Comic Book Corner: RIP Human Torch

I usually don’t go into comic books here, but a fellow geek wrote me and asked what I thought of the “death” of the Human Torch and the storyline surrounding it. Since I took a while to compose my answer to him, I thought I’d post it here and amortize the time spent so it wouldn’t feel quite so wasted…

(Background: Marvel Comics has been ballyhooing the impending demise of an unnamed member of the Fantastic Four for some months now, and the Big Issue shipped a day early this week in an opaque plastic bag.) 

So let’s see... Well, it surprised me because the Human Torch was the obviously most expendable character, so I thought “nah, too easy.” But I was wrong. The most expendable character did indeed turn out to be the PR department’s sacrificial lamb this year. I just hope when they eventually, inevitably bring the character back, they don’t go to the same tired Journey Through The Past formula both Captain America and Batman worked last year, practically simultaneously.

I’ve loved the FF for the last couple of years. They’ve got a creative team that has really struck the right tone and a great balance between the comic-bookie and sci-fi elements, with a extra helping of the latter. Like writer Jonathan Hickman had Reed Richards get proactive and decide until of waiting to be attacked all the time, he should undertake to “solve everything.” He breaks the task down into 100 to-do bullets-points and proceeds to check them off. Sue (Reed’s wife, The Invisible Girl) has been using her powers in very cool ways and has been touted for a while now as the “most powerful” member of the FF. And writing Ben Grimm must be like falling off a log.



They’ve also introduced a daughter (or perhaps they inherited her, I don’t know) who’s five years old and a super-genius, and they’ve actually made her interesting and fun to read. 



And the art is also pitch-perfect. A kind of pseudo-realism, the FF look like people really wearing uncomfortable form-fitting blue jumpsuits, but the wild sci-fi set-pieces also jump off the page. Whoever is drawing them is so good he doesn’t draw enough attention to himself, because I really have no idea who he is other than a name in the credits, one Steve Epting.



So in my opinion, they’re fixing something that wasn’t broken, but as I said, I could give a fuck about the Torch. Plus Sue just got promoted to Queen of Atlantis in the same issue that offed her bro. Namor looks like he’s just eaten a shit sandwich.



Here’s an example of the kind of cool plotting going into this book. One storyline has Reed dealing with people from the future who have killed Galactus, inset, (in the future) and are using his body to power their time-travel machine, and then present-day Galactus gets wind of it and comes looking for the people who have killed him in the future.



Well-thought-out time paradoxes make me giddy all over.



Anyhow, I thought the death scene was handled great. Well-paced, drawn, dialogued, and by seeing it through Ben’s eyes, it provoked an emotional reaction to the death of a character the reader may not have cared about, but Ben did. Just kick-ass writing. I read the last few pages a few times.