Namorita #1

When Corey, who runs the New Warriors Continuity Conundrum (please take a moment to check out his site and the incredible amount of work he’s done there – and also, take a moment to follow him on Twitter as NewWarriorsTalk) – where was I? Oh, yes – when he’d first made me aware of this Namorita #1, we were all in shock. It’d been released in 1993, and here we were in 2018 (at the time) having just caught wind of it? I’d been running the New Warriors website since around 1994 (see the About for more!) back on Geocities (and check out some of those atrocious banners I made back in the day!) – and during that time, I’d created an eGroup (which then got bought out by Yahoo Groups, and folded completely a few years back) – and that eGroup? It was extremely active. Everyone was always talking and buzzing – so the fact that none of us had heard of this elusive Namorita #1 clearly said something about it’s rarity – and when Corey made me aware and we’d done some digging – we saw why. The Miami-Dade Police had partnered with ARISE Foundation and created a very limited run that was, to my understanding, just for a specific school district in Florida.

It was really cool that Fabian also got involved in our quest, back in 2018 to try and locate a copy of the issue. Still, our efforts to find out more about the issue were leading to dead ends; until we found a very rough copy (almost impossible to read in some parts) of a very low resolution scans of the issue – but at least, we were able to piece together an idea of what the story was about. Fast forward to 2022, I finally set up an alert on ebay to email me anytime “Namorita” appeared on eBay – now, this resulted in emails with selling an issue of New Warriors, or Namor, Marvel Universe Handbook, etc., but – several times – Namorita #1 actually appeared – and a few times, I simply did not have the money to go for it. The one time I did, I got e-snipped a millisecond before it was over.

Well, the stars finally aligned; it so happens, at work, you can accrue “points” given to you by other teams (for helping on projects, going above and beyond, etc.,) and I had amassed 10,000 points which – rather than purchasing prizes and goods, I cashed in for $1,000 credit card. And while my plan was to use it for registering my car, paying for smog, and potentially getting a new car battery – it turned out, I passed smog on my car first try, didn’t need a new car battery, so this left some extra space – and a Namorita #1 appears. With a Buy It Now option. And I pulled the trigger (for under $200, which the one for MyComicShop is going for $285!). I still couldn’t believe it – when I said I got it – and that it was on it’s way – I expected something to go wrong – or when I got it it was gonna be a hoax – like a scan of it (because the seller had no ideas of the book – just images from the aforementioned bad scan I’d eventually gotten a hold of).

Well, as you can imagine from the image in the upper left – I finally did indeed get my copy of Namorita #1 – it came just a few days after winning the bid. I can barely believe it. Admittedly, I have wanted this since discovering it – because those who have known me from the New Warriors eGroup and into the New Warriors forum (that used to be on this site), and even into the newest New Warriors Facebook Group Page I created – I’ve made no secret of my “first comic book crush” being Namorita and have had an ongoing (unhealthy?) obsession with the character! But – winning this wasn’t just about me. What my (very near future) plan is to scan the issue – and because of it’s rarity – make it available for reading on the site. I am just working on the details of how I want to do that – because I’d like folks who were interested in reading this be able to do so. So keep an eye out – and maybe join the aforementioned New Warriors Facebook group, because that’s where I will probably announce how/when it’s all done.