Disney needs to ressurrect Namorita - NOW

As always I wasn´t planning on doing a post Today. In fact, I was just happy as a clam, going through my e - mails but in the end I just had to write another missive about another squandered superheroine sexbomb that hasn´t been resurrected by Disney so far like everybody else.

That´s right. I´m talking about the stunning Submarinette, Prince Namor´s favorite cousin, the underwater babe with the terrific twin torpedoes and the most exciting streamline shape in all the seven seas.

Taken away before her comic babe potential could be fully realized in the events that led to CIVIL WAR she still hasn´t come back like a lot of other comic characters like Hawkguy, Scarlet witch, Bucky, etc. Now this has always pissed me off but Today I was almost coerced into writing about it. Like I said, I was going through my e - mails and the first part of that is always going through the spam for this blog. Because there is always a lot of people who want to be clever and put links in their comments which naturally get blocked by blogger. Nevertheless there is always the odd chance that some of these comments get by the spam filter so I have to check all the spam. Which is mostly the same three posts but from time to time there are also others and one such post that has come up quite uncharacteristically often in the last few days is MY X - MEN TEAM or ALL I WANNA DO IS ZOOM ZOOM ON YOUR BOOM BOOM, BOOM BOOM .  

As you might have guessed from the title it´s my casting for a X - Men team that prominently includes mutant massita Boom Boom. Another candidate in this and my X - Babe Comicbabe Battle ranking was Namorita and since those posts are obvously very popular with my readers - spam or no spam - I though I should give it the once over since the links at the bottom were kind of funky and the whole layout a bit questionable. Anyway, when I read my old post from back in the day I wanted to include this picture of an unknown hot woman cosplaying as Namorita ( or the photo of some hot model that was photoshoped to look like Namorita ).

But I had some trouble finding it in my various folders ( this always happens ). So I went to the internet to look for it but what I found instead were a lof of other pictures of Namorita like the one below which is from the MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL issues. It´s much bigger and in a higher resolution than the one I had posted back then so I decided to change it.

She was one of my picks because it had just been revealed at that time that Namor was the very first mutant of the Marvel Universe and since Namorita turned out to not be his cousin but kind of a clone that was enough for the " mutant by association " rule. Hey, I was ready to go with anything to get some hot comic babes in my X- Men team. And since they had just made Hawkguy a mutant why couldn´t Namorita be one ? So I included her and also stressed that she would wear this sheashell bikini.

And before you call " foul " or call me a pervert or something worse the guys at Marvel put her in this costume, not me. The Bronze Age rules !

Okay, technically speaking she only wears this on the cover of this issue but you can see her in her full metal - bikini glory ( two years BEFORE the slave Leia outfit took over our collective minds ) in the very next issue.

As Doctor Andy notes in his post on the issue Namorita is not wearing this when Tiger Shark kidnapped her, so it´s very possible that some serious sexual harassment happened here.What I wonder is if Namorita did not have it on her did it come from Tiger Shark´s own private collection ?

Namorita also sported her Follet Tortuga bra in MARVEL TWO - IN - ONE 2.

She has a similar metal bikini / harem girl outfit in SUPER VILLAIN TEAM UP  9 and AVENGERS 155 . Doctor Doom approved of her court attire.

Yes, Namorita was really working it hardcore and I especially liked her as a supporting character in John Byrne´s NAMOR series which I just re - read last year and I have to say it still holds up surprisingly well.

Of course there was the whole thing were it was revealed that Namorita was not Namor´s cousin but actually a clone of Namor first cousin Namora that gave their relationship kind of a weird vibe. But I enjoyed the issues.

I even read the Jae Lee penciled issues but I don´t know for how long. His style was so not my thing back then and I got rid of all but his first issue.

Back to Namorita there were still some weird things coming her way when writers turned her into some kind of man - eating blue skinned mermaid.

 
Man, despite all this bunch of bad stuff that was just dumped on Namorita like being crucified by the Sea Urchin .... is it just me or was NEW WARRIORS a book that was in the top of the sales charts in the 90s ?

You know, the decade that everybody tells you sucked comic wise but which had incredibly well written, well drawn books like NEW WARRIORS, SLEEPWALKER and the newest incarnation of DER GEISTER REITER.

The new Ghost Rider by Javier Saltares and Mark Texiera was such a huge success that Marvel decided to put him in every book they could even if it was just for a few panels. But it was one of these cheap marketing ploys that actually worked on me and brought me back to reading THOR.

But we will get to talk about all that when I finally get to do my long postponed Ghost Rider post. Which I really hope to do one of these days.

Before we get back to Namorita I want to mention that I really don´t like coming off like one of those cranky old guys but the books that came out in the 80s and 90s just rocked so much more than Today that it just can´t be me. I mean I´m reading my old posts and realize that the x - books were really awesome. I actually cared enough about X - Men books that I thought long and hard about which team members I would pick for a team. And then I would go to all the trouble to actually write a post on it.

And now ? For the longest time I didn´t care what happend in the x - books, I got back into the x - verse by reading the german translations but there was just nothing interesting happening. I came back just after the EXTINCTION AGENDA and I don´t know if that was a good way or a bad way to start again but the only story that I thought was exceptionally well written and drawn was the SCHISM thing. That event started me on WOLVERINE AND THE X - MEN which became one of my favorite series ( although I skipped most issues not drawn by Nick Bradstreet since I can´t stand Chris Bachalo´s art ever since his STEAMPUNK image series ) or better said the only x - title I read. Later I started on ALL NEW X - MEN which for me is one of the few good books left that Disney publishes.

Man, Today I´m talking about a lot of old series but what can I do ? I´m trying to get into these new books but it´s kind of the same like with GEN 13 where iMAGE tried to recapture the success of the first run of the book but because the writing and art just got worse and worse with every new volume it just died a slow and agonizing ( mostly for the readers ) death.

And the same seems to be true for the NEW WARRIORS in that they try to come up with a new twist or a new team or SOMETHING and you are all exited and you want to give it a chance and then when you are at the comic shop you hold the first issue in your hand and it looks like crap.

And they had the real Nova on the team not some stupid third grader.

Okay, I really have to wrap things up since I already edited 2 posts Today and didn´t get to finish my e - mails. Again. So I want to mention once again that I was always very fond of the curvaceous Namorita and I can´t believe Disney is actually not cashing in on the possibility to have a comic book about a mermaid. They need to bring Namorita back because I think she was a great character and her death was totally meaningless.And I do not care if they go back in time, get the regular one or the blue skinned.

Now this is the part that usually lists all the websites that contrinuted to this post but in this case most of them have nothing to do with the topic of Todays post. Nevertheless I´m going to include them since I think there are some interesting ones but I´m afraid it´s going to be a long list.

The Marvel Swimsuit Special issues have come up a lot lately with the Spiderwoman scandal and if you don´t know them you can see the entire 1993 issue at italian website L´ANTRO ATOMICO DEL DR. MANHATTAN .

You might remember that I mentioned these publications in one of my latest posts about Ms Marvel and a nice supplement to that post are COMIC POW !´s entry on Carol Danvers ( [ Ms / Captain ] Marvel ) through time and WRITEUPS´s Carol Danvers profile that talks in depth about her many costumes. I have always been particular fond of her classic Bronze Age costume because it not only had a window in the front

 but also on her back side. And what a back side it is.

 
TOP TENZ has an article about the Top Ten Worst Moments in Marvel Comics and number ten is Ms Marvel´s rape in AVENGERS 200 and I have another related post for you. As I mentioned so many characters have come back to life at Marvel that it seems there is a revolving door and it´s a total injustice that Namorita has still not come back. Well ONCE UPON A GEEK has written a nice article about Mar - Vell called Captain Marvel, The Last Good Dead Superhero . As most of you know he met his demise in Jim Starlin´s fantastic graphic novel THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL which I can only recommend to anyone who still hasn´t read it.

Speaking of great comic artists Gene Colan has no connection to all this besides the fact that Ms Marvel once appeared in an issue of Tomb of Dracula and Vlad just ignored her. However I just have to mention the aptly named LONGBOX GRAVEYARD where you can find many entries under the Tomb of Dracula tag with many pictures by the great Gene Colan.

The Namorita pictures from COMIC VINE were really no help this time but I want to include it because it also has tons of other stuff and is a great resource. On the other side this post from NO MORE MUTANTS provided a better version of Joe Madureiras´ Blink splash page from ASTONISHING X - MEN 4 that I could use on the other two posts I worked on Today.

 
There´s kind of an X - Men / Alan Davis theme going on : GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE make an encore appearance on the blog with an extensive post about Uncanny X - Men 213 by Chris Clarmont and Alan Davis, HERO ENVY lists The Top 5 Greatest Battles of Wolverine that also includes Uncanny X - Men 213 and COMICS OUGHT TO BE FUN celebrates Psylocke Psunday and takes a look at how she and her teammates welcomed new member Havok - or not. I´m not sure what kind of website STORMANTIC is since they sell tarot cards with superheroes on them but they seem to be very fond of Alan Davis since this is their fourth post on him with a lot of pages that I will probably use in some upcoming black and white posts.

Likewise tireless is ERIK KANDOU since this is his third really elaborate post about Chris Claremont´s third Uncanny X - Men run. If you want to know what happens in the issues wihtout having to spend a lot of money on issues this is the address for you. More Alan Davis / X - Men stuff :

MARVEL COMICS OF THE 1980S analyzes Alan Davis´ cover to Uncanny X - Men Annual 11 in black and white, this guy has 98 original black and white pages in his gallery at comicartfans which he is willing to sell or trade but I guess the biggest help in making my black and white post will be tumbler page GOSH YES ALAN DAVIS that has tons of beautiful Alan Davis art

that has the occasional color page thrown in.

 
And last but in no way least this website lists posts about 80s tv sexbomb Markie Post ( which is how most people find this blog ) and my latest post on her is number three on the list although I think I got the first 2 beat.

I mean they have just some pictures and not a lot of information can be found there. My post has more pictures, links, videos and whatnot and is still ranked behind them. My only consolation is that this may be ranked in order of the date so it´s not a reflection of the quality of the content. 

Since I´m talking about Markie Post check out my big post on her which I just recently updated . I want to see it higher in my popular post listing.

Like always I wanted to add some video that is related to the topic of the post but I couldn´t find any good ones on Namorita and all the videos that came up looking for " Boom Boom " are not safe to post or the Vengaboys. So here´s one I found all about Night Trasher and The New Warriors.



One of the few mangas I´m still following is CASE CLOSED or DETECTIVE CONAN how it is called in the rest of the world. Naturally I became a fan by watching the tv series first and there are over a dozen movies but they are much too expensive for me. So I went looking for them on YouTube and was very surprised when I found out that some live action movies had been made. This is the first one and it seems to be kind of a prologue to the series because Shinichi Kudo is still in school as a normal teenager solving crimes. It´s in the original language but it has english subtitles.



The Big Bang Theory is one of the most successful sitcoms in the universe and I think beside the fact that the nerds are finally the real heroes here it has also a lot to do with the ravishing Kaley Cuoco who was invited to the Jimmy Kimmel Show in 2013. She always seems to be unfortunate with her haircut but I can´t fault her for her generously cleavaged dress.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Darick Robertson Donnerstag

Well, it´s just that " Darick Robertson appreciating Thursday " has not the same alliteration in it otherwise I would have gone with that. Today it´s Mr. Robertson birthday so I wanted to put the spotlight one of my favorite artists and the different series he worked on.


And being such an old fart that I am we´ll have to use the " way back timemachine " for that. I´m not that old that I read his first professional work the mythic SPACE BEAVER series so I guess the first I saw of his artwork was on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE. It was just a short part and all I remember from it is that it had the story with Power Girl´s famous coconut bikini and that I sorely missed somebody with a knack for drawing hot women like Bart Sears from the pages.


Aside from DC Darick also worked for Marvel on the odd issues of X - FACTOR and more importantly NEW WARRIORS and WOLVERINE. One of the latter ones was a Wolverine story involving Jubilee ( who still had a pretty small cupsize back then ) and Terror, a contract killer who could obtain certain abilities by adding bodyparts of other people. Preferable dead ones.

Like for instance if he changed his hands for the hands of a pianist he could play the piano. Weird, I know but that has always been my taste in comics : superheroes mixed with horror and a bit of the bizarre. The art on TERROR INC was done by Jorge Zaffino who also did some PUNISHER stuff like the storyline that crossed over Frank Castle and NAM or the ASSASINS GUILD graphic novel.


Back then I had pretty strict criterias for what I considered a good artist and most of the series I´m reading Today wouldn´t have made the cut because of artists like Mike Allred, Paul Grist, Steve Rude or Darwyn Cooke. Now I´m a big fan of their work but I had to cultivate my comic reading taste till reaching that point.


So it´s kind of a miracle that I read most of Jorge Zaffino´s stuff. I guess I was REALLY into all that horror stuff at that time period.

While HORROR INC had an interesting premise and tickled MY horror bone it didn´t catch on with too many comic readers and as the commercial success didn´t match expectations the originally planned 15 issue run was ended with the unlucky 13 but not before Terror could pay Wolverine a return visit - like they so often did back then. Although now that I think of it they still do that from time to time.


We´ll also pay Frank Castle and Wolverine a retun visit a bit later but coming back to Darick Robertson he was just about to start his first big thing where he went from an artist who I tolerated in my books to an artist that slowly made his way to the top of my reading pile.


In THOR 412 old Goldilocks got into a brawl with the f - ing Juggernaut ( beyotch ! ) and was bailed out at a very critical moment by Marvel´s newest Teen Team that was christened as THE NEW WARRIORS by Thor himself. And you know that if Thor picks your team name you better stick with it unless you want to be hit by a thunderbolt where the sun doesn´t shine.


The New Warriors pretty soon got their own title written by Fabian Nicieza and art by the - back then - up and coming superstar Mark Bagley. The team consisted of Speedball who was in his pre - Civil War jokester phase , Nova who was going by Kid Nova and changed his red costume for the now familiar blue one, Firestar and Marvel Boy who would later on become Avengers in training, Namorita who already was a hot babe and a character called Nightrasher who would lead to thousand of inapropriate jokes.

I got the first two or three issues but because they didn´t make a big impression on me I would have passed on the entire series if it hadn´t been for the cheapest marketing ploy in comics.


Yes, that´s right. I fell for the old " guest - starring THE PUNISHER " schtick. Which turned up not so bad in the long run since Mr. Bagley´s art had improved a great deal since the first issues and I not only stayed for the Punisher issues but also till the FOREVER YESTERDAY trilogy. The story pitted the Warriors against their first archnemesis The Sphinx in an alternate reality that had the familiar Marvel heroes although in ethnically more diverse versions. As a big fan of parallel worlds, alternate realities and doppelgangers from other dimension it was the perfect story to get me hooked and before I knew it this was one of my favorite books.


Fabian Nicieza ( whose name I still have to look up to amke sure to write it correctly ) really knows how to make characters interesting and in the first 25 - issue storyarc all the characters got their fair share of screentime. And I think in this series Namorita became an interesting character since over the course of the series she not only changed her one piece swimsuit for a two piece bikini


but she also got a forced haircut ( with cruxification at the same price ) by the villain Sea Urchin who she defeated in the rematch and even became team leader of the New Warriors.

All in all it wasn´t an easy time for her. First she got beaten up by Neo Nazis in the NAMOR series, then she learned she wasn´t really Namor´s cousin but a clone and then got the beatdown by sea Urchin. Man, I don´t think the writers didn´t like her that much since they later on gave her blue skin,


transformed her into some kind of fishwoman and finally blew her skyhigh during the Stamford Incident that sparked the CIVIL WAR. Of course, being a comic book character death is not final and a time displaced version of Namorita has already been seen in REALM OF KINGS and THE THANOS INPERATIVE. With time being kind of wibbly - wobbly, timey - wimey she may already be back.

By the way, back when I did my first COMICBABE BATTLE post I thought this costume might be a bit risky.


But it seems Marvel itself put Namorita in a similar one as far back as March 1978.


Coming back to the New Warriors, this was before the time when artists only stayed a few issues on any given title with six the highest number for a possible trade paperback, so the benchmark number for when an artist would leave a title was issue 12 or issue 25. Which meant for regular artists doing a book for one or two years and for artists like Joe Madureiras or J. Scott Campbell 10 to 15 years.

But staying serious, issues 12 or issue 25 was the point where you had to decide if you would stick with the book through a new creative team or not. Since in the case of NEW WARRIORS Fabian Nicieza stayed with the book ( he wrote all issues up to issue 52 ) I decided to take a chance on this new artist called Darick Robertson whose art I might have seen before somewhere.


The writing reached the level of quality few other teen team books like NEW MUTANTS or TEEN TITANS achieved especially with stories like Marvel Boy ( now going by the name of JUSTICE ) facing charges for killing his abusive father with his powers and the relationship between Nova and Namorita.


Artwise Darick Robertson started slowly with good, solid art on his first issues but started to take of with the beginning of the FORCES OF DARKNESS, FORCES OF LIGHT storyline.


Not only was he beginning to evolve a very unique artstyle with dynamic storytelling, in this three parter that guest - starred Darkhawk, Dagger and Spider - Man he began to experiment with the layout in interesting ways.


Darick Robertson stayed with the title till issue 50, the finale of the TIME AND TIME AGAIN story in which the New Warriors had to lay the smack down on - Sphinx - who would have thought that in a story about time they had to fight their time travelling nemesis ?


About issue 40 or so I was thinking about leaving the title but since 45 was part of a crossover with X - FORCE ( which wasn´t that difficult to manage for Fabian Nicieza since he wrote both series ), a teen team book I was also reading I decided to tough it out till the big 50th issue.


And that basically was it for me and NEW WARRIORS. Marvel tried another series but since it was entirely dependent on artist Steve Scott´s distinctive style the whole thing crashed and burned in the worst possible way when it took him longer and longer to finish his issues until he finally bailed.


There also was another series where they had their own tv show ( which ultimately led to the Stamford incident ) but since it was drawn by Scottie Young I never bothered to check it out. I didn´t return to NEW WARRIORS until CIVIL WAR when Jubilee developed an incredible rack, quite possibly due to a second mutation as some speculated.


Now coming back to X - FORCE, that was another book on my pull list that was a teen team book of which I apparently read quite a bunch during that time. The writing was done by Fabian Nicieza, like I said, and in the art departement Greg Capullo was rocking the title.


This was long before Greg became a better Todd McFarlane artist then Todd McFarlane himself when all his creative juices were flowing and he was at the top of the game. He was fresh of QUASAR, a title that he put on the map and which helped him gain a kind of new superstar status at Marvel. Man, I really wish they would do a trade with this run since this is one of Marvel´s best runs. Mark Gruenwald really hit it out of the ballpark and he even managed to include appearances of pre - crisis Barry Allen and NEW UNIVERSE characters like the STAR BRAND and DP7.


Now X - FORCE was more of a military kind of drill team instead of the NEW WARRIORS which was more like a family. Which should be no surprise if you keep in mind Cable´s military background. It also put Cannonball from New Mutants in a leadership role, one of the very few instances where he wasn´t underused. In the EXECUTIONER´S SONG story, that crossed over between all x - titles as most of the stories did, I remember Cyclops empasizing how important it was not to underestimate Cannonball. Not only was he trained by Charles Xavier and so knew all of the X - Men´s tactics,


he also was tutored by mutant terrorist Magneto when he was headmaster of the Charles Xavier School for Gifted Students and on top of that received military training by Cable who was a specialist in guerilla tactics.

It´s one of the rare moments when Cannonball got some well deserved respect. And speaking about military training there were a lot of team books that more resembled a fighting unit and in Marvel´s x - books that meant three things. First : teleportation, a lot of teleportation. All the villains had teleporters on the team or teleportation technology to escape in the nick of time and if the heroes didn´t have some means to teleport they couldn´t follow them. Teleportation is a topic to which we will also return later on.

The second thing fighting team books meant was time travel in all its aspects like team leaders from an alternate timeline like Cable, villains from another alternate timeline who were the twin of the team leader from an alternative reality like Stryfe and babies from our timeline who could grow up to be one or the other. Although I won´t get into detail as who this baby might be since I´ve already spoilered enough.

And the third and final thing that was an absolute must on those team books was weird accessories like pouches, lots of pouches, even pouches for the puches. Just ask Rob Liefeld or Jim Lee, they based their whole career - or at least big part of it - on the ability to add lots of pouches to a dress. I´m just surprised that Jim Lee didn´t put those pouches on the designs for DC´s new 52 heroes. Or maybe he did and Cully Hamner erased them all. But back in 1993 mutants had to have pouches. And guns. Let´s not forget the guns, the bigger the better.


As for Darick Robertson, after NEW WARRIORS he did THE NIGHT MAN for Malibu, some issues of mutant books like EXCALIBUR and SPIDER - MAN stuff at Marvel and he returned to the Justice League franchise with JUSTICE LEAGUE : A MIDSUMMER´S NIGHTMARE. It was in the following year that Darick Robertson should start working on one of the two titles he would be associated with from then on forward : TRANSMETROPOLITAN.


And with that we have reached the end of the first part of the Darick Robertson retrospective as it´s once again at least one hour past my bedtime. I thought I could wrap this up in one post, especially keeping in mind that I prepared all the stuff for this post the last two days. And maybe I would have if I had stayed on Darick Robertson but as always I drifted a bit away from the main topic into unexpected territory. And I slept a lot this afternoon because.....well, I´ll talk more about the reasons for that Tomorrow or I´ll never get this post finished.

Before closing I just wanted to mention that Today Vanessa Angel also celebrates her 45th anniversary so this could also have been an entirely different post. Vanessa is best known for playing the sexy russian spy in the god - awful SPIES LIKE US, in fact it´s the only scene that makes the movie almost bearable.


She also played Kelly Le Brock´s part of artificial lifeform Lisa in the tv series WEIRD SCIENCE. Yup, like the EC comic.


So happy anniversary Vanessa.

Since I have already mentioned the NIGHT MAN comic series I couldn´t end this post without a clip form the tv series. Here´s the first part of episode 1 and I have to admit up until now I have never watched it so don´t ask me if it´s any good.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest