Issue(s): Sub-Mariner #43
Cover Date: Nov 71
Title: "Mindquake! / ...And the power of the mind! / The changeling war"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker

Review/plot:
Ok, i've cracked the code on this one. The key here is to drop all your expectations about Stephan Tuval and the Black Sea people and everything that you may have expected to see resolved or revealed regarding the story that introduced them.

This is just a story about old people that hate hippies.

On that level... well, it's still a sloppy mess, but it's comprehensible.

Namor's involved because, hey! Hippie chicks!

    

Tuval channels the "power of our bitterness" from a group of old people who have apparently taken to occult ritual because they are so unhappy with the way the world has been changing.

It restores Tuval's youth...

...and gives him the power to go turn the hippies into old people.

Namor is aware that he's facing Tuval, the guy from the Black Sea story, only because, per Tuval, "Your mind hears the overflow of my awesome brain".

I think "the overflow of my awesome brain" needs to be my blog's new tagline.

As Namor punches the daylight out of Tuval, he does say that he's upset that he's lost the "mental code" that would allow him to return to his dimension.

Why he blames the hippies for that is for you to determine.

After Tuval is beaten, Namor shakes up the other old timers and they realize they've been delusional. One of the old people is Namor's father, Captain MacKenzie, which is who Namor is nominally looking for right now, but the two don't yet connect.

This issue was published during the month when Marvel was doing the extra-large 25 cent books, so there is an additional story tacked onto the front of the Tuval one , where Namor helps a lighthouse keeper and stops some criminals from dropping radioactive waste into the ocean (there is a thematic tie-in due to the fact that the lighthouse keeper is also old and tired and already enthralled by Tuval).

I note it mainly to show an example of Namor dodging bullets even though he's generally considered bulletproof...

...and also to note that Namor has apparently picked up some verbal ticks during his recent team-up with the Hulk.

Meanwhile, we learn that Walter Newell has a definite romantic interest in Diane Arliss...

...and we're promised a more straightforward plot with super-villains for the next arc.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Namor especially doesn't like radiation since it's what forced his people to leave their homeland, as shown in Fantastic Four #4.
  
• Stephan Tuval and the Black Sea people were seen in Sub-Mariner #40.
  
• The death of Lady Dorma in Sub-Mariner #37 still weighs heavily on Namor during this story. Except when flirting with hippie chicks.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The card catalog in the second last extract is interesting. They've become a thing of the past.