1946:
Betty Dean’s brothers are home from the War with Frank happy, Jimmy minus a
leg, and Lloyd drinking because of combat fatigue, which Betty disapproves of.
She has a new hairdo because she is going out with Prince Namor, the
Sub-Mariner….
The
next day, Betty takes Namor to Palisades Amusement Park where he has a lot of
trouble relaxing until he spots the pool. He dives in, soaking Betty with his
splash and must apologize. The sound of gunfire from the shooting gallery gives
him a flashback to the War. He enters the grocery pitch, throwing balls at
stacked cans and he wins several bags of groceries for a poor family. Then he
hears real gunfire and heads to the ticket booth where he finds his old enemy
Verrill Shark in an armored shark suit, robbing the park. Namor easily clobbers
the henchmen and he tears off Shark’s chest plate and sees a swastika and goes
berserk, brutally beating Shark and wrecking the park which is quickly
evacuated. Whizzer shows up in a flash and begins ferrying people down from the
roller coaster and the rest of the All-Winners Squad (Captain America, Bucky,
Miss America, Human Torch, Toro) arrive soon after. Cap and Torch try to calm
Namor down and fail while Miss America seizes Shark and drops him in the River
which turns out to be a mistake as he tries to swim away and Namor pursues him
and throws him back to the Park. The assembled heroes again try to stop Namor
who reminds them of Bitburg, where they liberated a concentration camp and
Namor saw the ovens and the mass graves and since then he has no mercy for
Nazis. He rips open Shark’s armored suit but Whizzer is able to whisk the
baddie away and hand him over to the police. Betty tries to talk Namor into
getting therapy for his pain but he refuses and flies away, leaving Betty to
scream about loving him but always being left behind. Miss America (Madeline
Joyce) takes Betty to a tavern and tries to convince her that she (Betty) is
the one responsible for Namor being considered a hero rather than a villain but
now she finally knows that any hope of a future with Namor is gone; Madeline
gives Betty her number to talk when she needs to….
Betty
goes home and apologizes to Lloyd and they make up and learn to appreciate each
other’s wartime troubles.