Namor's History
Origins
In 1915, Ernest Shackleton, sent by Winston Churchill, sought out vibranium in the Antarctic. His ship, the Endurance, was lost. Later, Leonard McKenzie, with the telepath Paul Destine as a passenger, attempted to recover the Vibranium. Princess Fen was sent to investigate explosions near the surface by her father, King Thakorr. McKenzie met, fell in lovewith, and impregnated Princess Fen with the child who became Namor. Soldiers commanded by General Krang attacked McKenzie's crew. McKenzie himself did not die, though he did not recognize Namor later when he first learned of his son's rampages in New York.
The child was named "Namor" which means "Avenging Son". Namor spent his boyhood taunting his cousin Dorma, as well playing with his other cousins Namora and Byrrah as well as his friend Meranno. An oil spill in 1936 attracted the attention of Namor, who began a relationship with a young woman named Sandy. Namor grew up distrusting surface dwellers.
1940s
He was sent to New York after divers were found near Atlantis. However, it was revealed that the divers were Nazis, and Namor joined the Invaders, fighting in World War II alongside men such as Captain America and the android Human Torch (in addition to his solo missions), and later the All-Winners Squad to oppose the Axis. Namor would at times battle, then befriend the democratic societies of the surface; the explanation for this was later discovered to be temporary insanity as a result of too much time spent away from the sea. For the most part, however, the Sub-Mariner set his sights on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The Atlanteans became involved with the Axis-created Human Torch duplicates the Firebrand Squadron. One Atlantean, his friend Meranno, became an Axis agent as the U-Man.
1950s
In the 1950's Namor attempted to gain recognition for Atlantis, only for bigots to cause the death of a man named Truffaut. Namor disappeared in 1958 after Destiny, the same Paul Destine who had voyaged with his father, attacked Atlantis.
Atlantis was relatively unharmed during the war but soon greatly damaged by powerful earthquakes. Princess Fen and King Thakorr were killed. Paul Destine, who had ordered the explorers on McKenzie's ship to find the 'Helmet of Power' (actually Set's Serpent Crown), was causing them. He used the crown to turn Namor into an amnesiac, living as a derelict in various flophouses. Coincidentally, his former teammate Bucky was also briefly sleeping in the same flophouse. As both men had amnesia, neither man recognized the other.
Modern Age
Namor remained as derelict until Johnny Storm, the third Human Torch, happened to find him in a flophouse and saw him use his super-strength. Johnny felt bad for the amnesiac and offered to help him get back on his feet. He shaved the "bum" with his flame, revealing Namor's true features. Johnny then dumped Namor into the river, successfully restoring Namor's memory. Unfortunately, Namor tried to return to Atlantis, but found an outpost that had been destroyed by nuclear testing during the years he was an amnesiac. He assumed that all his people were scattered where he would never find them.
He immediately vowed vengeance on the surface world and attacked it, using the giant sea monster Giganto. The Fantastic Four were able to stop the Sub-Mariner. During the fight, he became instantly enamored of Sue Storm, and offered to make her his bride, and after that, his queen. Namor carried the romantic crush with him for years and she even reciprocated the feelings for awhile, which first became apparent when Namor teamed up with Doctor Doom to destroy the Fantastic Four.
Namor also joined the Hulk in an attack on the Avengers, but was repulsed when the temperamental Hulk left the fight. After the battle, Namor stumbled across the still-frozen body of his wartime comrade, Captain America, which was being worshiped by a far-flung Inuit tribe. Enraged, the Sub-Mariner threw the ice block into the ocean. The Avengers happened upon Rogers' thawing body, and soon revived the legendary hero. Even though he had been their enemy, he had won the Avengers' respect. When the team's original members took a leave of absence, they approached Namor to offer him a place with the Avengers, but he refused.
Shortly thereafter, Magneto approached Namor and asked him to join his first Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Namor fought against the X-Men in a battle alongside Magneto, but refused to kowtow to the Master of Magnetism and ultimately rejected the offer.
Hellfire Club
Once Sebastian Shaw was in search for a new person for the title of the White King of the Hellfire Club. He made a party to which he invited the most influential men in the world and trying to decide who is better fit for this position. Rejecting the candidacy of Tony Stark, he choose Namor, and invited him to join the Club. But Namor contemptuously rejected the proposal, saying that if Sebastian once again dare to waste his time on such a minor thing, he will kill him. This led Shaw into a frenzy, so he ordered Emma Frost to force Namor to join the Club, no matter what the cost. A few days later, she acted out a suicide by jumping overboard a yacht to attract Namor's attention. He rescued her and they spent together two weeks in the Atlantis. Shaw, however, tired of waiting for news from Emma, thinking that Namor killed or captured her, he decided to sent the Sentinels for her. Sentinels attacked Namor and Emma and caused damage to Atlantis, and Namor took this as a declaration of war. Finding where the Sentinels came from, Namor, along with Emma, went there and clashed with Shaw, Donald Pierce and Selene. Selene mind-wiped Emma, to erase the memories of her betrayal and make her loyal to the Club again. Surrounded by two telepaths, Shaw explained to Namor that he would never get close enough to kill him. Namor left, but vowed to take revenge one day.
Namor returned to Atlantis and became king of Atlantis again, clashing with the surface world on several occasions as well as fighting off undersea threats to Atlantis like the rebel leader Attuma. He was supposed to marry his cousin Dorma, with whom he had fallen in love. However, Llyra, an evil princess of Lemuria, another submarine culture, kidnapped and replaced Dorma at the wedding hoping to usurp Namor's kingdom in that way. Legally, though, Dorma was the one Namor had married, but he still had to find his wife. Unfortunately, Llyra had taken Dorma to the surface world in a tank as bait, and when Namor arrived, she smashed the tank to distract him. Namor was unable to save Dorma, and nearly went insane from grief.
Later on, Namor, flying near the Savage Land, spotted Magneto lying unconscious near a volcanic eruption. He picked Magneto up and brought him to Atlantis to recuperate. Namor then left Atlantis to join the Fantastic Four on a mission, and returned to find that Magneto had usurped his throne. The Fantastic Four and Namor made short work of Magneto, and Namor regained his kingdom.
Unfortunately, trouble brewed often for the Avenging Son of Atlantis, and he lost his kingdom a number of times. He also married the Alpha Flight member named Marrina, another sea-dweller, but lost her when she turned evil and was killed. During some of his exiles from Atlantis, he joined his former rivals, the Avengers, and helped to found the Defenders. He also was a member of the short-lived undersea team, Deep Six. During his active membership as an Avenger, his hubris was an obstacle towards teamwork, and his rivalry with Hercules was particularly notable. His respect for his old comrade Captain America helped to keep this from becoming a major problem. The Defenders, with their looser organizational approach, allowed the Sub-Mariner the "space" he required. It was during his tenure with the Avengers that Namor helped recover the cocoon in which the Phoenix Force had placed Jean Grey, thought to be dead, years earlier. He also fought against Magneto when Magnus tried to rescue his students from Emma Frost, then White Queen of the Hellfire Club, and recovered his lost giant horn, which was found by the X-Terminators. Not long afterward, rogue elements of Atlantean society led by Attuma declared war on the surface, and Namor was presumed killed in the battle, though the Atlantean barbarians were defeated.
However, Namor had actually survived, and surfaced months later in the South Pacific. Nearly mad from his ordeal, he was found by Caleb and Carrie Alexander, a father-daughter team who quickly nursed Namor back to health. It was Caleb who revealed to Namor the truth about his blood chemistry and his "rages," and who equipped him with a monitor that warned him when he had to seek air or water. This allowed Namor to control his metabolism for the first time in his life. Determined to continue to preserve the oceans and his people, but without revealing himself, Namor raided sunken treasures to finance his purchase of an international company he renamed Oracle, Inc., using the Alexanders as proxy buyers. Shortly thereafter, however, Namor was forced to reveal his survival when a terrorist bomb detonated on an Oracle submarine super-tanker, threatening the lives of everyone in New York. Then, Namor lost his ankle wings when he unleashed a mutagenic scrambler inside the animated garbage dump called "Sluj" in order to stop the monster. He dealt with the world of high finance thereafter, though it brought him into conflict with the Super Skrull, and then to the dimension of K'un-Lun, where he found the hero Iron Fist, who had been presumed dead for many months.
Returning to Earth and investigating the apparent invasion of Earth by the K'un-Lun sentient plant race called the H'ylthri, Namor was forced to fight Wolverine, who had been captured by the H'ylthri and their associate Plant-Man days before. The battle was fierce, but it was interrupted by the sorcerer Master Khan, who destroyed the plant people and returned Wolverine to his place. Khan then wiped Namor's memory and dumped him in the American Midwest, as punishment for interfering in his plans for Iron Fist. Namor was "missing" for almost a year, and was known as "Rex," until his cousin Namorita was able to track him down using a psychic link to him that she had recently discovered. However, Namor didn't recognize her and rejected her. He didn't regain his memory until a while afterwards, when he and the apparently-resurrected Princess Fen (his mother, who had saved him when he was thrown into the ocean by an explosion) were captured by Dr. Doom's new sonic ram fishing vessel. The boat itself was then magically imprisoned in a bottle by Master Khan, and Khan assumed Namor's form and sold off much of Oracle's holdings. Namor soon broke the bottle and the spell, and then ripped Khan's head off.
Immediately thereafter, Namor was called to Atlantis to deal with attacks by the ancient Faceless Ones on Atlantis's borders. Fen attempted to usurp the throne, and it was soon revealed that she was really the witch-queen Artys-Gran, who had stolen Fen's body in order to release her husband Suma-Ket, a pagan sorcerer-king who had been banished by Namor's ancestor thousands of years earlier. Namor soon confronted Ket and was killed, impaled on Ket's spear. Fortunately, Father Neptune, the deity worshiped by Atlantis, appeared to resurrect Namor to fight Suma-Ket, whose religion threatened Neptune's existence. In the process, Namor's ankle wings were restored and he was given the sacred golden armor of his ancestor in which to fight. With the help of his people and comrades, Namor defeated Suma-Ket and his forces, though the real Fen, trapped in Artys-Gran's body, died defending her son from a final attack from Socus, the villains' servant. Namor eventually returned to both ruling Atlantis and running Oracle, but has remained generally out of the surface world in recent days. Oracle, Inc. was also funding the charitable super-group Heroes for Hire, and the team used an Oracle facility as its headquarters.
Afterwards, Namor was involved in an international dispute with Wakanda and its King T'Challa (a.k.a. Black Panther), and had to deal with Attuma's uprisings again.
A mystical curse from an old foe, the sorcerer Yandroth, bound Namor and the three other senior members of the Defenders--Doctor Strange, the Hulk and the Silver Surfer--to be transported to scenes of danger and trouble around the world, forcing them into the midst of one deadly crisis after another. Namor and his fellow Defenders eventually freed themselves from this curse, but not before they attempted to take over the world as "The Order," figuring that if they ran the world there would be no crises. The world's heroes tried to stop them, and eventually the curse was lifted.
Namor allied himself with the New Invaders team, bringing the full might of his Atlantean army to bear wherever needed.
Namor was briefly reunited with his father with the help of Stingray, although the villainous Tiger Shark and Llyra later had Leonard killed.
Llyra also posed as the Invisible Woman to seduce Namor during a time when Mister Fantastic was believed dead. She gave birth to a son, Llyron, and aged him through forbidden magic and technology. Llyron confronted his father over the control of Atlantis, but he and his mother were eventually defeated.
When the Scarlet Witch altered reality in the event known as the House of M, Namor was idolized by the general public as the first super hero. He was also classified as a super human mutant (homo superior). After M-Day, Namor retained his powers.
Namor was a a member of the clandestine policy group the Illuminati, with Mister Fantastic, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Professor X, and Black Bolt, although he appeared to be very hostile and arrogant in his opinions and decisions of the group. He violently opposed the the group's decision to send the Hulk into outer-space exile, and eventually left the group.
Civil War
His cousin Namorita was killed with the rest of the New Warriors in the Stamford explosion caused by the super-villain Nitro, which led to the Superhuman Registration Act. The Illuminati asked Namor back in this light, to consider the Act, but Namor refused this as well. For vengeance of his cousin's death, Namor activated sleeper agents of the Atlantean Royal Guard to search for Nitro, who was instead found and captured by the X-Man Wolverine. After his ambassadors were attacked on U.S. soil, Atlantis rebuffed diplomatic overtures. Namor brought an army of Atlanteans to aid the Captain America's forces in the climactic battle between the pro and anti-registration heroes, but they returned to the sea after Captain America surrendered.
Post Civil War, Namor discovered he had a long lost son, Kamar, who attempted to usurp the throne of Atlantis by forcing war with the United States. Because most of his former allies had refused to help him during this crisis, Namor was forced to evacuate the entire civilization of Atlantis, ordering his people to emigrate to the surface world to live within sleeper cells, leaving an overcharged Nitro to explode within the empty city-state, assassinating the then captured Kamar.
Dark Reign
Namor then formed an alliance with the supervillain and European monarch Doctor Doom due to him being the only former ally who offered any assistance after Namor's crisis. This eventually led to an alliance consisting of Emma Frost, Doctor Doom, Norman Osborn, Loki, and the Hood, known as the Cabal.
As Emma and Namor meet again, she finally restoring her memories about their first meeting and Shaw's betrayal, so she offered Namor a deal: she will help him kill Shaw, and in response he will protect and defend mutants as his own people. Namor agreed, so Emma telepathically called Shaw to the Club's mansion. When he arrived she blinded and immobilized him in illusion, and in the same time showed Namor another illusion, in which she kills Sebastian. After convincing Namor that Shaw is dead and enlisting his support for mutants, Emma took Sebastian to the Graymalkin Industries and locked him in the Brig for crimes against the mutantkind.
When an Atlantean sleeper cell launched a terrorist attack on California, Osborn ordered Namor to publicly denounce the rogues, and execute them, leaving one alive to parade before the media. Namor vehemently refused, and walked out on the Cabal. Along with Emma, Cloak and Dagger, Namor left the Dark X-Men after helping his lover, Frost, betray the Dark X-Men and Osborn.
Not long after the X-Men relocated to Utopia, the island base began to slowly sink. To permanently fix the problem Magneto approached Namor with a plan to build a support pillar to serve the double purpose of preventing the sinking of Utopia and housing the scattered Atlanteans. Namor agreed and New Atlantis was constructed just beneath Utopia. Soon hundreds of Atlanteans came to their new home. Namor later fought alongside the X-Men during Bastion's massive assault on Utopia.
Curse of the Mutants
When Xarus led his united vampire nation to San Francisco to convert the X-Men, Namor was sent to reclaim the head of Dracula from the Aqueos. This provoked the long forgotten horrors into attacking New Atlantis. During the fighting Alani Ryan, the X-Man known as Loa, almost drowned but was saved by an Atlantean Amulet which gave her the ability to breath underwater. After the Aqueos were defeated Namor was praised as a hero by his people.
After studying Loa, Dr. Nemesis concluded that the Atlantean Amulet had permanently changed Alani's physiology due to the way it reacted with her X-Gene; even without it she could breath underwater. However, the transformation had not ceased when the Amulet was removed. Within four to five hours, she would be unable to breath air. Namor himself broke the news to Alani, who took it badly. Inexplicably, specters emerged from the Amulet and dragged Namor back inside to hell. Wolverine's recent escape from Hell had softened the borders between realms, allowing the spirits to use the Amulet as a channel to kidnap Namor.
In Hell, Namor found himself in a desert, taunted by skeleton-headed creatures. Any water he found retreated from him. He then came across the disembodied heads of dead Atlanteans, including General Kadar. Namor finally found his way to an ocean. Upon diving in, he was assailed by a giant skull-headed octopus and was surprised that the water hadn't restored his strength. The ocean was revealed to be an illusion, and the skeleton-headed creatures revealed their identities to Namor; they were the dead Kings of Ancient Atlantis.
Back in New Atlantis, the options to rescue Namor proved to be few and difficult. However, an unexpected guest arrived to offer assistance: Doctor Doom. However, Doom eventually abandoned Namor in Hell and departed alone, leaving Namor and his remaining allies to fend for themselves. They eventually returned, only to find a rebellion led by Krang and his ally Selach. Krang eventually defected and Selach was defeated, but to do so Abira, Namor's latest love, had to become the new Logomancer to replace the old one, losing her emotions in the process.
Fear Itself
After Skadi released the malevolent Serpent, he summoned the seven hammers of the Worthy to Earth. One of those hammers transformed Attuma into Nerkkod, Breaker of Oceans. He devastated Namor's kingdom, forcing him to turn to Stephen Strange for assistance. The Defenders were reformed, consisting of Namor, Strange, Loa and Lyra, daughter of the Hulk and herself a She-Hulk.
Avengers vs X-Men
Namor stands with his fellow X-Men against the Avengers. He fights both Luke Cage and the Thing. After a short battle, the X-Men feign a surrender and teleport out of Utopia to give them a head start in searching for Hope. The X-Men eventually locate Hope on the Moon and Namor, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus and Magik teleport to the Moon in order to find her. They are confronted by the Avengers who are also there to find Hope. Before a fight can break out, Thor falls from the skies followed closely by the Phoenix.
A fight then broke out between the X-Men and the Avengers while Iron Man built a weapon to fight the Phoenix. Iron Man attacked the Phoenix but instead of destroying it, the Phoenix turned all five of the X-Men into avatars. Namor and the rest of the avatars took Hope back to Earth in order to prepare her.
The Phoenix Five built a grand new Utopia, a floating fortress, for mutantkind. They began working to provide power, food and water for all the Earth. Not content with just that, they outlawed war altogether. The Avengers, however, mistrusted the Five. Wishing to prepare for the day when the Five would lose control and become destructive, they tried to retrieve Hope from Utopia. Cyclops and Emma alone defeated the Avengers, but they were saved by the timely intervention of the Scarlet Witch, who teleported the Avengers, and Hope, to safety.
Scott realized they needed to hunt down the Avengers, imprisoning some of their members, while the rest were outlaws. Namor, against Cyclops' will, sought to finish the Avengers. So he headed to Wakanda and raised a massive wall of water from a nearby lake, to drown them. Destroying almost the entire kingdom and killing an untold number of innocents in the process. Following this, was his defeat by the combined forces of all the Avengers present in Wakanda. After Namor fell, his portion of the Phoenix Force was bequeathed to the rest of the Phoenix Five.
Namor returned to Atlantis after his de-powering and remained there for the rest of the battles. He was then approached by Hope who came seeking files belonging to Cable. Hope asked him if he was okay after his possession and Namor initially defended his actions as a Phoenix, but then remarked on how being possessed made him feel like a single krill lost in endless oceans and departed.
Collision of Alternate Universes
After an event in Wakanda, Black Panther reconvened the Illuminati, Namor included, to face the threat of colliding multiverses brought to their attention by Black Swan. After facing two incursions, tension built within the group with Wakanda and Atlantis on the brink of all-out war. Namor proposed a peace treaty with T'Challa in the belief that the incursions were too important for them to be distracted by war. T'Challa agreed to bring it before the council but the Queen of Wakanda, Shuri, rejected the offer, feigning acceptance while preparing her armies. While Namor was celebrating the peace with T'Challa, T'Challa revealed the truth, and Namor left to find Atlantis a ruin after an attack by Wakanda.
Moments after discovering the ruins of his city, Namor was approached by Proxima Midnight and Thanos' invading army. Proxima had come to kill Namor, raze Atlantis and take his Infinity Gem, but upon seeing the ruins of Atlantis, she realised that Namor did not have a gem in his possession. She offered to spare Namor and Atlantis in return for the location of the gems and his allegiance to Thanos. Namor pledged his and Atlantis' allegiance to her and told her that the gem was in Wakanda, a lie to trick Thanos into destroying Wakanda for him.
This caused the Black Order to come across the Necropolis and get hold of the Illuminati's anti-matter bomb. However, the Illuminati later defeated their forces and secured their arsenal, albeit somewhat damaged from the ordeal.
The next Incursion pitted the Illuminati against the Great Society of Earth-4290001, a group of noble heroes who had been able to prevent the destruction of their Earth without bloodshed. However, the Society no longer had the means to prevent this Incursion in the same way as the others. This led to a fight between both teams for the fate of their respective universes. When the Illuminati won the battle, they planted the anti-matter injector and returned to Earth. When they had to decide who would activate the anti-matter injector, both Mister Fantastic and Black Panther tried to do it, but failed, realising they were not capable of such a monstrous act. Namor derided them for holding their own morals above the lives of two universes, and he was the one to finally activate the trigger, destroying the other inhabited Earth. Following this course of action, the Illuminati confronted Namor for what he had done. The friction between Namor and T'Challa escalated, and after revealing that he was the one who led the Black Order into assaulting Wakanda, Namor left the team.
With a new Incursion happening immediately after, and with the Illuminati resigning themselves to their fates, Namor contacted the Inhuman scientist Maximus and freed Thanos, Proxima, Corvus Grave, Terrax the Truly Enlightened, and Black Swan; and formed the Cabal, who were willing to destroy other Earths to save both universes. Together, the new team destroyed the colliding Earth.
Time Runs Out
Eight months after the formation of the Cabal, it had received legitimacy as the world's protectors and been sanctioned by the UN. The world allowed the Cabal to raze Wakanda, and claim the ruins as their new base of operations. They continued to protect universes by destroying colliding Earths, but despite this, Namor had grown weary, since the Cabal engaged in wholesale slaughter of the colliding Earth's heroes and population, as opposed to simply planting the bomb and leaving as he would like. He sought out Doctor Doom and asked him to join the Cabal, believing that together, they could keep the Cabal under control. Doom refused however, judging Namor as broken and weak, and telling him that he should have to come to him first instead of freeing the Cabal.
Namor, now willing to turn himself in for his crimes in order to stop the Cabal, devised a plan with the Illuminati to destroy the Cabal. A new Incursion was on the horizon, one in which the incursive world had been ravaged by the Mapmakers. Namor would lead the Cabal to said world, activate the anti-matter injector without their knowledge, and leave them to die with said Earth, preventing them from escaping with the use of an A.I.M. platform capable of creating an impenetrable barrier between the two colliding Earths. However, as Namor was preparing to activate the platform, Black Panther and Black Bolt ambushed him. They incapacitated Namor and threw him off the platform to the soon-to-be-destroyed Earth.
The Cabal confronted Namor for fleeing, and he lied, claiming he had seen a strange object in the sky and gone to investigate. He warned them about the trap the Illuminati had set, omitting his part in it, and luckily, a means of escape presented itself in the form of yet another incursion happening simultaneously. Namor and the Cabal narrowly fled to the other world, the Ultimate Universe, where they encountered Reed Richards
After Reed lets Thanos and Maximum talk with his world's Nick Fury and convince Fury to lead an attack on Earth-616 in order to save Earth-1610, Namor talks with Thanos and Maximus in private. Thanos asks Maximus if the lifeboat that would take them to safety when the incursion occurs will be ready in time. Maximus tells Thanos that it will but couldn't say if it will work or not. Namor asks if Nick Fury is going to play his part, and Thanos claims with certainty he will. Maximus however is not so sure, claiming that Fury is crafty and knows they're lying. Either way however, when the incursion happens, Thanos believes Fury will have no choice but to do what they want.
