DOUGLAS: On to Namor: The First Mutant #1. I suppose gerrymandering the Sub-Mariner in as an X-book is an approach that hasn’t been tried before (although I kind of think of all the “Curse of the Mutants” stuff as an off-label sub-category of the X-books). And I like Ariel Olivetti’s artwork, here as in his run on Incredible Hercules; it reminds me a little of those early-’80s magazine-sized Marvel titles where they were all excited about how the artwork was painted like, you know, real art, and also of the stuff Frazer Irving’s been doing lately.
What I don’t know about, honestly, is trying to give Namor his own book again. This is something like Marvel’s sixth attempt at a Sub-Mariner ongoing since 1968 (not counting various miniseries and such), and aside from the bizarre Bill Everett run, nobody’s really been able to make him work as a lead character in a long time. Namor’s a great supporting character–the nobleman who’s genuinely noble but also a total dick, the champion of his realm who cares so little for anybody else’s that he can seem to be a hero or a villain by surface-world standards at any point but never actually changes his mind. But all that has to do with how he plays off protagonists; I don’t know that he’s as effective as one (even though the “being a dick to the soothsayer” scene at the beginning of this is entertaining).
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Really, the best thing about this issue is Jae Lee’s cover: Namor perched in one of those crossed-ankled positions that you can do underwater but not on the surface, giant symmetrical squid-creature behind him, two little trails of blood rising from his neck. That’s an arresting image.
EVAN: I already think that this story would be best kept to a miniseries. A few things struck me about this issue:
New status quo aside, I really don’t like the big red X on Namor’s belt. I know what it stands for, but we’ve got a character who’s always been cantankerously his own man. The X feels like it’s diluting Namor.
Olivetti’s art works great underwater. He’s never been one for backgrounds, so undersea stuff is awesome for him.
I generally like Moore’s work–his Firestorm run is one of the best teenage-superhero comics in ages–but this issue felt way overwritten. The book starts with a creepy horror tone, but everybody then starts talking too much. And I’ve really grown to hate these text pieces at the back of milestone issues. If you can’t tell me everything I need to know about the character in the panels, then something might be wrong.
I love Namor as a character. I do. But the whole dominance of Namor-as-asshole meme over the last few years is as bad for him as the self-destructive Matt Murdock thing has been in Daredevil. I kinda want a more thawed-out Avenging Son. I hope Moore brings him there.
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GRAEME: As one who hasn’t read the book thanks to Diamond screwing the West Coast, I really shouldn’t say anything, but I’m very much with you, Douglas, about the wisdom of giving Namor his own book again, especially trying to tie it so closely to the current X-Men vampire storyline (and, for that matter, the character so closely to the X-Men in general). Namor, like Aquaman, just doesn’t seem to work out longterm as a leading man, nor in teams. He’s best as a jerk – occasionally a jerk with the best intentions, or for the right reasons, sure, but a jerk nonetheless – who doesn’t have to shoulder the audience’s attention for too long.
MIKE: Aside from the fact that nothing really happens in this book, I was excited and then let down by the artwork of Olivetti. The problem with drawing a story about characters diving “below the sea floor” where it’s so dark that vampires flourish is that it’s too dark to show anything. If you just opened this book to any random page, you’d think it took place right off the beach in the Carribean it’s so bright and blue. And that’s just in the panels where the background isn’t pure white. The tone just felt off to me.
DOUGLAS: Weirdly, I’ve recently reread two other stories involving underwater vampires: the Alan Moore “Swamp Thing” story where the community of vampires sets up shop in a stagnant lake, and (especially) that awesome Devlin Waugh story “Swimming in Blood,” with the underwater maximum-security prison and the ultra-dandified Vatican investigator who gets turned into a vampire halfway through the story but that doesn’t even faze him, he just starts taking bottles of blood with him everywhere he goes along with his Oscar Wilde first editions and ancient Persian rugs.
GRAEME: I love Devlin Waugh. John Smith really is an incredibly underrated writer.