Sub-Mariner Comics #29
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSub-Mariner Comics #29 is historically notable as the sole issue in the entire Timely run whose cover bears the title 'Sub-Mariner and Namora Comics,' a unique co-billing that reflects Timely's late-1940s experiment with spotlighting Namora — Namor's recently introduced Atlantean cousin — as a co-headliner. Published in the final gasps of the Golden Age superhero cycle, it documents the editorial strategy of propping up a flagging superhero line by diversifying its cast with a female counterpart, a pattern that would become common across the industry. The issue also carries a text story fictionalizing the real WWII hero Colin P. Kelly alongside an imagined letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, illustrating how Timely comics of this era blended wartime mythology with postwar nostalgia even as the superhero genre was commercially collapsing.
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The American edition carries a December 1948 cover date and was published through Manvis Publications Inc. under the Marvel Comics brand, with its on-sale date documented in the U.S. Catalog of Copyright Entries (Copyright number B154479). Bill Everett, creator of the Sub-Mariner and the primary artistic force on the title throughout its run, is credited on the issue, though Grand Comics Database scholars — particularly Michael J. Vassallo — have flagged uncertainty around the inking credits, with a previous indexer's attribution to Al Gabriele disputed and currently listed as unknown. A separate Canadian reprint edition was issued by Superior Publications (the Superior, 1948 series) approximately around April 1949, part of the broader program in which Superior held reprint rights to Timely/Marvel material for Canadian distribution during the postwar import-restriction era.
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- The American Timely edition carries a December 1948 cover date; its on-sale date is documented in the U.S. Catalog of Copyright Entries under Copyright number B154479.
- Issue #29 is the only issue in the entire Sub-Mariner Comics run (1941–1949) whose cover title reads 'Sub-Mariner and Namora Comics,' a unique co-billing not used on any other issue (#2–#28 and #30–#32 all read 'Sub-Mariner Comics' on the cover).
- Primary stories include 'The Professor and the Mermaid,' 'The Mystery of Pirate Cove!,' and 'The Deadly Game of Captain Black,' all featuring Sub-Mariner tackling postwar crime — reflecting the genre's shift away from wartime adversaries.
- A Human Torch backup story, 'The Flame That Wouldn't Die,' appears in the issue, continuing the anthology tradition of the Timely Golden Age titles.
- The issue contains a text story based on real WWII pilot Colin P. Kelly, framed around a fictional letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to 'the President of the United States in 1956,' written in 1941 shortly after Pearl Harbor — a piece of speculative wartime patriotism.
- Bill Everett is the credited creator/artist; inking credits are disputed, with scholar Michael J. Vassallo flagging the previously assigned credit to Al Gabriele as unverified.
- A Canadian reprint edition was published by Superior Publications (catalogued by GCD as Sub-Mariner Comics, Superior 1948 series, #29, circa April 1949); GCD records indicate this Superior #29 reprints content sourced from the American Timely issue #30 rather than Timely #29.
- The issue's stories were later collected in Marvel's 'Timely's Greatest: The Golden Age Sub-Mariner by Bill Everett — The Post-War Years Omnibus' (2019/2020 oversize hardcover), which gathers Sub-Mariner Comics #21–24, #26–30, and additional related issues.
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