Spoiler Sunday--Namor Crosses A Line!

Friends, I come to bury last week's Avengers #9, not praise it.

But that involves spoiling the hell out of the issue, so if you haven't read it yet, come back later. The post will still be here.

Spoilers commence after the 5 images of Stingray...

SPOILERS commence now.

Last Wednesday. Jason Aaron tweeted how much he'd wanted to write Namor...

Been wanting to write this dude for a looong time. And this issue is just the beginning of the trouble that'll be raging beneath the waves. pic.twitter.com/YEbJ4NVgKu

— Jason Aaron (@jasonaaron) October 10, 2018

Well, that's nice. And, aside from making him all broody/sexy-Kylo Ren-look-at-my-crotch-area Namor, what did he have in mind for the character?

How about making him a psycho killer?

Sure, Namor's always been a jerk, an ass. Even back in the Golden Age, he couldn't make up his mind between conquering the surface world and just beating up Nazis. That's just a basic part of the character--arrogant prick.

But Aaron has him cross a line.

See, Stingray is fighting Tiger Shark, as brothers-in-law are wont to do. When black leather fetish Namor shows up...

Stingray, fellow Avenger and long-time ally of Namor, tries to talk it out.

 [NOTE: calling out that you're doing the 100th rerun of Namor vs. the surface world doesn't make it any less of a tired cliche. it just makes it a tired self-aware cliche.]

Namor beats the shit out of him. Fine, as we say, Namor is king of the dicks.

But then...

So, yeah, Namor straight up murders Stingray.

Now, you can say that Namor is being controlled, or had too much Ambien, or some such. No evidence of it yet, but as Aaron tweeted, there's a lot of story left to tell here.

And sure, it's possible that Stingray isn't really dead. Maybe the "war sharks" only ate him a little bit, and that "born from the blood of the old" is only metaphorical, despite all the damned real blood we see, and despite the shattered suit, Walt Newell doesn't drown when Namor leaves him bleeding out helplessly deep beneath the waves. But not likely.

Of course, it gets tougher to defend when you see that the "Defenders Of The Deep" that Namor puts together...

...is 100% villains, murderers all.

Why was it necessary to kill Stingray? He was an Avenger. He was often an ally of Namor. Why wasn't kicking the crap out of him enough? Was Namor as asshole not cool enough? Did you have to go full Anakin-killing-the-younglings to make him a credible threat? Because you made him look like Kylo Ren, did you think he had to do something as heinous as killing Han? Was "anti-hero" not trendy enough, so you crossed the line to make him a full on super-villain who feeds former friends to the sharks?

Plus, Stingray had a really cool costume. What the hell, man??

Just watch--at some point in the distant future (because Aaron can't write briefer stories--the "War of the Realms" in Thor is entering it's 6th year!) they'll try to walk it back and have Namor "redeem" himself somehow and all will be forgiven and everyone will be friends again and dance around with Ewoks--and Stingray's murder, like Alderaan, will never be mentioned once.

Hmm, went further than I planned with my Star Wars analogies there...