Spider-Man (1981) Episode Twenty-Four: Wrath of the Sub-Mariner

Wrath of the Sub-Mariner

First Aired: February 20th, 1982

Synopsis: Spider-Man tries to do what he can to get Silvermane and Man-Mountain Marko, criminals, arrested, but he can't as they're only wanted for crimes on the West Coast. Meanwhile, the Kingpin's head scientist has invented a formula which melts metal, allowing Kingpin to break into what vaults he wants. The waste produced in creating the formula is dumped into the ocean, leading to Namor's cousin Namorita getting sick and falling into a coma. Namor starts attacking the surface world in revenge, but is soon knocked out by the very pollution he sought to destroy. Spider-Man helps him recover and gives him an encouraging speech, leading to Namor both owing Spider-Man a favour and going to see J. Jonah Jameson to use his newspaper to stop pollution. At the same time, Spider-Man goes after Silvermane, who's meeting with Kingpin, Hammerhead, and Caesar Cicero to discuss a crime alliance on a yacht.


Spider-Man is soon defeated onboard the yacht, but while Namor is giving Jonah a tour of New York to show him the pollution problem, he sees Spider-Man dumped into the water in chains, and swims down to save him. Afterwards Namor continues looking for pollution to destroy, and ends up at Kingpin's mansion, where Kingpin is demonstrating his melting formula to the other crime bosses. Namor is defeated and dangled over a vat of the formula at Silvermane's suggestion, but Spider-Man then shows off and saves him. The two of them are able to work together to stop the crime leaders, and in the aftermath Namorita recovers from the effects of the pollution.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• As mentioned, one of the criminal leaders is Caesar Cicero. It's an incredible unexpected appearance from a very minor character, but you know what? I love it.
• When Namorita's in hospital, a doctor mentions that she can breathe both air and water, and we see gills on her neck. To my knowledge, neither Namor nor Namorita of the comics have gills on their necks. I vaguely recall something about how their lungs work differently to normal peoples' to explain how they breathe water, but I could be wrong about that.

Review: This episode feels like it could have been adapted from, or into, a comic of the time. Namor's heroic but still fairly antagonistic towards the surface world, the crime lords are all villainous, and everyone's motivations are pretty much what you'd expect of them. Thinking about the episode in retrospect, Spider-Man's role is mostly to rescue (or be rescued by) Namor, but honestly, I'm fairly okay with that.

There's not a lot going on in this episode - Namor gets angry at the surface world, ends up fighting the crime bosses, and Spider-Man gets involved in it - but I think that that kind of makes it work. Sure, it doesn't have some insane gadget or plot to make me laugh, but at the same time, including an insane gadget or plot just as easily might have made me roll my eyes. Honestly, the most notable thing about this episode is the appearances of Man-Mountain Marko, Silvermane, Hammerhead, and Caesar Cicero.

And yeah, that's about it. By no means is it setting the world on fire, but not every episode needs to do that. I don't think there's a single negative thing you could say about the portrayals of any of the characters in this episode, which I guess is what I wants as a comics fan. This episode is overall probably skippable, but I wouldn't recommend doing so.