Saturday, April 6, 2013

Namor: First Mutant

I am now working my way through Namor: First Mutant, a title that ran for 11 issues, not including the Annual, in 2010 and 2011.

Namor appeared in the well-nigh Biblical Marvel Comics #1 from 1939. This makes Namor, along with Ka-Zar, Marvel's oldest character. (If one can understand Marvel's superheroes -- why they rose during World War II; why they disappeared during the Cold War; why they reemerged at the outset of the cultural revolution of the 1960's; how they heralded the freak scene of the 1970's, etc. -- one can know a lot about America.)

Namor is a difficult guy. Half Atlantean fish man, half surface dweller, he is basically angry all the time; he is a proto-Punk prince of the deep. It's interesting that at the originary center of the Marvel Universe you have a character who is the leader of a martial and constantly-harried-to-the-point-of-extinction race; it is as if Marvel has Tecumseh at its heart.

Below you'll find three consecutive pages from Namor: First Mutant #5, written by Stuart Moore with art by Ariel Olivetti. You won't find Namor himself though. (I just liked these panels.)




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