Sub-Mariner: Marvels Snapshot #1

Marvels Snapshots #1

by Alan Brennert, Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross (Cover Art)

It begins here — a series of specials that show us Marvel’s greatest characters from the Golden Age to today, all through the eyes of ordinary people! Project curator Kurt Busiek (Marvels, Astro City) has brought together an amazing assemblage of talent to bring you a total of eight new and unusual viewpoints on Marvel history and Marvel heroes, two per month for the next four months. To kick it all off, best-selling novelist and Emmy Award-winning TV writer Alan Brennert (L.A. LAW, TWILIGHT ZONE) and superstar artist Jerry Ordway (All-Star Squadron, Crisis on Infinite Earths) to tell a story of Marvel’s debut superstar: Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. It’s 1946, and the boys are back from World War II. But they haven’t left the battlefields behind, as reporter Betty Dean discovers when she and Namor reunite for an outing at Palisades Park, only to find themselves under attack. Also featuring the All-Winners Squad. A dramatic, unexpected and revealing tour through the Marvel Universe by a cornucopia of amazing creators.

Genres: Comics, Marvel

33 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 11, 2020

About the author

Alan Brennert is the author of the historical novels Palisades Park, Honolulu (chosen one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post), and Moloka'i, which won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year (and has sold over 600,000 copies since publication). It was also a 2012 One Book, One San Diego selection. He has won an Emmy Award and a People's Choice Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law, and his short story "Ma Qui" was honored with a Nebula Award. His new novel, Daughter of Moloka'i, will be published by St. Martin's Press on February 19, 2019. Follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alan.brennert.

http://us.macmillan.com/palisadespark...

Reviews

[Murphy C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jerry Ordway is still one of the greatest artists working in comics. His work here is beautiful

[Ray Keane · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10
Betty, the girlfriend of Namor, and her brothers talk in their house in 1946 as they have returned home from the war. Frank is seemingly doing pretty well. Jimmy is in relatively good spirits but lost his leg. Lloyd is suffering and using alcohol to combat it. The avengers invaded Berlin and helped stop the war. Betty says that Namor is not her boyfriend. Jimmy is going back to school. Lloyd spills the alcohol and Betty tells him he needs to cool it on the alcohol and that they’d all seen things and he takes it harshly and says maybe she’s a better man than him. Frank pulls Betty aside to tell her to relax on him and asks if she’s seeing Namor. She plans on seeing him tomorrow and giving him a fun day. He comes to her house and they begin driving. They go to Palisades amusement park. She tells Namor to try to enjoy himself. She asks namor how long he will live and he says his grandfather is 600 so maybe longer maybe less. Betty is slightly distraught. Namor jumps into a big wave pool splashing Betty, and she gets upset. Namor hears a gunshot and tenses up but it’s just from a game. He then plays grocery pitch and wins bags of groceries for many families. Suddenly there are shots with real bullets. The Verrill Shark arrives and says Namor stands no chance now. Betty attends to a wounded soldier. Namor begins fighting the shark who has a Nazi symbol and this enrages Namor. He attacks him sending the power out of every ride. The cops and Betty urge to take this out of the park so no civilians get hurt but Namor is in the zone. Betty phones the all-winners. Whizzer shows up first and begins evacuating people. Miss America, Captain America, Bucky, Torch, and Toro arrive. Betty fills them in and they begin to help. They try to stop Namor from making things worse but he threatens to attack them next. Miss America flys away and dumps the shark into the ocean and Namor tries to stop her because it will increase his power. He comes flying out. Namor grabs him and flings him back into the amusement park. The shark is badly injured. Namor goes to kill him when he’s stopped by Torch. He remembers Bitburg, a concentration camp where he saw many dead. He tried to kill all the guards but Cap stopped him. Whizzer takes the man in the shark suit to the cops quickly before Namor can kill him. Betty consoles Namor who cries in front of her for the first time remembering the camp. He suddenly bolts away. Miss America takes an upset Betty out for a drink and tells her it’s been hard for everyone and she can call whenever. She talks to Lloyd and they apologize to each other. She goes to call Miss America.
Awesome story and art.

[Matt Graupman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sub-Mariner has always been one of the trickiest superheroes for Marvel to pull off because (a) he seems less defined than a lot of the House Of Ideas’ marquee characters, and (b) it’s difficult to pull off the right tone without making him into a whiny brat. “Sub-Mariner: Marvels Snapshots #1” largely pulls off this balancing act by recasting Namor’s moodiness as something more akin to PTSD from his experiences in the war. It’s the first time that I’ve read a Sub-Mariner comic and actually felt some sympathy for the Atlantean. Kudos to writer Alan Brennert for that. Jerry Ordway’s art has a crisp, classic feel to it that perfectly evokes Namor’s Golden Age roots which, with Brennert’s plotting, gives the book a timeless quality while still being a firmly modern comic. It’s probably not a series I’ll stick with (is it a series, or is “Marvels Snapshots” an anthology?) but it’s definitely one of the better Sub-Mariner stories I’ve read.

[Mykhailo Gasyuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Історія в світі “Див”, де в фокусі прості люди, які спостерігають зі сторони за тим, що творять супергерої. І тут у нас сюжет про дівчину Намора-Підводника, яка наполягає, що треба радіти завершенню Другої світової війни, але через м’ясорубку пройшли члени її родини, та й її бойфренд Підводник не залишився осторонь, повернувшись із ПТСР. В цей омаж на роботи класичних коміксистів додали серйозних тем. Є і негативний момент: оскільки це слідування класиці, то і тексту тут забагато (щоправда, в старих коміксовий діалогах все було примітивніше).

[RubiGiráldez RubiGiráldez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante propuesta y enfoque. He de decir que Namor me resulta un personaje bastante difícil de tragar al no acabar de conectar del todo con él ni en su faceta más heroica. Pero en esta historia sí. El añadido del estrés postraumático (no deja de ser un veterano de la segunda guerra mundial) está muy bien llevado para lo breve de la historia que goza de un apartado gráfico que termina por culminar la evocación de cómic pulp clásico Marvel.

[Roman Colombo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a rehash of the character's origin, but this really is a snapshot of a day in their lives we've never seen before. And it felt like a classic comic too, but with more ramifications for the characters.

[Ruben Vermeer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay maybe a comic book doesn’t really count as Literature with a capital L, but it’s by far my favorite short story, maybe in all fiction, and it’s on this app, so you snobs can suck on each others pretentious asses.

I’m planning to read all star Superman next, hyped af