I'm looking for the one person on the planet who considers the Sub-Mariner or Aquaman his or her favourite character. Anyone?

Misty's not a superhero, nor is she water-based.

Does Aspen of Fathom count?

I have a theory that I have shared before. What's that? Okay, I'll share it again.

Aquaman has an extraordinarily high ratio of pop-culture awareness to actual popularity. If you took a "man on the street" poll, I think almost all adults would answer "yes" to "Do you know who Aquaman is?" Not so for Namor.

Conversely, I think Aquaman enjoys popularity (either favorite or top handful) from a very small percentage of comic book readers. He is not popular.

Namor, on the other hand, benefits from Marvel's penchant for ambivalent anti-heroes, so his cool factor is higher. But he too is not popular (favorite or top handful) with many fans, in my opinion. But he does not seem to shoulder the same burden as Aquaman, what with Aquaman having been a Superfriend.

Water-based heroes suck.

I disagree. It can certainly be more of a challenge to write stories for a water-based hero, but both Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner are solid characters in their own right.

On the other hand, the Red Torpedo did suck.

Sub-Mariner is up there for me, but more for his awesome personality than his powers.

You're a very charitable person, Kebbin.

Well, maybe that's true.

I think both are good characters, but I'm not blind to their limitations. Both of them seem to work better in a team setting than in solo books.

Namor is best as a guest-star. He's like a hurricane that comes through, ticks everyone off by acting like an arrogant prick, wrecks everything, flirts with some chick, and flies off leaving everyone else wonder what the heck just happened.

Aquaman is not my favorite super hero. But he is one of my favorites.

Melissa, I must firmly but kindly disagree with you. Namor is among my favourite characters ever. The first introduction I had to Marvel were the 'limited animation' cartoons that used to be on TV before I went to school every weekday. I still know the words to the theme songs from those cartoons (geeky, but true). My favourite one, by a mile, was Namor (The Prince of the Deep).

I have a couple of Bowen mini-busts - Triton (my favourite Inhuman) is one of them. The only full-sized statue I've actually considered getting is the one of Namor (in his funky black outfit). Underwater characters have always fascinated me - From Marrina in Alpha Flight to that guy from Dallas (Patrick Duffy?) as The Man from Atlantis (yes, as a child, I would actually swim around in the pool like that, imitating him), I love 'em all! I even liked the underwater sequences in The Phantom Menace, and was a tad disappointed in Attack of The Clones when they didn't have an underwater sequence on the planet Kamino (those guys were so obviously amphibians...I mean, come on!). If there's an undersea city, or people who can exist underwater, I'm totally hooked, and it's all because of that Namor cartoon when I was five or six years old. I even got annoyed when I was reading The Science of Superheroes (by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg) earlier this year and they dismissed the notion of underwater characters as 'implausible' (What?! The Hulk and The X-Men are plausible...but Namor and Aquaman aren't? What the hell are these people smoking? I digress...)

Phew! There, I think that was everything I needed to get off my chest! They don't suck...I actually have a theory that they breathe through their skin.....

Trevor, you're right. He's the 'rock-star' of the MU, in my opinion. Like an undersea Errol Flynn, with a touch of Elvis thrown in for good luck.

Me too! Oddly enough, I was not a fan of the show, and remember very little about it. But me and my older cousin used to swim around "Man from Atlantis" style. Let's see, you put your arms down at your sides, feet together, and do a body wave, cracking your legs like a whip over and over. Like a seal.

Yep! That's it Jay. Then you do the hokey-pokey and you turn around.....

It's just a jump to the left....

And then a backstroke to the right....

That's nice.

FREAK!!!

It's more of a gurgle.