Issue(s): Super-Villain Team-Up #5
Cover Date: Apr 76
Title: "...And be a villain!"
Credits:
Steve Englehart - Writer
Herb Trimpe - Penciler
Don Perlin - Inker

Review/plot:
The Sub-Mariner shows up at the Baxter Building looking for help. Dr. Doom has caused the blue suit that Namor wears to stop doing what it does to keep him alive. Reed Richards puts Namor in a vat of brine and starts working on the suit. While he's doing so, Johnny ponders Namor in all his speedo glory (a "gang-leader from the Bronx"?).

Then he spots a shadowy figure on a nearby building and goes to check it out. It turns out to be a new character called the Shroud...

...who is another Batman rip off (he even has the same origin: 'walking home from a show, parents killed by a criminal, swore to fight evil'). (After Shroud appears in Spider-Woman and someone writes in noting the similarity of his origin to Batman's, the response is that they wanted to stay true to Englehart's origin story, although they say they suspect Englehart was being "affectionately satirical".)

Unlike Batman, he got his training from the Cult of Kali (as Edda notes below, and as Englehart has confirmed, the Shroud is also partially based on the Shadow as well).

I assume it's the same Cult of Kali that Iron Fist fought in Marvel Premiere #21-22). The other wrinkle is that he's blind, but he's about as blind as Daredevil, if you know what i mean.

Doom has given Namor 24 hours to reconsider accepting Doom's offer of an alliance, and at the end of the 24 hours Reed has failed to fix the suit, so Namor feels honor bound to accept the agreement and he becomes Doom's partner (as jti88 notes in the comments, Namor performs one final act of resistance when he tries to allow himself to die from dehydration, but Doom catches him in time). Doom has completely forgotten the character development he recently went through where he realized that his pride was often the cause of his downfall and that if he wanted Namor to be his partner, he also has to be his friend.

This is because that character development was written by three different writers. Englehart is writing him as a generic megalomaniac villain, and therefore he treats the Sub-Mariner like a complete lackey.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - first Shroud

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Letters Page for Fantastic Four #173 says: 'All the "current stories" in Marvel Two-In-One occur before bashful Benjy's catastrophic alliance with the Hulk, which so drastically altered his life. Ditto for the recent issues of Super-Villain Team-Up.' However, the MCP places these Team-Up issues after the Thing's powers return (during FF #176). I originally resisted that but now see that it's necessary to accommodate the Sub-Mariner's appearance in Daredevil annual #4.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

"Then he spots a shadowy figure on a nearby building and goes to check it out. It turns out to be a new character called the Shard, who is another Bat-man rip off (he even has the same origin: 'walking home from a show, parents killed by a criminal, swore to fight evil')."
Unlike Bat-man, he got his training from the Cult of Kali."

Interestingly, when the Shroud debuted, Bruce Wayne's trip to Tibet was not a part of his origin. It was not added till the late 1980's, so far as I know. Of course, the Shadow's Oriental scholarship was already long established.

In an article for Comics Scene, David Goyer noted that he wrote a screenplay for Doctor Strange in the 1990's. He noted that he wanted to follow the origin storyline-a selfish, acquisitive man gets redeemed when going to Tibet and studying under a mystic. Then The Shadow came out in 1994 which features a similar origin. So he rewrote his Doctor Strange screenplay to not focus on Tibet. However, Goyer felt no compunctions about including Tibet in Batman Begins. Goyer stated this in Comics Scene #49.

I just noticed something; in Fantastic Four#278, it is established that Doctor Doom was actually largely disfigured when a monk in the Himalayas put a still hot newly forged metal mask on his face, and Doom then rushed out into the snow to cool the mask and his face down. This story was published in the 1980's.

Well, let us take a look at the origin of the Shrould published in the 1970's:
a monk in the Himalayas put a hot brand on his face and he ran out into the snow.

http://bp3.blogger.com/__p6Clhn9WDI/R84f49BIHOI/AAAAAAAACJk/yz3_QHeSsjE/s1600-h/03-04-2008+08%3B14%3B47PM.JPG

http://random-happenstance.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-dcs-lawyers-missed-this-i-have-no.html

Since this is Shroud's first appearance, shouldn't the Historical Significance rating be upped to a 2?

Yes, more than a 2. Thanks.

I'd say that Namor intead rhat pleading allegiance to Doom he tries to commit suicide: at the end of the story he accepts to head toward Doom just because he knows that, dehydrated as he is, he'll plunge to his death.

Why is Sub-Mariner able to quit wearing the blue/black suit Richards made for him after this issue? Not that I'm complaining-- I never liked that suit-- but I'm not finding the answer to that question here in these entries. In Namor's next appearance in Daredevil Annual #4, he is back in his swim trunks with no apparent problems. Does Doom cure Namor so that he no longer needs the breathing suit, or what? Does Richards cure him?

Doom begins treating Namor with an antidote in lieu of the costume. Namor has to take the antidote at regular intervals and his lack of access to it when he and Doom get separated over the course of the next several issues is a plot concern. It seems that by issue #13 (when Doom also revives the Atlanteans) Namor no longer needs the antidote.

Thanks fnord12. Somehow I felt pretty sure it wouldn't be Richards who cured him...xD