Marvel Comics #1 (1939)
“The Human Torch”
by Carl Burgos
cover by Frank R. Paul
This is the origin of Marvel, although it was called Timely Comics at the time… the company will eventually take the name Marvel supposedly in honor of this series.
Also note this is the first PUBLISHED story to become part of the Marvel canon; Namor technically pre-dates it by a few months with an unpublished story, but we’ll discuss that in detail in a separate review of Namor’s own story.
The cover is NOT by Carl Burgos, who writes and pencils the Human Torch story. Which might explain why he looks completely different.
The cover is by Frank R. Paul, who is better known for his covers on science fiction magazines (such as this 1927 cover of Amazing Stories). He’s LITERALLY in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
We begin with Professor Horton inviting some fellow scientists to show off his latest creation: a fully synthetic human.
It has a slight technical defect, though.
You have to love Professor Horton being just fine with this.
It’s fascinating that the very first Marvel hero starts out with the press out to get him.
Marvel heroes and the public oscillating between outright antagonistic and a love/hate relationship is really integrated into its universe, and it’s probably what sets it apart from the VAST majority of heroes of the Golden Age.
In later stories Professor Horton will be hailed as a visionary, and it’s easy to see why: the dude built a fully functional and fully sentient artificial human IN THE THIRTIES.
But in the first story, he might have stumbled on it by accident.
The Scientists’ Guild first proposes to destroy the Human Torch, but one of them comes up with the idea to just bury him in concrete.
In 2019, they will retroactively be identified as the scientists from the Enclave (the ones who created Adam Warlock).
Rather surprisingly for such a short story, we get a scene detailing how the Human Torch is imprisoned in concrete. You rarely get this level of detail in the Golden Age, and it really does help to ground the scene. Pun intended.
Too bad the people building that concrete coffin were not as thorough, though, because the Human Torch manages to break free.
Pop quiz! The Human Torch has been silent up to this point… what are his FIRST words?
A) AAAAHHH!!!
B) I’m burning alive!
C) Flame on!
D) This is fine.
The Human Torch was technically just born, so it’s quite charming to see he’s a bit child-like in his attitude.
Also, the (relatively) subtle fact that people think he’s laughing maniacally at the destruction he’s causing, while he’s just ticklish.
He’s far from evil, though: in fact he regrets causing damage so much that he hides inside a pool.
A pool that belongs to some criminals, so this a racket story now.
If you have to guess the plot behind any Golden Age story, here’s a hint: if it’s not a war story (and we’re a bit early for that), it’s either a saboteur or a racket.
Those three seem to cover like 95% of ALL Golden Age stories.
In principle it’s an easy racket, but it requires quite some work. You need to have a pool, a diving suit and a human-sized glass container.
For a guy surrounded by fire, the Human Torch is not very bright.
Then again, he was born like two weeks ago so I think we can cut him a bit of a slack.
This is also the moment when the Human Torch realizes he can fly because his flames have made him “lighter than air”.
One of the fun things about reading Golden Age comics is coming across some expressions that are either obsolete or have a different meaning.
We’re lucky the Human Torch is one of the good guys, because he can be TERRIFYING.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!
Also he totally murders this henchman. Not unusual for the early Golden Age… we’ve already seen Batman kill someone in his first story… but the Human Torch is ruthless!!!
I need to remind you that the Human Torch landed in this guy’s pool totally at random, but he managed to find a racketeer with an underground laboratory protected by Super-Steel™ walls.
Which does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the Human Torch.
Professor Horton however has rushed to the lab! And I’m wondering… HOW? I mean I understand the Human Torch is not exactly hard to spot, but it’s still a bit of a stretch.
Also this is clearly identified to be the racketeer’s own laboratory; why couldn’t it be Horton’s lab? It would been easy to have the racketeer slip into Horton’s lab to protect himself against the Torch.
Adding to my theory that Horton just stumbles into things… the Human Torch protects him from a nitrogen tank that is about to explode, and it turns out that the secret ingredient needed to help the Torch control his powers was simply dousing him in nitrogen.
Also notice the Torch is a redhead in this comic, instead of his usual blond, and that even flamed off he’s still HOT ENOUGH TO MELT BULLETS.
Since nitrogen is what’s needed to keep his powers under control, maybe the racketeer will be able to bribe the Human Torch with some more?
Well the Human Torch might be only a few weeks old, but he’s not THAT dumb.
And then the racketeer gets himself killed when he tries to throw a huge container of sulphuric acid at the Torch. Even in 1939 I hope actual labs had SLIGHTLY better safety measures to handle acid!!!
I was mistaken earlier: it takes the Human Torch a SECOND dose of nitrogen to control his powers.
Also he can throw fireballs now. The narration talks about blue flames; I don’t know if this is a mistake from the modern recoloring or if it was in the original printing.
Then the Human Torch surrenders to the authorities. This is one of the VERY few instances when it’s acknowledged that, realistically speaking, normal humans shouldn’t be able to get near him.
The Human Torch has created MASSIVE property damages and he’s definitely killed people, only some of them in self-defense… but the police just lets him go on Horton’s good word.
Sounds legit.
Now you might expect Professor Horton to decide he’s going to use the Human Torch to help the world, but… nope! He’s only in it for the money!
Which doesn’t sit right with the Human Torch, who flies off into the night ending the story.
The origin story of the Human Torch has been expanded upon countless times.
Easily the most famous case is Marvels, in particular Marvels #0 which includes the Human Torch narrating his own history.
The are some liberties, for example Horton shows his creation to the press and not to just a couple of scientists.
Marvels #0 integrates a minor retcon introduced by Roy Thomas in his 1990 “Saga of the Human Torch”: the fact that while he was imprisoned in the concrete, he’s fed information.
It’s a nice companion to the original story, giving the Torch some much-needed depth.
Historical significance: 10/10
The original Human Torch’s legacy is definitely lesser than the other two Marvel powerhouses of the Golden Age, Namor and Captain America… but you can see a lot of what set Marvel apart from his competitors originating in this story.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
Why the Torch bursts in to flames and he’s later cured goes unexplained. As is why exactly the racketeer had access to that lab. Still, pretty tame for the Golden Age.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
What a rush! One thing is for certain: despite some typical Golden Age naïvete, the story keeps you on the edge the entire time. The Human Torch himself starts off less of a superhero than a classic monster, which works really well here. Later stories, especially in the Golden Age, make him a little TOO human… but here, there’s an eerie other-ness about him that I find fascinating.
The fact that the hero’s creator doesn’t end up being his benefactor but that he’s simply in it for the money is a surprising bit of dark realism in the end!
How close is this to the modern character? 6/10
You may have expected a “What modern character?” here, but he’s still around… although far, FAR less than his Silver Age counterpart.
He’s kind of a blank slate here; over the years he’ll get a bit of characterization and, especially in the last few decades, something of a “cool grandpa of all superheroes” vibe.
The original Human Torch was Marvel’s first hit, getting his own series in 1940; we’ll revisit it to have a look at his own sidekick. And you might remember we already looked at the very first comic book crossover that featured the android.
He disappeared in 1954, only seven years before the debut of a new Human Torch on Fantastic Four #1. The two faced each other in 1964 in Fantastic Four Annual #4, where the original seemingly died.
The story includes a rather accurate retelling, including showing off the Torch to scientists and him being trapped inside concrete.
Also you may notice Kirby draws different flames for the two Torches, trying to imitate Burgos’ style for the original.
In the 70s, the Human Torch was retconned into being a member of the Invaders, in a series set during WWII written by (who else?) Roy Thomas.
In a truly convoluted mess that would take forever to entangle, he was also linked to the origins of the Vision, something that has been retconned back and forth a couple times.
[EDIT: originally I assigned the blame for the original retcon to Thomas, but as pointed out in the comments it was Englehart]
While I’m not a huge fan of the Invaders or of the Vision retcons, I suppose it DID help reminding people of the original Human Torch… to the point that he was resurrected for real in 1989 and briefly join the Avengers.
Since then he’s had a surprisingly complex story… he’s lost and then regained his powers, he’s been a billionaire by handling Namor’s fortune, and he’s been part of multiple teams either called Invaders or inspired by the Invaders.
One way or the other, the original Human Torch has been published every single decade from the 1930s to the 2020s!!!
Oh, and there’s another little thing… the original Human Torch CANONICALLY KILLED ADOLPH HITLER in the Marvel Universe!!!
Yep!!! That happened in Young Men #24, in 1953. That single panel is the only information given, inside a flashback narrating the Torch’s origins.
Of course Hitler still returned to the Marvel Universe thanks to the Hate Monger, but… THE HUMAN TORCH BURNED HITLER ALIVE.
And if you think this is just Golden Age shenanigans… it’s been confirmed multiple times that IT’S STILL CANON.
I think it was Steve Englehart rather than Roy Thomas who was responsible for the Vision being revealed as the body of the original Human Torch.
You’re right, it was such a Roy Thomas thing to do that I forgot it was in the Englehart issues… I’ve corrected the mistake.
The scene of the Torch killing Hitler was expanded on in What If #4 (What If the Invaders Stayed Together After WW2?) by Roy Thomas & Frank Robbins, which gave it a little more context than the Young Men panel did. The Torch and Toro are at the forefront of the Soviet forces entering Berlin (I don’t recall if there was any explanation how they came to be there). They break into The Bunker with the intentIon of capturing Hitler, but he reaches to press a button that the Torch fears might be a detonator to blow up the entire city, so Torch fires him up to prevent that possibility.
It was What If, but unlike other issues of the series, the story was always intended to be canonical – Thomas just didn’t have any other venue to tell it in.
Decades later, Bendis had Captain Bucky America casually claim to have killed Hitler in Mighty Avengers, because God forbid established continuity stand between Bendis and a line of throwaway dialogue that he thinks is hysterical.
I can never get over the fact that this hero is called The Human Torch and he’s literally not human!
Does Johnny Storm call himself The Robotic Torch!?! No, because he’s not a robot!
What also bugs me is that his artificial skin is frequently on fire (it’s his whole deal) and yet he never seems to have any of his skin burnt away, even if he has been on fire for hours.
If this guy (not a human) keeps running around on fire sooner or later he’s going to burn all his skin off, go around looking like a Terminator, and he won’t have any powers until he can get his skin replaced.