The Marvel Super Heroes · Season 1 · Episode 10
The Start of the Quest / Escape to Nowhere / A Prince There Was
Synopsis
Namor comes home to Atlantis and finds his throne gone. Warlord Krang has seized it in his absence, and the palace guards now answer to a usurper. Lady Dorma, whose love Namor has spurned, has him taken in a fit of wounded pride. It seems even the Sub-Mariner cannot fight the Hydro-Ray, and the mightiest man beneath the sea is dragged in chains before the new king. Krang means to conquer the surface world with Atlantis at his back. He throws Namor in a watery dungeon to rot. Dorma's heart wins out over her jealousy. She steals the Vibra-Key and frees him. Namor sets off to reclaim his birthright the only way left to him, by finding the enchanted Trident of Neptune, the hidden symbol whose bearer all Atlantis must accept as its rightful heir.
The quest is a gauntlet. In the Cave of Shadows a giant killer squid guards the first clue, a shell bearing Neptune's mark, and Krang seals the cavern shut to trap prince and monster together. Namor hurls the shell like a guided missile and shears the tentacles away. The spirit of Neptune rises from the shell to send him deeper. Namor bores through solid rock with his own body, scatters the cowardly crews of Krang's hydro-powered soil-movers, and stops to hear an aged citizen swear that the people still love their true prince. Then the Forbidden Deeps give up their guardian, a towering Seaweed Man who has never lost a fight. Namor turns the creature's own crushing grip against it and drowns it in a whirlpool. The Trident is still hidden, the traps still waiting, and Krang still watching every step.
Reality Designation
This story takes place outside the main Marvel continuity: 600026
Reality numbers are Marvel's official designations.
Where a universe has no official number we follow the Marvel Database and use its Temporary Reality Number (TRN-1092). Where there is neither — official or temporary — at the time we watch it, we assign a Snark Industries number of our own (SI-001).
Characters in the Episode
Deposed Prince of Atlantis; takes up the quest for Neptune's Trident to win back his throne and his people.
Usurper who has seized the throne; monitors the quest and sets deadly traps to see Namor dead.
Loves Namor; betrays him out of jealousy, repents, frees him with the Vibra-Key, and sends him on the quest.
Sea-god whose spirit-image rises from the shell to bless Namor and point him toward the next peril.
The creature found in the Forbidden Depths
In-Universe Date
Directly follows the previous Namor installment, which took place in 'contemporary' New York
Comic Roots
Where the episode's people and places come from on the page.
These three chapters adapt the opening act of the Sub-Mariner's "Quest for the Trident of Neptune," which ran in Tales to Astonish #70 through #76 (cover-dated August 1965 to February 1966), written by Stan Lee and drawn by Gene Colan under his pseudonym "Adam Austin," inked by Vince Colletta. The cartoon chapter titles are lifted straight off the comic covers: Tales to Astonish #70 "The Start of the Quest!", #71 "Escape... to Nowhere!", and #72 "A Prince There Was!" The screen version compresses the throne-seizure, Dorma's rescue, the squid, and the Seaweed Man into a single sitting, so beats that took three months on the newsstand arrive back to back.
The two figures orbiting Namor come from opposite ends of Marvel history. Warlord Krang first appeared in Fantastic Four Annual #1 (1963) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, an Atlantean military man swept up in Namor's first great invasion of the surface world; the Quest arc promotes him to full usurper. Lady Dorma goes all the way back to Marvel Comics #1 (1939), Bill Everett's Golden Age debut for the character, where she began as Namor's cousin and childhood companion before the Silver Age reworked her into the tragic, unrequited-love figure driving this story. Her jealousy-into-betrayal-into-guilt turn is straight from the page.
Neptune is the sly one. The sea-god does not merely get referenced here; he makes his Marvel Universe debut in the very issue this chapter is retelling, Tales to Astonish #70 (1965), by Lee and Colan. So the cartoon is adapting a character's first appearance without flagging it, and the Trident that anchors the whole quest is his emblem, introduced at the same time.
Recommended Reading
Where to go next if the episode left you wanting more.
The complete Quest for the Trident of Neptune. These chapters adapt the first three issues; read the run to see how the traps, the Trident, and Krang's downfall pay off.
Krang's first appearance and Namor's grand surface-world invasion. Sets up the warlord and the imperial Atlantis this quest fights over.
Where Namor and Lady Dorma begin, in the book that launched Timely and, eventually, Marvel itself.
The Snark File
Easter eggs, callbacks and technical tidbits.
Animated... Kinda
This segment is xerography, not animation: Gene Colan's actual comic panels are traced and given the barest flicker of lip and eye movement. Because the Sub-Mariner had thin source material to draw from, watch for jarring jumps in art style where panels from different artists and earlier appearances get spliced together mid-scene
Heavily Titled
Namor's rolling title stack, "Prince of Atlantis, Emperor of the Deep, Lord of the Seven Seas," is lifted from the grandiose caption style of the comics, where Lee never met a Namor boast he could not stretch another clause.
