Sub-Mariner comics I have owned.

As I clamber over the petrified forests of Middlewood, people often say to me, "Steve, we all know you like trees that have turned to stone thanks to the remorseless passing of aeons so huge it leaves one in awe at the unimaginable age of the planet Earth - but who'd win a fight between Flipper and Skippy?"

I, of course, respond, "You half-witted nincompoop! Flipper would win! Why? Because he lives in the sea, like the Sub-Mariner does - and the Sub-Mariner's well hard!"

Long-suffering readers will not be surprised to learn I took such a stance; as I have in the past stated my childhood desire to be the Sub-Mariner. The combination of flying and swimming was always going to appeal to me, as I could do neither.

Nor could I breathe underwater.

Nor did I have a flat head.

Clearly, this all meant Subby was the man I could never dream of being.

But that didn't stop me dreaming of being him.

And thus it was that, in my formative years, I'd grab any comic I saw that starred him.

In total, that was five.

And these are they.

My razor-sharp senses tell me Tiger Shark is involved in this tale - and the Human Torch.

Other than that, I must confess I can recall nothing at all of the issue's contents.

Still, it has a Gil Kane cover - and Tiger Shark was always one of my favourite villains - so what should I care?

Colour me shocked! Dr Doom's up to no good!

Am I right in thinking the Sub-Mariner's lost his memory in this issue? Is he not sure if he's a good guy or a bad guy? Is Doomy out to trick him into wrong-doing?

I do believe that, somewhere in this issue, Doom says it's half a decade since he was last in Latveria, which, when I was ten, seemed a very very long time. In fact, I struggled to believe it was possible he was even still alive after such a phenomenally long time.

I had a similar experience when Patrick Troughton returned to Dr Who after four years' absence. "How can he still be alive after all that time?" I reasoned.

What an idiot I was. But such is the difference between how adults and children perceive the passage of time.

Hooray! After an unfortunate accident, Subby has his new suit that allows him to live outside water.

And he finds himself up against a man called Force.

I happily declare myself to be amongst those who far preferred his new costume to his old trunks.

And you can read my review of this issue, right here.

Despite what the cover promises, there's not what you'd exactly call an epic clash between Spidey and the Sub-Mariner in this issue.

In fact, Spider-Man's guest appearance is so fleeting that it's obvious he's only in it so he can appear on the cover and boost sales of a mag that was only months away from cancellation.

And you can read my review of this issue, right here.

Of the Sub-Mariner issues I had, this was the jewel in my crown; a great big thick comic that reprinted a trio of Subby's adventures from the Gene Colan years.

I seem to recall that Warlord Krang or some-such is up to no good in it and, just for a change, has kidnapped Lady Dorma.

What was it with Subby? First he wanted to get his leg over with Sue Storm who was always getting kidnapped, and then he wanted to do the same with Lady Dorma who was always getting kidnapped. When it came to women, he clearly liked them useless, helpless and drippier than seaweed.

Giant-Size Invaders #1.

What a cruel mistress The Mighty World of Marvel could be. Much as I loved it, there were times when it could inflict horror unimaginable upon a reader.

One such occasion was when it decided to run reprints of Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos for what seemed like an eternity. I really did try to read those stories but must confess that after a while I simply gave up and habitually left that section of the comic unread. How I celebrated when they were dropped from the mag, to be replaced by some other strip or other.

The other nightmare was when the comic started running reprints of The Invaders.

At this point, I have to come clean. As a kid, I hated war comics - all that, "Achtung!" and, "Donner und blitzen!" Even as a young child, it all seemed horribly stereotyped and juvenile. The truth is that the main reason I read Marvel Comics in the first place was because they bore no resemblance to the war comics that British publishers routinely inflicted on us.

The only exception to this antipathy was Weird War Tales - but that was only because it was full of ghosts and great artwork.

Sadly, The Invaders possessed neither, being straightforward super-hero fare and drawn by Frank Robbins. I don't like to be harsh on Frank Robbins but if he wasn't drawing The Shadow, I couldn't cope with his weirdly distorted characters who fought in strange balletic poses, with proportions that suggested they 'd been through some sort of mangling machine.

Well, the first time they made their appearance was in Giant-Size Invaders #1. How will that comic fare, upon me re-reading it for the first time since the late 1970s?

After bashing up some Nazis, Captain America learns that one of the scientists who helped create him has been taken to hospital after a run-in with yet more Nazis. There, he discovers the Germans have created their own super soldier known as The Master Man who's out to attack a British battleship headed for America.

Cap, Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro head off to stop him - and discover the Sub-Mariner's already on the boat. Our heroes then proceed to hit the Axis Antagonist from all sides.

When The Master Man's finally dispatched, it turns out his target on the boat was Winston Churchill who tells them to stay teamed-up in order to thwart the Germans, at which point our heroes go all gung ho and tell the Nazis (who aren't there) that they're going to smash their faces in, or words to that effect.

It'd be nice to say my adult self was won over by all this in a way my youthful incarnation never was but I still didn't like it. Roy Thomas' script is full of caricatured Germans being beastly and having silly accents (I'm sorry, I should have said, "Haffink der silly accents, schweinhund!") and it has to be said The Invaders are strangely inept and ineffectual. The only reason they beat The Master Man is because he loses his powers at an inconvenient moment, otherwise they'd have failed completely in their mission and Britain would have been looking for a new Prime Minister.

On top of that is the same old complaint that Frank Robbins' art just isn't suited to super-heroes. He was suited to the 1940s - just not men in tights in the 1940s.

There's also the problem that Namor talks like he did way back in the Golden Age. Granted, this makes some sort of sense, bearing in mind that the story's set in that era but, for a reader used to the more haughty Silver and Bronze Age Sub-Mariner, it really is jarring to see him rattling on about, "Ratzis," and slanging it up big-time. You also have to feel sorry for him not having a youthful sidekick like the other two adult members do. Could Marvel not have let him abduct Aqualad or something?

So, there you have it. I remain unconvinced that I was ever wrong about the strip. Still, at least it's not Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos.

Now that really would be a terrible thing to be.

PS. You can never say this blog isn't educational. Apparently, the phrase, "OMG," was first used in a letter sent to Winston Churchill way back in 1917.

I have no info on whether his diary entry for June 6th 1944 read, "Just invaded France. lol."

Horizontal heroics from a long-gone landscape. The Titans #1.

Has there ever been a greater comic book cover than that of Marvel UK's The Titans #1? What kind of comics fan could resist the sight of all those heroes rushing out of the page at him?

Of course, the other thing that leapt out at you when you first saw The Titans was that it was printed the wrong way up. Surely such a thing was madness but it was also genius, allowing twice as much content at no extra cost.

Admittedly, not all those heroes on the cover could exactly be called easily recognisable. Just who is, for instance, that blue man with the pointy ears behind Nick Fury?

But, if the cover wasn't packed entirely with what you could call Marvel "A" Listers, it was at least a reflection of the mag's not-always Top Line content as the issue kicked off with the Inhumans in a tale written as well as drawn by Jack Kirby, which means the dialogue's often made up of people just describing what's happening and we get a silly plot by Maximus the Mad to start a war between the Inhumans and humans by making the former think the Fantastic Four are firing missiles at them. The Inhuman Royal Family, having seemingly had lobotomies, all fall for this cunning ruse and, within mere pages, Black Bolt's all ready to declare war.

If the Inhumans are ready to launch into conflict, the next story starts in the thick of one as we get Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 1960s retelling of Captain America's origin. At just ten pages, it can only be seen as a master class in compression - although it does bring home Captain America's irresponsibility in making a young boy his accomplice on deadly missions and it does beg the question as to why Captain America - who was presumably a captain - spent most of the war pretending to be a private instead of just being Captain America.

From one World War Two veteran to another as we're then given the first half of Nick Fury's first-ever adventure as Agent of SHIELD. It's not exactly a secret that I'm somewhat allergic to both Nick Fury and SHIELD but the story does at least feature a flying car, so it has something to appeal to me.

Next we get the issue's only real clunker as Stan Lee and Gene Colan give us the start of a Sub-Mariner epic in which Namor returns to Atlantis only to discover Warlord Krang has claimed the throne of Atlantis in his absence. It'd be easy to say one's outraged by this villainous behaviour but the truth is Namor acts like such a complete jerk in virtually every panel that when Krang has him flung into a cage to rot, you're hoping he spends the rest of eternity there. Sadly, Lady Dorma - who betrayed Namor to Krang in an attempt to win Namor's heart - then helps him to escape in order to try and win his heart. Those Stan Lee scripted women, eh?

Captain Marvel too finds himself threatened by a menace that arrives from underwater as he faces the Metazoid, a Soviet dissident who, exposed to experimental rays, has become a strange inhuman creature. The Metazoid's been told by his masters that if he kidnaps Mar-Vell's alter-ego - rocket scientist Walt Lawson - they'll restore him to normal. The tale's dominated by the Metazoid's struggles with his conscience and endless philosophising as he tries to work out whether he can justify kidnapping a man to return himself to normal. Surprisingly the haunted nature of the Metazoid makes the Captain Marvel tale the best story in the issue, marred only by the fact that some of the pages are printed out of order. Was this a consequence of the printers struggling to make sense of the new format or was it just one of those things that happens?

Throw in a John Buscema poster featuring a whole host of Marvel super-doers, and a plug for that year's Marvel annuals and there you have it; as far as I know, Britain's - and possibly the world's - first ever landscape format comic. I can't deny it, the format and the five stories per issue always made The Titans feel like something special to me. There was also something that appealed about the unpredictability of just what strips were going to be in it that week.

Have there been any comics since The Titans and Super Spider-Man that were printed in landscape format? It's a shame if there haven't because it was an ingenious idea and, when my destiny's finally fulfilled and I hold ownership of the American comic book industry in my talons, then the world had better beware, for I shall make sure the landscape format returns to once more bamboozle printers and newsagents alike.

The Sub-Mariner & the fan from Atlantis.

Many are the matters a man must put in order before he can prepare to meet his maker. Chief amongst them is deciding just who is his favourite Marvel hero.

It sounds simple enough but how does one do such a thing? There's the everyday drama of Spider-Man, the cosmic shenanigans of the Fantastic Four, the cod-Shakespearean of Thor, the mystic dabblings of Dr Strange and the hanging around in the back garden, talking to insects, of Ant-Man.

Faced with such an impossible task, I suppose the only method I can come up with is to revert to childhood and recall which super-hero I most pretended to be when I was a kid.

Well, I pretended to be most of them at some point - even Ant-Man. It was the cybernetic helmet. I didn't know what cybernetic meant - I still don't - but I knew it sounded like a good thing to have. I'm sort of hoping my fridge is cybernetic. I'd just love to tell people, "Just wait while I get you a beer from my cybernetic fridge."

But there were some characters I pretended to be more than others and, based on this method, I get five names; Dr Who, James Bond, Dracula, Daredevil and the Sub-Mariner. Obviously I can discount Dr Who and James Bond, as they weren't Marvel  characters. And, whatever his charms, Dracula was certainly no hero.

This means it's between Daredevil and Subby. Bearing in mind how little interest I have these days in those early years of Daredevil, it's a bit odd now to remember just how often I pretended to be the Man Without Fear. I even made a billy club from Lego, from which I could "shoot" a piece of string, with a small Meccano grappling hook on the end. I think it was the relative lack of super-ness of Daredevil. It made me feel that if I practised I could do the things he did - as long as my Lego held out.

But the Sub-Mariner was something else. He didn't need Lego. He was a self-contained package of super-ness. He'd grabbed me ever since I first encountered him in the pages of The Fantastic Four, when the Human Torch found him living as a homeless bum and dropped him in the sea to restore his memory. After that he oscillated between being a hero and a villain and, even in hero mode, really wasn't blessed with the greatest of social skills. But I never cared about that.

Or perhaps I did.

Perhaps it was his moral ambiguity that made him interesting.

Unlike Daredevil I'm not a blind man and am therefore aware the Sub-Mariner hasn't always got the love from the average comic fan over the years that some of his Marvel colleagues have but, to me, there's something indefinably appealing about  him and his testy ways. Maybe I can boil it down to this; super-heroes are all about wish- fulfilment and if I could have super-powers there are three I'd want more than all others:

1. Flight.

2. Super-strength.

3. The ability to breathe under water.

And guess which pointy-eared flat-head has precisely those three powers?

Steve Does Comics' 100th issue special

Hooray, Steve Does Comics celebrates its 100th postiversary.

That's right, despite often lengthy and unexplained absences, I've somehow managed to rack up 100 missives on this blog. And to celebrate - and avoid me having to do any proper writing - I thought I'd look at how some of my favourite heroes marked their 100th issues. I'm only including tales I've actually read, so I'm afraid the likes of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman don't make the list.

Daredevil marks his 100th appearance with a tale I have no memory of whatsoever, although I'm sure I must have read it in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel. Judging by the cover, it seems to follow the Marvel trend of having a load of old foes show up to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, it probably also highlights the fact that most of his foes were a bit on the so-so side.

I said there was a trend with these things. Like Daredevil, Spider-Man fights a whole villains' gallery of his deadliest foes - this time in his dreams. It all climaxes with him getting a mystical message from the late Captain Stacy before waking to find he has six arms. Words can't describe how much I loved the six arms when I was eleven.

This is how to celebrate a 100th issue. Everyone who's ever been an Avenger up to that point - including the Swordsman - goes to war with Olympus. I read this in the pages of Marvel UK's Titans mag. Thanks to the ground-breaking landscape format, the art was shrunk to the size of a postage stamp but Barry Smith's art still shone through.

Just like Spider-Man and Daredevil, the Fantastic Four get to fight a whole bunch of their greatest foes. I think they were the first of Marvel's Silver Age heroes to make a hundred appearances, so they can at least claim to have been the ones who set the trend. Sadly, the foes in question are only robots, and the not-exactly-awesome villains behind it all are the Thinker and Puppet Master who manage to blow themselves up through their own incompetence.

Thor celebrates Journey Into Mystery's big ton by tackling Mr Hyde. Mr Hyde might not be one of Marvel's greatest - or best dressed - villains but, like the Gray Gargoyle and the Cobra, I've always had a soft spot for him. Love the smiley Thor pic in the top left corner box.

One of Marie Severin's best efforts sees the strongest man on land tackle the strongest man in water, as the Hulk and Sub-Mariner square up to each other. Again the Puppet Master's involved, this time looking like Donald Pleasance. I seem to recall the story's set in Miami, which, when I read this story, as a kid, impressed me greatly, even though I'd never heard of Miami.

The very new New X-Men grapple with the original X-Men. Again, it's only a bunch of robots they're up against but, happily, despite the appearance of a bald bloke on the cover, it's not the Puppet Master who's behind it. This was the first issue of the new X-Men I ever had and I didn't have a clue what was going on or who any of these people were. But I knew one thing. It grabbed me. The tale was a roller coaster ride of action, tension and human drama, starting with the scrap between new and old X-Men and ending with a battle to escape a solar flare, and the genesis of the whole Phoenix saga. Could they have crammed more into a comic if they'd tried? 

Of the above tales, I have to say the X-Men, Avengers and Hulk/Subby stories are the ones that stand out most in my memory and, like the visiting judge at a prize marrow contest, I think I have to give first prize to the X-Men which really was a classic in every way imaginable. 

Savage Sub-Mariner #69. The Sub-Mariner vs Spider-Man!

This is more like it. Spider-Man vs Namor, twenty pages of rip-roaring action, web against water, sticky toes vs ankle wings. At last that question answered; "Who'd win a fight between Spider-Man and the Sub-Mariner?"

Well, no, in fact, it isn't.

Despite what we're promised on the cover, there is no fight between Subby and Spidey. They meet early in the tale, have a chat in which Namor gives us an info-dump on what's been going down in Sub-Mariner-land and then go their separate ways, as Subby basically stages a re-enactment of what happened last issue, in Sub-Mariner #68, by fighting and defeating Force. It has to be said that, for all his boasts of being unbeatable, Force is again, as super-villains go, a noticeably useless foe for Namor who defeats him in double-quick time.

But our anti-hero's not the only one doing re-enactments. In a sub-plot so prominent it practically becomes Plot, a group of characters re-stage the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie by rescuing a place called Zephyrland from the spell of the dreaded She-Beast.

Who are these people? And what have they done with the "A" Plot?

It being Yellow Submarine Mark 2, they do it of course by using music. I don't see what these events have to do with anything and have no idea who these people are - or what guest star Dr Strange has to do with it all - but the truth is that, with Subby spending the first half of the tale info-dumping and the second half quickly defeating a foe he quickly defeated last issue, it's this somewhat odd subplot that actually gives the issue most of its appeal.

The other thing that lends it appeal is the artwork. It's pencilled by George Tuska who I know isn't everyone's cup of tea, and inked by Vince Colletta who I know is even less everyone's cup of tea, but their style's mesh pretty well here, to some degree nicely cancelling out each other's weakness - although I do have to admit Tuska's Spider-Man looks too muscular and has a strange shaped head (NB: not a Dr Strange shaped head).

It seems that, after this, there were only three more issues of this title, which is a shame because The Savage Sub-Mariner was one of my favourite strips as a kid, and it's a pity not enough people shared my enthusiasm to keep it going. Oh well. As we all know, like the tide itself, Namor may sometimes recede but, in the end, he'll always come back.

Sub-Mariner #68. A Man Called Force

The Savage Sub-Mariner #68.

Was there ever a hero more frustrating than the Sub-Mariner? Here you had a character who, when he was in water, could go toe-to-toe with the Hulk, but, take him out of water for more than a few minutes and suddenly he was struggling to beat a stick of celery.

On top of that, he couldn't decide if he was mankind's saviour or its enemy.

And then there was his constant inability to save his kingdom from disaster. Had any nation ever befallen more misfortune than Atlantis under his reign? It seemed like every time he turned up, Atlantis was facing doom and destruction.

In The Savage Sub-Mariner #68, it was at it again. This time, during a fight with Orka, Subbie'd collided with a shipwreck that'd promptly released a nerve gas that'd put everyone in Atlantis into a coma. Needless to say Namor responds to this latest catastrophe with his usual calm by declaring he's going to destroy the surface world. Then a bunch of amphibious scientists tell him a surface-dwelling professor may be able to furnish a cure, and Subbie sets off to find him. On the way, he encounters Force a gloating imbecile in a power-packed suit who our hero soon flattens.

If the Sub-Mariner was frustrating he had the most appropriate artist possible in this issue because it's drawn by Don Heck and was there ever a more frustrating artist than Don? There were times when his artwork could be appealing. I've always had a fondness for his work on the early Iron Man, especially his last few issues before Gene Colan took over, and I like his early work on The Avengers too. On the other hand, at other times he could make a strip almost impossible to read. His last few issues of The Avengers before John Buscema took charge literally make my eyes hurt, with their jagged edges, scratchy lines, awkward angles and random blocks of dead black. Somehow black never seemed deader than when Don Heck used it. Happily, here, he's in his best mode. The art in this tale's never going to be accused of being a work of genius but has the simplicity and elegance that his work at its best possessed.

Of course the thing that leaps out at you about this tale is the Sub-Mariner's wearing clothes. Presumably the costume change wasn't too popular, as it was dumped fairly quickly but I've always liked it. After years of dressing like a Baywatch refugee, at last he was dressing like you'd think a ruler of Atlantis would dress. Admittedly they rationalised it as him having lost his power to breathe out of water and needing the suit to survive on land but, in the stories I've read where he's wearing it, there's never any dramatic use made at all of the the fact he can no longer breathe out of water, meaning the explanation's not really necessary and becomes just another addition to his failings out of water. Then again, a needless addition was only to be expected. After all, he was never nothing less than frustrating.