24 Days to Christmas
2021 - REPRESENTATION
One of the first appearance of Namor I read, was his own 1968 title, The Sub-Mariner #3. It was the second half of a team up with Triton, where the pair had rescued London from a giant monster created by Plantman. Not the best opponent, but it was a great read, since it was a riff on The Defiant Ones, where Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are two convicts chained together and trying to escape. Yes. Triton and Namor spend most the issue chained together! Also, the art was by Big John Buscema, and it was sublime. Here is one of the last panels.
As a biracial kid growing up in the late sixties, this was my first encounter with a biracial comicbook character -- and he was actually talking about being mixed race, and how that affected him! Mind blown! Of course, from that moment, Namor was the most interesting comic character ever for me. Especially since that was actually a core trait of the character, that played a role in his personality and choices and plots in his stories.
Nowadays there are many dismissive readers who don't actually know the character or how things were back in the dark ages, when there was so little representation. But for older fans and certain groups, Namor was the only major character who represented people who were Othered, for whatever reason -- and he kicked a$$.