GIANT-SIZE SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP #1 (1975)
by Roy Thomas & John Buscema
Cover by Ron Wilson
This is basically a framing device to reprint some of Doom’s previous appearances, as well as the only title with three hyphened words.
This is set right after Fantastic Four #144, when Doom blew up in space thanks to Darkoth.
Either Doom’s armor is VERY lightweight or it has a floating device, because Namor finds him in the middle of the ocean.
Namor actually saves Doom’s life with the Electronic Stimulatron ™. I sure hope he won’t regret this years later.
Unless you hear Doom’s version, of course.
In all their previous encounters, it was Doom who was trying to recruit Namor. This time is the opposite.
That’s our framing device: Doom recalls the events of Sub-Mariner #20.
After that flashback, Namor updates Doom about what’s going on in his owns series: all the citizens of Atlantis have been put in suspended animation.
Namor makes the case that having Atlantis as an ally would greatly help Doom’s plans of world domination.
Doom isn’t so sure about it: the last time he tried an alliance with anyone who isn’t Namor was with Diablo. And, in Doom’s own thoughts:
That is of course the reason to reprint Marvel Super-Heroes #20.
After that reprint is over, Doom is genre savvy enough to realize that any alliance with Namor will inevitably end with one of them betraying the other.
They have a brief fight, where Namor does the mistake of offering Doom the chance to surrender.
Then they both leave, realizing that this was a complete waste of time for both.
Namor, on the other hand, vows to continue trying to make their bromance work.
Since this is a glorified cameo, I’m not doing any of the usual categories. It was interesting to get some insight into Doom’s view of his relationship with Namor, though.
‘Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up#1′, ( “Encounter at Land’s End” ) is actually one of my all-time favorite “stand alone” Marvel Comics! ( a comic that does not belong to a multi-issue storyline, such as “The Sentinel Trilogies”, “The Galactus Trilogy”, “The Avengers/Defenders War”, “The Phoenix Saga”, etc. )
I know I’m a weird person, but “Encounter at Land’s End” just hits all the right notes for me: Roy Thomas’ legendary prose at it’s most erudite, John Buscema’s artwork at it’s most sophisticated, a brief, tight encounter between two of Planet Earth’s most interesting inhabitants, ( not all great comic-book stories have to be Magnum Opuses -indeed, this encounter between Namor and Doom transpired over a course of about fifteen minutes ) a very unique and interesting battlefield- Namor’s flagship, which seems to come equipped with everything including the kitchen sink , and, lastly, but for myself, certainly not in the least, Namor’s awesome mid-Seventies black battlesuit, which I have always believed dramatically increased his interest-quotient, making him a man to be feared and respected, as opposed to an overexposed monarch in a scaly-green Speedo!
Clothes truly DO make the man, even the aqua-man!
The status-quo of Namor needing a sharp-as-Hades battlesuit to keep him alive out of the water, as well as an ongoing desperate quest to save his people and kingdom, made the saga of the Sub-Mariner more interesting than it’s ever been, either before or since!
Following the events of Super-Villain Team-Up#13, Namor should have returned to the Baxter Building to retrieve that suit if for no other reason than it had been personally autographed by King Neptune himself! ( in Sub-Mariner#68 )
I can’t believe Namor forgot about that! If there’s anyone in the entire Multiverse whose autograph Namor would actually covet, wouldn’t you think it would be King Neptune, the only being in all creation whom Namor acknowledges as his superior??!! Of COURSE it would!!!
If I were Namor, I’d swim back to FF HQ at top-speed, and recollect that collector’s item! But, back to Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up#1- one of Marvel’s greatest self-contained, single-issue stories, which launched a series that had all the right ingredients to make it a smash-hit, but fell abysmally short by losing the critical winning team of Thomas and Buscema, with the very second issue.
So, so sad- but at least “Encounter at Land’s End” stands as a beacon of how great a single, stand-alone story can be!
Excelsior!
I’m not the biggest Roy Thomas fan, but you can never go wrong with John Buscema artwork. And yes, that is probably Namor’s best costume ever.