"Since there ain't any oceans in this room, I'll use this fishbowl!" - Ben Grimm

This was a pretty enjoyable issue (and a step up from the last four) for a couple of reasons. Not only do you get the Atlantean civil war pageantry...not only do you have Namor gettin' all kingly in the personal defense of his kingdom...

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...not only do you get The Lady Dorma...

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...but you even have the FF aiding Namor expressly without letting him know about it. As Reed says, "Without Namor seeing us, we must save him from Attuma's traps - make sure he can fight a fair fight!" That's a great idea from Stan and/or Jack. In fact, Johnny singlehandedly prevents the wholesale destruction of Atlantis when he negates the "nutro-nuclear dissolvo-bomb". Namor would die of shame if he or his subjects knew the extent to which they're in the debt of this surface dweller. And how fitting that the object of Namor's affection, Susan Storm, would be the one to aid him during his mano-a-mano battle with Attuma? (But wouldn't Namor notice that his arms and hands are invisible?)

In the sense that his foes are hampered by his unknown and unseen allies, Namor resembles Thor from JiM 109 when the off-panel X-Men chased off Magneto. The splash title is inaccurate: ""Side-by-Side with". The cover has it right: "On the Side of". Good battle action in the second half of the story. And just where was The Warlord Krang during all of this??

So Namor found his subjects again, and then Dorma betrayed him, which is sort of payback when you consider he abandoned her in order to save Sue in the first Annual. "Using my authority as a noblewoman of the realm, I ordered the guard away from a vital outpost, allowing Attuma's hordes to crash through!" Pretty dramatic line there. And Namor forgives her! "For I, above all others, am aware of the strange things one may do - in the name of love!" He's talking about how he chose Sue over Dorma in the Annual. The phrase "above all others" refers to the fact that he left a woman of his own species for a woman of another.

Dorma is the second figure in two issues to emerge out of the drink in a New York harbor.
Here she is side-by-side with the Super-Skrull.
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As for Dorma's competition, we have reason to suspect that Sue is still somewhat enamored of Namor (ouch), judging by her facial expression and insistent dialogue on page 5: "But what of Namor?? What happened to him?? Tell us, Lady Dorma!" Sue's hair is substantially longer in this issue, but her face seems to have aged 5-10 years since last month. There is one particularly good illo, although the Omni coloring looks better than this MW version:
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And a couple of Mr. Fantastic's exertions were more memorable than usual, like this one.
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I liked how one of the oxo-spray's logical side-effects was to make Johnny's flame harder to control.

One thing I didn't like was how people's eyes were consistently not colored in. In my Masterwork the eyes are colored in on these pages, but not in my Omnibus. (I don't know if the eyes weren't colored in the original floppies, or whether this is an example of "retrorerestoration".) Pg2pn1, pg3pn6, pg5pn2, pg5pn4, pg7pn1, pg14pn4, pg15pn6, pg19pn3.

Great pinup of Namor in front of a "red sky in the mornin' ".

Thus do I take my leave of previous Marathon threads and join the "current" one.

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"Now we're getting off focus." - the Elder Son of Storytime