The new Atlantis Attacks centers around Namor and his attempts to try and bring justice for a captured Atlantean dragon from the secret sanctuary of the city of Pan. What some might now know about the Marvel event is that it shares a title with a classic Marvel crossover from thirty years ago that couldn't be more different from the current story.
Instead of having a more straightforward plot that pitted Atlantis against other heroes of the Marvel Universe, the 1989 Atlantis Attacks event -- which ran through the annuals of fourteen separate series that year -- featured giant monsters, snake people, brainwashed superheroes and Thor fusing with a God killer to punch out a giant seven-headed snake. Even thirty years later, Atlantis Attacks stands out as one of the weirdest Marvel crossovers of all time.
ATLANTIS ATTACKS
The original Atlantis Attacks is a wild ride, encompassing almost every major corner of the Marvel Universe at that time. Finding a strange lifeform attached to his board, the Silver Surfer accidentally creates a new body for the Deviant priest, Ghaur. Having lost his body following his previous battle with the Eternals over the fate of the Earth, he returned to the planet with a new plan -- to summon the multiversal snake god, Set, into this plane of existence. He allied himself with Llyra, queen of the undersea kingdom Lemuria, and the pair convinced Attuma (then ruler of Atlantis) to join them in an assault on the surface to gain the elements they need to complete the ritual. This is the Atlantis attack of the title, allied alongside the Deviants and the armies of Lemuria.
They make multiple attacks across the United States but are met by many of the heroes of the Marvel Universe. While some heroes are successful in their missions to stop them (such as Punisher and Moon Knight preventing a drug from turning humanity into a race of docile snake people), Ghaur's schemes mostly come to success. He's able to summon a massive monster to sacrifice a defenseless Atlantis, although the New Warriors eventually saved enough of the city so that some Atlanteans were able to escape. He collected magical artifacts that could be used to help reconstruct a new Serpent Crown. Ghaur also captured the "Seven Brides of Set", seven superpowered women (Jean Grey, Dagger, Storm, She-Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Andromeda and the Invisible Woman) who are brainwashed and forced to serve Ghaur -- until they are eventually impregnated with the children of Set. Meanwhile, Namor is forced to fake his death, operating in secret throughout much of the battle.
Eventually, the Avengers convene and took the battle directly to Ghaur and his base. Ghaur was almost successful in summoning Set to Earth, but the team of Thor, Doctor Strange, Quasar and the Thing went into his reality to confront the beast head-on. Thor even fuses with the god killer known as the Demogorge to finally destroy Set. Many of the heroes then unite on a mission to Llyra's kingdom and are eventually able to win the day, with Namor's surprise appearance taking Llyra off guard and giving him an opening to defeat her. Meanwhile, Ghaur and Llyra disappear (alongside an accidentally restored Naga). The brides are released from their control, and send the newly constructed Serpent Crown off a cliff, where it then explodes.
OVER THE TOP
Atlantis Attacks is weird for a whole lot of reasons, some of which have aged better than others. It's an event that opens with the Silver Surfer finding a weird fungus on his board and it just gets stranger from there. It's the kind of event where knowledge of the Eternals and their internal battles is necessary to the story, making it niche for even the most devoted readers. It's sheer scope probably accounted for some of that weirdness, as the scope of Ghaur's plan extends across much of the Marvel Universe and requires a lot of strange missions. It also seems oddly unconcerned with the actual attack from Atlantis, before flipping thongs around seeing instead the underwater kingdom being attacked.
While elements like Thor fusing into a giant purple god killer to fight Set head-on to make this epic on an entirely different scale then something like the contemporary events like the Mutant Massacre, other elements have proven more forgettable (like the Silver Surfer's initial role) or outright regrettable. This includes the Brides of Set subplot, which reduces seven of Marvel's (well, six not counting Andromeda) most engaging female characters to character-less minions -- when they aren't just McGuffins for the characters to try and fight over. But in terms of at least being unique, this genuinely bizarre epic stands out from other events.