Note: this may be NSFW, due to racial stereotypes common to the 1940s!
The new movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever shows Namora (and her cousin, King Namor, as descendants of Mayans!
This wasn't always the case in the Marvel Multiverse...
Timely's Greatest
Golden-Age Sub-Mariner
by Bill Everett
Post-War Years
...which features this tale, and the entire Namora comic's run!
(Note: the Young Men Comics and other 1950s tales were actually post-Golden Age, and were technically Atlas Comics stories, as shown in the Marvel Masterworks: Atlas-Era Heroes reprints of those same stories!)
Penciled (and likely inked and written) by Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett, this tale from Timely's Namora #1 (1948) portrays the Mayans as easily-manipulated, superstitious savages, a sadly not-uncommon event in pop culture of the era.
Oddly, when Marvel digitally-remastered the story...
...they gave the Mayans Batman-gray skin (25% Yellow/25% Magenta/25% Cyan)!
Note: I used scans of the actual comic book, not the remastered versions.
Considering it's just as easy to digitally give the natives either suntanned or brown skin (even sticking to the 64-color combination palette used in Golden Age comics), why go this route?
Trivia: Namora first appeared in a Sub-Mariner tale in Timely's Marvel Mystery Comics #82 (1947), created by Bill Everett, who didn't draw her premiere story...but may have written it.
Bob Powell did the cover, and penciller Ken Bald and inker Syd Shores illustrated the story.
Besides guest-starring in Namor's strip, she was given a book of her own, which ran three issues.
When Subby was revived in the 1950s, she was part of the revival, as shown HERE!
Though the Sub-Mariner and other supporting characters like Lady Dorma and Prince Byrrah returned in the Silver Age, Namora didn't appear again until the Bronze Age in Marvel's Sub-Mariner #50 (1972) when Namor discovered a crystal casket with her poisoned, preserved corpse along with a never-revealed "daughter" (who was later retconned to be her clone), Namorita!
Namora's "corpse" was later retconned to be merely in suspended animation (not poisoned, BTW) and was revived by the heroic Agents of Atlas.
She's still active in present-day Marvel comics.
Note: I used scans of the actual comic book, not the remastered versions.
Considering it's just as easy to digitally give the natives either suntanned or brown skin (even sticking to the 64-color combination palette used in Golden Age comics), why go this route?
Trivia: Namora first appeared in a Sub-Mariner tale in Timely's Marvel Mystery Comics #82 (1947), created by Bill Everett, who didn't draw her premiere story...but may have written it.
Besides guest-starring in Namor's strip, she was given a book of her own, which ran three issues.
When Subby was revived in the 1950s, she was part of the revival, as shown HERE!
Though the Sub-Mariner and other supporting characters like Lady Dorma and Prince Byrrah returned in the Silver Age, Namora didn't appear again until the Bronze Age in Marvel's Sub-Mariner #50 (1972) when Namor discovered a crystal casket with her poisoned, preserved corpse along with a never-revealed "daughter" (who was later retconned to be her clone), Namorita!
Namora's "corpse" was later retconned to be merely in suspended animation (not poisoned, BTW) and was revived by the heroic Agents of Atlas.
She's still active in present-day Marvel comics.
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Golden-Age Sub-Mariner
by Bill Everett
Post-War Years
...which features this tale, and the entire Namora comic's run!
(Note: the Young Men Comics and other 1950s tales were actually post-Golden Age, and were technically Atlas Comics stories, as shown in the Marvel Masterworks: Atlas-Era Heroes reprints of those same stories!)
