At the recent "D23 Expo", Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, was asked if Marvel Comics' anti-hero "Namor: The Sub-Mariner" would ever become a live-action motion picture. Feige confirmed it was up to Universal, the home of the most famous monsters of filmland, to come up with a feature as they still retain the rights to the Marvel Comics property.
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Regarded as Marvel's first mutant, the last we heard of a Namor motion picture was in 2006, when Universal Pictures proudly announced that director Jonathan Mostow would rewrite a script by David Self and direct a "Sub-Mariner" feature, with Kevin Misher ("Carrie") producing through his Misher Films.
Debuting in 1939, the character was created by writer-artist Bill Everett, as the mutant son of a human sea captain and a princess of the mythical undersea kingdom of 'Atlantis', possessing the super-strength and aquatic abilities of the 'Homo mermanus' race, as well as the mutant ability of flight.
Through the years, the compelling character has been alternately portrayed as a good-natured but short-fused superhero, or a hostile invader seeking vengeance for perceived wrongs that misguided surface-dwellers committed against his kingdom.
After fighting WWII alongside 'Captain America' and the 'Human Torch' on the side of the Allies, Namor resurfaced in the 1950's as the subject of a developing live-action TV series.
He then came back into significance during the 'Silver Age' of comics, in Marvel's "Fantastic Four" #4 (May 1962), when 'Johnny Storm', the new Human Torch discovered him living as an amnesiac homeless man in the Bowery section of Manhattan.
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Recovering his memory, Namor immediately returned to his undersea kingdom, finding it destroyed from underwater nuclear testing. He vowed revenge against the surface dwellers, as "two elements — a thirst for vengeance and a quest for identity" would dominate his life. He was both a villain and a hero — striking against the human race who destroyed his home, while showing respect to worthy individuals.
Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek the original 1960's "Namor: The Sub-Mariner" cartoons, animated from the original Silver Age comic book illustrations by Gene Colan...
