Maybe it's something about being underwater.

I've spent the better part of a year searching for a team lamer than the short-lived and lamentable Deep Six.

Ask, and the Quarter Bin giveth, as the cover of New Mutants Annual #5 (1989) promises us:

S.U.R.F.??? Who dat??

Gaze upon them in full Liefeldian pin-up glory:

Yes, I know the cover had periods in the S.U.R.F., whereas the pin-up is just plain SURF. They're never referred to by either name in the story, so, I guess you get to chose for yourself. Hurray!

And yes, the costume Liefeld drew for Namorita is amazingly bad.

Anyway, this is during Atlantis Attacks, and it turns out that SURF is  group of Atlantean mutants...


Sharkskin has--wait for it--really tough skin, Eel can become flat and stretch, and Undertow can control water.

These guys made one more appearance--the Avengers West Coast Annual #5 the following year--and then they vanished into the murky depths of forgotitude.

So--they made one more appearance than Deep Six...but most of the Deep Sixers have at least appeared again, individually. So I have to declare that SURF (or S.U.R.F.) is indeed lamer than Deep Six.

So maybe it is something about being an underwater team.

Then again, it could be worse--they could have had a really stupid name like The Others...

There are short-lived super-teams, and then there are these guys:

Man, these guys make the Champions look like the Justice Society Of America...

A dweeb in a suit, the lamest Inhuman (which is saying something), a hot alien, Attuma's daughter, a man-eating villain, and a former hobo.

(More specifically, for the Marvel-impaired, it's Stingray, Triton, Tamara, Andromeda, Tiger Shark, and Namor)

"Deep Six" existed for less then one issue. In Namor #58 (1995), they banded together to find the missing Namor, who had been accused of crimes on the surface world. They found him, fought the Avengers for about 30 seconds, and more or less immediately disbanded.

This pin-up, drawn by regular Namor artist Geof Isherwood, appeared in Namor Annual #4 (1994). That issue hit the stands six months before Deep Six debuted. Perhaps at the time Isherwood thought they were going to be around a little bit longer than a cameo, justifying a pin-up. I do feel bad that they designed a logo and everything for the lamest, shortest-lived, most ad hoc team ever.

Oh, and it was Stingray who came up with the name Deep Six. Like I said, dweeb.