Like Aquaman, his cousin at DC, Namor has never really seemed like a character who can sustain a long-running series. But a quarter first issue, indy star Andi Watson on scripts and Salvador Larocca on pencils seems like a big promotion to throw behind his new book, so I thought maybe we'd see something pretty spectacular. Instead, we've got a book that I doubt will appeal at all to those who are fans of the Namor character and probably won't do much for other fans either. The first issue reads like Disney's Little Mermaid without the dramatic tension, which is to say that it's beautiful to look at but quite dull.
Namor starts off on the surface with Namor as a young boy, playing with a little girl. It's a cute little story bit, although the way it's paced doesn't really give Namor or the girl any time to develop their relationship, and the closing pages of the sequence is remarkably heavy-handed in making its point that people fear what lives in the ocean. Which doesn't strike me as a particularly true observation anyway. At any rate, after this opening, which reminded me more than a little of the Tom Hanks flick Splash, the book jumps to Namor as a teenager, and it doesn't get a lot more exciting there.
Those looking for the serious and hot-blooded Namor known for shouting "Imperius Rex" won't find him in these pages. Instead, Jemas and Watson present the readers with a character who is more of your stereotypical rebellious teen, anxious to prove himself and deaf to the sound of advice from his elders. It's a character who could certainly grow into the Namor that we know, but so far this characterization doesn't stand out as particularly interesting, and I say this as someone who doesn't have much interest in the modern-day take on Namor and was looking for something a little different.
Part of the trouble, I suspect, is that we're given some fairly alien notions in the script without much effort to explain them. The cliffhanger at the end, when the book actually shifts to providing a little tension, is not the easiest to read, as Larroca's choreography doesn't make clear the nature of the threat or who's at risk, and it's never clearly explained in the script about the Neptune Net or the Trident team, beyond surface ideas. It's not impossible to work out what's going on, but neither is it as easy as it should be.
Mind you, while Larocca's choreography isn't always perfect, his art does look pretty much gorgeous here. The opening scene on a beach in the Pacific Northwest is beautiful, especially with the lush colors of JD Smith, and his work reminds me more than anything of the work of Josh Middleton, with impossibly beautiful and entrancing faces and wide-open landscapes. In addition, his take on the undersea world of Atlantis is the strongest I've seen since Steve Epting's work on Aquaman. The double-page splash as Namor and his mother enter Atlantis is breathtaking, and Larocca really does seem like the guy to convey the alien beauty of the undersea kingdom and its inhabitants. I just hope that the story picks up considerably in future issues.
