SUB-MARINER #20 (1969)
by Roy Thomas & John Buscema
It’s been a while since Doom met Namor, but they get a chance to rekindle their bromance in the regular series of the Prince of Atlantis.
It’s not a good time for Namor: he’s recently lost his ability to breathe underwater thanks to some hostile aliens.
It’s a long story, but all you need to know is that Namor typically has two emotional states: either “cool detachment” or “constant rage”.
He’s in “constant rage” mode today. As most days, really.
Since this is a guy who can survive more than a few rounds against the Hulk AND he has previously tried to invade the surface world, the Army intervenes.
Well, more like “the army shows up to be bulldozed by Namor”.
As powerful as Namor is, he gets progressively weaker if he’s away from water for too long.
He’s already so weak that he can’t fly, and he’s backed into a corner by the army.
The gate to the building opens up automatically, and we learn that Namor has just been granted asylum into the Latverian embassy.
Namor is first greeted by a weird-looking robot…
…and then by Doom, in one of his most melodramatic introductions (and there’s a lot of competition there!).
Note that Namor is let inside the embassy as a personal favor by Doom, and STILL he must prove himself worthy of Doom’s friendship. That’s Doctor Doom in a nutshell.
Namor correctly points out that the last time they met (seven years before this story) Doom almost let him die in space, but Doom basically shrugs it off.
Doom proposes an alliance to destroy the Fantastic Four, but Namor refuses and the two start arguing. Like they do basically every time they’re in the same room.
Specifically, Doom is interested in the army of Atlantis, which Namor once used to almost conquer New York.
Also: as we’ve seen before, Doom absolutely cannot sit down like a normal person.
Unfortunately for Doom, Namor isn’t playing the villain role anymore. The only thing he wants from Doom is some water to recover his strength.
Doom orders the embassy’s staff to make sure that there isn’t a single drop of water in the building (they even throw away the ice cubes!) before blackmailing Namor into joining forces.
Kind of a dick move. It’s also ironic that Doom would try to blackmail someone else into being his ally, considering he exiled Diablo for trying exactly the same thing.
It doesn’t work with Namor any better than it worked on Doom.
Doom is thoroughly enjoying the fact that Namor is in bad physical condition.
I find the fact that Doom modified the staircase of his embassy to turn it into a slide to be hilarious.
But eventually Doom gets bored embarrassing Namor and just decides to mortally wound him.
At this point Namor is so weak that he doesn’t resist Doom’s goons who show up to throw him into a dungeon (they don’t specifically call it a dungeon, but OF COURSE Doom has a dungeon in his embassy).
Unfortunately for them, Namor still has just enough strength to reach one of the cables and…
Yep, this starts a fire and since Doom got rid of the water there’s no way to put it out.
You would think that Doom would have something in armor to stop a fire, but no.
This could backfire on Namor, but he’s saved by the fire department. (!!!)
How fast was the fire department in 60s New York!?!?
Namor regains his strength but, in a rare case of him thinking things through, he doesn’t try to fight Doom in his own base and just flees.
They will run into each other in a couple of years, but that will have to wait because next time Doctor Doom gets his own series!
Kind of.
Namor significance: 0/10
I’ll admit I’m not too familiar with this series, but in the long run this has basically no impact on the character’s life.
Doom significance: 0/10
Other than reminding us that Doom and Namor have history, this is pretty unremarkable.
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
On the Marvel scale, of course, but there are a couple of contrivances. Namor just HAPPENS to end up at the Latveria embassy: the dialogue implies that neither him or Doom knew this would happen. But even you can ignore that, the fact that the fire department is there to douse water on the embassy SECONDS after the fire starts can’t be ignored today.
Does it stand the test of time?
Kind of harmless. I normally can’t stand the way Roy Thomas writes dialogue, but he’s pretty restrained here… with the exception of Namor and Doom, and both are always supposed to be self-aggrandizing windbags. The art by legendary John Buscema, even if the inks by Johnny Craig don’t do him any favor. I like the way he draws Doom; he’ll get much better at it in future stories.
Speaking of the story itself, it’s nothing special… basically an excuse to brush up on the classic Doom-Namor duo. A nice side story, which is fitting because it’s in the middle of another storyline in Namor’s book.
It was a Doombot all along
One of the many instances where this could either be the real one or a robot without much impact on the story.
Take over the world & Destroy the FF!
A relatively rare case of both objectives being specifically mentioned.
Crazy tech
Nothing that stands out. The robot sent to greet Namor has a really weid design, but it goes down in a couple of panels.
Superhero count: 17
Since Namor is the closest thing to the hero of the story, I’m counting him to the heroes who have fought Dr. Doom so far:
Fantastic Four
Ant-Man
Spider-Man
Daredevil
Crystal
The Avengers from Avengers 1.5 (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Wasp)
The Avengers from Avengers 25 (Captain America, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver)