D. J. David B. Spins Comics-Tunes: Prince Namor - The Sub-Mariner!
The tricky thing about collecting comics-related songs is knowing when the song is really about a comic book character and when it’s just a coincidence. For example, “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman” is not about the Caped Crusader. (I think it’s about the game of cricket, but since it’s an instrumental it’s hard to tell.) The same is true of any number of songs with “superman” in the lyric. Is it about Clark Kent, aka The Main of Steel, or a sly reference to Friedrich Nietzsche? (Or George Bernard Shaw, for that matter.)
Here we have a track called “Submariner.” Is it about Namor, Prince of the Seven Seas? Or about a guy who loves sandwiches?
From his pointy little head down to the itty bitty wings on his feet, the Sub-Mariner is one of the strangest and oldest characters in the Timely/Marvel pantheon.
Is this song about his appearances as a Fantastic Four villain?
Was the song written about Subby’s very own postage stamp?
It may even be about a Rolex watch, for all I know, since there are no lyrics to give me a clue.
So I’m just going to assume that this is a song about the famous underwater anti-hero and that Mister Neutron couldn’t find a rhyme for “Namor” so he didn’t write words to the song.
Click the link below and groove!
Next Tuesday, another comics connection that’s all wet.
— DJ David B.
RE “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman” - nice guess, DJ Dave, but I think you’re off the mark. The term in cricket is “batsman” (ie, one of the two players batting at any time). In this context, “Batman” is more likely to be a reference to the old term for the manservant of a senior British Army Officer- generally a soldier of the lower ranks. Of course, the idea of a World War One British soldier being a Batman to the Kaiser is absurd. - but you’ve got to admit it was a pretty intriguing title for what was, from memory, an instrumental with some whistling over it!
Aha! That makes a lot of sense. And it proves I know even less about cricket than I do about comics and records.
If I run out of genuine Batman records (probably in a decade or two) I may drag out “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman” and try to fob it off as a comics record. Stay tuned!