I think I've at least briefly noted the excellent representation of women and women of colour in this comic. There's a nice level of equality between the depictions of costumes, in that the women's costumes are form-fitting, but only in as much as the men's are. There's no ridiculous, revelatory, arbitrary holes in the costumes, no but-floss, no extremely high-cut thighs or pseudo-bathing suit costumes.
Well, on the women, anyway. As you can see up above, the Sub-Mariner basically parades around in his underwear while superheroing. And he's not the only Avenger to do so. Hercules, too, tromps about Manhattan wearing what looks very much like a bondage outfit, but in bright green. It's actually a pretty surprising turnaround, that the most naked characters are the men in this superhero comic, rather than the women.
The other interesting thing today's comic does is to bring up questions of forgiveness. The Sub-Mariner's never been on great terms with the surface world, but he was a fairly prominent hero during the Second World War. Given that this comic is over 30 years old, WW2 was actually a little more recent for people at the time - veterans were still about in fairly strong numbers, unlike our contemporary moment. So the protests and counter-protests are quire well wrought, defined by generational and political gaps, and fanned by the nefarious Karla Sofen, the Moonstone (whose costume is also not particularly revealing).
By the end of the issue, Namor has proven heroic, and the protests have died down to a dull roar. But then he gets served (as is, legally), and then he takes off to Atlantis, leaving his teammates to deal with his legal troubles. Namor was a strange, and I think really great, choice to put on the team, but he doesn't stick around for very long. In fact, the roster has been in a state of flux pretty much through the whole run, and I begin to wonder what that's saying about the Avengers, or about how Mr. Stern sees the way that the team functions.
To be continued.
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