The Defenders Of The Deep: Who Are Marvel's New Underwater Avengers?

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Avengers #9 by Jason Aaron, David Marquez, Justin Ponsor and VC's Cory Petit, which is on sale now.

It's a good thing beach season is over, because Marvel Comics' newest team just made going into the water a lot more dangerous. Namor the Sub-Mariner has launched his latest crusade against the surface world with the Defenders of the Deep, a new team of underwater warriors.

For Marvel's Atlantis, the last few years have been pretty rough, and Namor and his fishy friends finally reached their breaking point in Avengers #9. Despite a devastating war with Wakanda, the end of the world, and being raised to the ocean's surface, the King of Atlantis and his subjects have rebuilt their undersea kingdom time and time again. However, much of Atlantis was devastated once again in recent weeks when the body of an impossibly big Celestial fell from the stars and crushed it. When Atlantean refugees and warriors were mocked and executed by the surface world, the Sub-Mariner declared open season on "air-breathers."

While Namor has always flip-flopped between being a hero and villain, he's rarely been this serious about attacking anyone who doesn't have an address near SpongeBob SquarePants' home. In the past, Namor has flooded Manhattan and launched a few invasions on dry land, but this time is different; now, he wants to exercise his home-field advantage and kick humanity completely out of the oceans.

While this conflict will partially play out in Marvel's upcoming Invaders series, it's already started in the pages of Avengers. In Issue #9, Namor sends his War Sharks to chow down on his old pal, the ex-Avenger Stringray, and takes on the Avengers all by himself. For whatever he has planned next, Namor will get some help from the Defenders of the Deep.

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To help him declare adult swim for humanity on a planetary scale, Namor gathered a mix of old and new underwater heroes and villains to form the Defenders of the Deep. At the beginning of this issue, the nautical villain Tiger Shark joined Sub-Mariner's cause moments after watching his brother-in-law, Stingray, get eaten alive. Tiger Shark was originally a human Olympic swimmer who had his DNA bonded with samples from Namor and, well, a tiger shark. While he's fought Namor plenty of times, he's also been a member of the Masters of Evil and bounced around the Marvel Universe as a recurring minor villain.

The team also includes another relatively noteworthy Namor villain in Orka. After being experimented on by a mad scientist, this Atlantean soldier was given the strength of a killer whale. Orka even took down an Avengers squad once, all on his own. Since then, the marine mercenary's resume has been considerably less impressive, although he did briefly join an incarnation of Heroes for Hire in a rare altruistic phase of his career.

Besides Namor, the blue-skinned Andromeda is the only other former Defender in the Defenders of the Deep. This Atlantean warrior is the daughter of Namor's fiercest foe, Attuma. Inspired by Namor's example, she moved to the surface world and briefly joined the New Defenders in the 1980s. She also played a key role in defeating her father during the self-descriptive 1989 crossover "Atlantis Attacks." More recently, she urged the Sub-Mariner to take on Thanos' Black Order when the Mad Titan's forces invaded Atlantis during the 2013 storyline "Infinity."

The nightmarish mermaid floating above Andromeda is probably Echidna. This half-serpent created several of the most famous monsters in Greek mythology. Although she doesn't have an extensive history in the Marvel Universe, she and her sea monsters attacked the Fearless Defenders and Marvel's Amazons in 2014. The fearsome fishies behind Echidna are most likely the Men-Fish. These strange-looking creatures are related to the obscure undersea villain Piranha, a fish that was bombarded with radiation and turned into a humanoid villain. After some other piranhas ate him, they turned into mutated piranhas too, but these fish might very well be Echidna's creations.

The last two members of the Defenders of the Deep are still a mystery. While they could be new characters, it's not yet clear who the creepy white-haired man and the giant crab monster are. The man could be a redesign of Namor's longtime white-haired confidant Vashti, and the monster could be one of Echidna's creations or a new take on the crab-themed Zodiac villain Cancer. Either way, we probably won't get a chance to see the Defenders of the Deep in action until Avengers #10 (which is also the 700th issue of the title), which goes on sale on November 14.

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