The Saga of the Original Human Torch #1-#4 (1990)

So as some of you may know, I’m a huge fan of the original Human Torch story from Marvel Comics #1 (1939) & I actually think it might be my favorite comic story of all time. I only first read it a couple of years ago & I’m kind of glad for that as I’m sure I wouldn’t have appreciated it as a kid. So I’m fascinated by this character who’s come to be called “The Original Human Torch” (not to be confused with the member of the Fantastic Four). He’s an android who ignites into flame because of some kind of design problems & who abandoned his maker to try to become a human instead of just being used to make money. In the late 1980s he had a revival & became a member of the Avengers right around the time I stopped getting mainstream comics & this series came out in 1990. I actually stumbled across this looking for something reprinting golden era stories of the Torch.

Well, I don’t know what I think of this series. The first issue is just a re-telling of the first story of the Torch & is pretty great, but the three issues afterwards try to bridge the entire fifty year history of the character & reads like what it is – a reader’s digest that makes as little sense as the way they have occasionally ret-conned the character. It’s unfortunate that such a clearly incredible intellectual property has never been thoroughly explored by top young talent in the way so many semi-obscure comic characters have been over the years. Especially now when the machine trying to become a man has become a popular story, it seems like the Torch would be a natural for a basic cable television series.