Our last Sub-Mariner update (heroic) included a bit where New Yorkers were booing Namor for the several times he had attacked their city already and in that I noted that it was just and good that they do so because of human nature and also because he deserves it. With that in mind, today’s Sub-Mariner (villain) update, from Human Torch v1 005b, 1941, provides much of the rest of the world with a reason to hate the guy as well.

The Sub-Mariner’s rise to global-level villainy starts out somewhat reasonably, as he returns home to Atlantis the as-yet unnamed undersea city of the Sub-Mariners to find that it has been devastated by fallout from a series of naval engagements in the oceans above it. Were there a lot of large-scale naval battles off the coast of Antarctica during WWII? I guess there were in the Marvel Universe. Namor also meets Rathia, the ruler of a different underwater civilization that has been similarly ruined by surface wars and has come to his people for shelter.

In response to a little light prodding from Rathia, Namor calls a war council of all the various undersea races and proposes that they band together to end the war on the surface. A noble goal! Rathia also starts planting the seeds of an idea in Namor’s mind, that he might make a good ruler of the newly-pacified world.

The trial run for this pacification plan goes off without a hitch: a battle between Russian and German forces on the banks of the Dniester River in Ukraine is ended when the river’s waters suddenly flood the battlefield. Rathia’s plan is also proceeding apace, as Namor’s ego is so easily manipulated that he is already all-in on the world conquest scheme. They are also lovers by this point, which is not technically important but fun to note for anyone making one of those big character relationship maps.

It is at this point that the Human Torch and Toro show up as part of their investigation into just what the heck is going on. On their way into the Sub-Mariner’s HQ, they pass my the first of his super-weapons: a gigantic turbine that allows him to move huge amounts of water around, and which he has hundreds of. This will be important later.

Namor reveals his plans to the duo and is predictably unsuccessful in convincing them to join in his schemes. The ensuing donnybrook sees the Torch escape while Toro is captured and slung into the dungeons.

The next chapter of this comic is devoted to the efforts of the Human Torch (with the Patriot in a minor role) attempting to spread the word about the threat that the Sub-Mariner poses to the surface and doesn’t amount to much: the Russians and the Germans reject the information as enemy propaganda, while the Americans and British accept it but don’t really do much in response. Winston Churchill does provide the Human Torch with a squadron of soldiers to accompany him on a raid into Atlantean territory but they are almost immediately drowned. Would I call that a predictable loss? Indeed I would!

Unlike those brave British boys, the Human Torch does not drown. Instead, he briefly engages the Sub-Mariner in hand-to-hand combat before being doused in fire-retardant chemicals by Rathia and slung into the same dungeons that Toro has been rotting in for a couple of weeks already. Never one to waste an opportunity, Namor laces the Torch’s food with brainwashing drugs to turn him into a living weapon.

In this capacity, the Torch gets a tour of the Sub-Mariner’s forces and we see a couple more of his cool super-weapons, including some cool shark suits for undersea shock troops and the mighty whale ships, which we will see again and which are my personal favourite piece of Atlantean technology.

And speaking of those particular weapons, this is the point at which the Sub-Mariner begins his campaign against the surface in earnest, and he employs them to first capture the Gibraltar (whale ships) and then the British Mediterranean Fleet (shark troops), with a side order of blowing up a bunch of Italian submarines along the way. The season of racking up national grudges has begun!

The next salvo in this war on all nations is a somewhat inexplicable attack on all of Africa. As presented, the Atlantean turbines send a wall of water from North Africa all the way down to the Belgian Congo region of Central Africa where Ka-Zar lives (and worry not, for the Human Torch made sure to warn him in advance about this possibility, so he and exactly one ark-worth of animals are safe) and possibly all the way to the tip of South Africa. It’s a devastating attack on an entire continent of people for very little reason.

The Sub-Mariner’s next move is to use his thrall the Human Torch to drive a glacier across Northern Europe and into the Soviet lines – slightly more relevant to the ongoing campaign in that it affects the Russian war machine, but still a heckuva thing to unleash on an area full of civilians.

Around here is where the Human Torch breaks his programming in a burst of patriotism after he sees an American flag in passing. This is the sort of thing that reads like parody today but will just sincerely appear in these Golden Age books.

Before he became his own man again, however, the Torch also set loose a North American glacier to sweep across Canada and into the US. Despite the Sub-Mariner’s attempts to stop him, the Torch melts this glacier before it can do much more harm than it already has.

Undeterred by this setback, the Sub-Mariner uses his turbines to flood Berlin and sail his whale ships into the city to conquer it. He also unleashes dozens of giant octopuses onto the flooded streets for good measure.

This flood does not hold, however, and the whale ships are forced to retreat while being harried by Nazi forces. In counter-counter-attack, the Sub-Mariner orders his turbines to send a tidal wave from the Mediterranean to wipe out his pursuers. This has a number of ongoing consequences:

1. The Italian Fleet is swept out into the open sea
2. The Rock of Gibraltar falls over due to being undermined by the actions of the turbines. This blocks the Atlantic connection to the Mediterranean and means that the turbines quickly empty the entire sea
3. There is a brief battle on the sea floor between Italian sailors, Atlantean forces and the Human Torch (not pictured) that ends when the Torch bakes the mud that everyone is standing in, trapping them
4. The Sub-Mariner pushes the Rock of Gibraltar back into place, thus destroying the entire Italian Navy

The Sub-Mariner is at this point feeling the pressure that the Human Torch is putting on him and so in a final act of sea-on-land warfare he flood NYC. It’s not the most original thing for him to do, but there’s something to be said for going with what you know.

Thanks to the Patriot’s earlier warning, the population of New York has repaired to waterproof shelters in advance of this flood, and the wave itself is dealt with when the Human Torch burrows down deep enough to unleash enough magma to evaporate it all.

Finally, having personally antagonized and devastated England, Italy, all of Africa, Russia, Canada, the USA ( and particularly New York) and Germany (and particularly Berlin), the Sub-Mariner is cornered by the Human Torch inside his former home base in the Statue of Liberty and immediately flips on Rathia in a very pathetic display. And it works! All of Namor’s crimes are implicitly forgiven due to the fact that he was under the influence of an evil woman! And not in a mind control way – she just told boosted up his ego and told him that world conquest made her horny and he started doing war crimes!

Rathia does try to usurp the throne of Atlantis once she learns that Namor has stopped trying to take over the world, and that is a villainous act, but it’s no more than the guy deserves at this point in the comic. Anyway, he escapes his just deserts with the help of the overly-forgiving Human Torch.

And that’s that! Namor gets to go back to being the ruler of Atlantis while Rathia is sent to the Hague to await trial as “World Enemy No 2” after Hitler. Justice is a sham!