Things Namor Doesn't Say Anymore

Think of Namor, The Sub-Mariner, and you think of this:



Oh yes, he's the Sue Storm-kissin'est guy there ever was. (And that includes Reed!) But when I think of Namor, I think of long-winded, multi-paragraph, boistrously hubristic speeches that, since they're underwater, should all sound like this—(blub blub blub blub blub)—but which, thanks to the excellent translation skills of Stan Lee, actually sound like this:



You know, it just occurred to me: if Subbie wasn't destined for a life in Atlantean politics (aside from that free year trekking around Europe after college, you gotta take after your dad, you know), he might have become a nifty-keen Shakespearean actor. Can't you just picture Namor McKenzie spouting elegant Shakespearean lines like

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office.

and

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

not to mention

Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim like a
duck, I'll be sworn.

Of course, first he'd have to put on a shirt.

But in his youth, Namor hadn't yet developed the swirly and purpled prose he spouts out regularly in the post-Silver Age. Why, in the pages of The Invaders he was all about punching Ratzis in the snoot so hard they would have to swim back to Uncle Adolf with their torschlusspaniks between their legs. But even further back in his youth, Young Namie liked to speak that hepcat swingin' slang that all the kids were into and that exasperated their parents, whether fish or fowl. So let's wind the clock back, peer through Uatu's magic spyglass of voyeurism, and check in on the young, uncultured Namor as we listen to

Things Namor Doesn't Say Anymore!

Now, I'm not saying Namor wasn't friendly and outgoing...




...but sometimes, like every moody young kid, he could get pretty annoyingly emo:




Yes, Namor would regularly annoy his elders with his jargon that he picked up on the surface world.




Atlantean scholars are unsure where Namor picked up this contemporary slang, but it may have come from his love of hanging around the surface world, taking part in illegal boxing matches, building up your collection of rare antique dinglehoppers while singing songs about how much you'd rather be on the surface, and possibly reading Janet Evanovich mysteries:




Why, I bet half the time he didn't even know what he was saying. At least...I hope not.




Still, you can't deny the obvious: these days, Namor never says anything like this:




So in case you want a gentler, friendly, more hip Namor, all you have to do is look back to the Golden Age, where the Son of the Sea nlocution was so unrecognizable you'd never guess he was the same half-man/half-fish he is today, back in those days when he never exhibited the signs of his later arrogance and pomposity...


Well, mostly.