Marrina killed by Sub-Mariner. This is not a repeat from 1988.

Dark Reign: The List – X-Men #1
Nov 2009

Marrina has been killed, uh, again, by her former husband, the Sub-Mariner.   Marrina had first been seemingly killed by The Sub-Mariner in Avengers #293 (Jul 1988), which turned out to be a “false death” (Alpha Flight #78 Dec 1989), confirmed when we saw her floating in a tank in Avengers v3 #47 (Dec 2001).   This time around,  in a classic evil villian/maniacal scheme to take down Namor once and for all, Norman Osborn somehow gets his hands on her, genetically modifies her to be continually in estrus, insane, hungry, able to eat only Atlanteans, adds in “shark stuff” and gives her completely awesome blastey eyes.  He sets her free to go eat.

Completely awesome eye blasts.

After some completely awesome eye blasts, she gobbles up some poor Atlantean farmers.  The X-Men decide to stop the threat, luring the Leviathan to Utopia Island.  When she comes into view, Namor instantly recognizes her and utters an absolutely inappropriate line, “Ex-wives, what can you do?”

Bad times.

Poor Marrina then battles the X-Men, very similar to the battles against the Avengers in issues #291-293.  Iceman tries to freeze her, Wolverine chops up her blastey eyes, which just gets glowing eye goop all over the place, Surge tries to electrocute her, and Nightcrawler teleports in a bomb and tosses it at her.   This brings her to flop onto land, where the Sub-Mariner can pick her up and fly her out to the Marianas Trench. 

Good times.

He dives down into the crushing depths with her, mistakenly calling her “Mariana”, probably just a typo.  The oddly flippant attitude shown previously is gone.  Instead, he softly begs her not to fight him, not to think.  Then,  a very nice touch: flashback to his fondest memories with her, printed in halftone as if it were lifted right from an 80s era comic.  He comforts her, “It will all be over soon”.

Which isn’t exactly the case because The Avenging Son doesn’t stop there.  No, he has to sever her head and toss it into Osborn’s office window.  When the Leviathan had been subdued before, it reverted back to Marrina’s humanoid form, and again when it was seemingly killed, it reverted again.  This time, she must really be dead.

Well, you can’t blame Namor for what he did. Except for the completely awesome blastey eyes, Marrina was in pretty bad shape.  The wrenching agony of his decision to kill Marrina had already been played out the first time he killed her, so it wasn’t necessary to blather on and on about whether or not to try to rehabilitate her or reverse her condition, etc.  Although it was very nice to see Marrina again after so many years, it was disturbing to see her so terrified and heartbreaking to see her killed in the same issue.  I was really hoping when I saw the preview art that she’d be brought back to us, but no, another Alphan has been killed off.

This concludes the sad, sad saga of Marrina’s short and torturous life.

	This issue is printed with an alternate Frank Cho cover (1:100 Hero variant) which will cost a pretty penny due to its low print run.
	Second printing variant by Alan Davis
	Preview art from this issue without speech bubbles was printed in Dark Reign: The List – Avengers #1 last week.
	That issue also had an alternate 1:100 Hero variant by Marko Djurdjevic, which will also cost a pretty penny.
	Second printing of the Avengers issue, also by Djurdjevic, much cheaper.

Tags: Dark Reign, Death, Marrina