Number 2349: Sub-Mariner: a couple of laughs in the torture chamber

I love the fifties versions of Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Human Torch. Atlas, formerly Timely, later Marvel, tried to bring their wartime heroes back to fight commies a few years after their publications were cancelled, but didn’t have much luck. It would be another few years before they came back into new popularity.* Sub-Mariner was fortunate enough to be drawn by his creator, Bill Everett. Everett was a busy artist in the fifties, and no matter what the stories are about, I love just about everything he did during that period.

This story appeared originally in Sub-Mariner #34 (1954), and I scanned it from a reprint in Marvel Super-Heroes #14 (1968). I got a big kick out of the sequence on page 3 when Namor is put in the torture chamber and encounters a large, brutish blue man who tells him, “Chee! I allus wanted t’meet d’famous Sub-Mariner! You used t’be my hero when I wuz just a liddle kid, mister!” Everett, who is credited with  the story (as well as drawing and lettering it) by the Grand Comics Database, avoided showing torture scenes with some comedy.

*All those Marvel movies...where is Sub-Mariner? Has he appeared in one and I missed it?

Posted in: Pappy Comics