Essential Ant-Man volume 1

1962 saw Marvel launch more than one hero based on an arthropod (arachnids are technically not insects). But whilst one soared to great fame, the other wandered along, went through multiple identities and ultimately has remained a minor player in the Marvel Universe. That hero was Ant-Man.

If you ever find yourself on QI and are asked "Which was the second Marvel superhero strip of the Silver Age?" think very, very carefully before risking an answer.

(For those unfamiliar with it, QI is a British television comedy quiz show devoted to obscure trivia and pedantry. Often the questions asked have a seemingly obvious answer that is in fact wrong and giving this answer sets off a klaxon and loses you points.)

"The Man in the Ant Hill!" from Tales to Astonish #27 is part of another, now obscure genre - the science fiction/fantasy and monster stories that Marvel had been telling prior to the superhero revival. It's the all too common tale of a scorned scientist seeking fame but finding his invention backfires on him, as Henry Pym's shrinking formula reduces his body in size too quickly, and he has to find a way to get to the growth formula with the complication of facing down ants. This is really part of the old genre rather than the new, although the divide between the two is far more blurred than is often assumed. There are no real signs of the traits of the superhero era that was growing - there's no costume, no real villain and no great characterisation of Pym beyond being a stock fame-seeking scientist. It wasn't until issue #35 in September 1962 that he became a regular feature and a costumed hero. So his claim to be the second hero feature after the Fantastic Four is contentious (as are some of the other claimants' but let's not go into those now).

As for Tales to Astonish itself, this was another of the various Marvel anthology series that morphed into a superhero title and is best known for carrying the Incredible Hulk from issue #60 onwards, eventually transforming into the Hulk's own title. The later issues would also carry Namor the Sub-Mariner, who took over Ant-Man's slot. We'll look to see why a vacancy opened. Essential Ant-Man volume 1 carries the Ant-Man/Giant-Man strips from Tales to Astonish #27 & #35-69, including the various back-up strips featuring the Wasp either solo or telling a story. All but a couple of the issues are plotted by Stan Lee who also scripts many, with others scripted by Larry Lieber or H.E. Huntley. The other two issues are written by Leon Lazarus and Al Hartley. The art sees runs by the likes of Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Dick Ayers, Carl Burgos and Bob Powell, with Steve Ditko contributing one issue and Larry Lieber drawing all the Wasp features, which he also scripts over Stan Lee plots.

The publication of this volume was a landmark back in 2002. Up until this point the Essential series had only focused on the biggest name heroes and teams and the idea of an Essential Ant-Man was largely just idle speculation on Usenet. But Marvel took the plunge in bringing one of its more obscure heroes' series back into print and the success of the volume has led to many other Marvel series being rescued from the depths of obscurity and brought back into print, including the Human Torch in Strange Tales, The Man called Nova, Ms. Marvel, Dazzler, Godzilla and many more.

But the volumes has also revealed just why these adventures are so forgotten. Frankly this is a series that's never quite sure why it's there, which does little to develop the world around the hero and which sees motivations, costumes, powers and identities regularly changed. And few of these changes feel like natural developments but rather sudden alterations made in individual stories. The result is that the series never gets a clear identity for itself. Perhaps that’s appropriate given Hank Pym's subsequent career with yet more identities to the point that he’s never really been clearly identified with a single one.

On the face of it a man who can shrink to a tiny size and communicate with ants sounds plainly silly. But aren't some of the other Marvel heroes equally silly? A blind man with enhanced senses becoming an all action crime fighter is patently absurd. So's a teenager getting the powers of a spider. Or another teenager who can turn into living flame. Or a man who can stretch his body in all manner of ways. But we've already made those leaps of faith and it's how the concepts are handled that has determined whether or not such characters have durability. One could easily nit-pick the shortcomings in Ant-Man's powers or question some of the leaps of logic (such as how exactly does a man move around so quickly either flying on the back of an ant or by catapult?) but such silliness is part and parcel of the era and a good writer in a later generation could doubtlessly easily come up with explanations for some of that if it was deemed necessary.

The real problem stems from the limited scope and development in the series. Apart from the Wasp the only recurring supporting cast that I can spot is a US government agent who appears twice. Otherwise we're limited to just Hank Pym and, from issue #44 onwards, Janet van Dyne. And Hank's motivations for why he does what he does change a bit without clear explanation. In the initial story he's just a fame seeing scientist whose invention gets out of control and he destroys it. But then he becomes an ongoing series and suddenly his serum is back with no explanation for why he brought it back. Nor is it clear why he's switched from using it as a way to cut down storage and travel to becoming a crime fighter. Nor is it clear why a biochemist is suddenly able to discover the means by which ants communicate and devise artificial means to enter that conversation.

A change of tack comes in issue #44 when we suddenly learn a whole new element of Hank's backstory. Now we discover that he once married a Hungarian woman called Maria who had fled communism but choose to visit the country on their honeymoon, where she was recognised, kidnapped and executed. And so the widowed Hank was motivated into fighting crime back home. Some of that just doesn't add up, and after being introduced in this issue the whole point is then ignored for the rest of the series save one issue when he goes on a mission behind the Iron Curtain. And there's also the uncomfortable point that Janet looks very much like a younger Maria, a point explicitly remarked upon at the time. And this was nearly two decades before a similar plot point was used in X-Men.

With the introduction of the Wasp the series takes a shift but in no way is this a partnership of equals. The Wasp may be brave and resourceful in battle, but all too often she is otherwise presented as a silly, flighty girl who spends her time wishing Hank would be more romantic or worrying about clothes and the like. Between issues #51 & #58 she gets her own back-up feature but in nearly all of these stories she is just narrating various science fiction stories to either orphans or veterans. The early 1960s were not yet a time for enlightened women, but even compared to Marvel Girl over in the X-Men the Wasp is not the most advanced character of her era. And Hank's attitude to her may not be overtly sexist but he frequently doubts her word and makes comments that border on misogynistic. And there's a late development when Hank devises the means to change size merely by thinking commands into his headgear - and he also adds the ability to make Janet shrink down without having to do anything herself! I don't know how many young girls were reading Tales to Astonish at the time (or many women have picked up this volume) but I doubt many dreamed of growing up to be the Wasp.

Throughout the run there's a succession of changes in the way that Hank operates his shape-changing powers. At first he pours a serum on himself but later he switches to a gas, then later to pills and finally to some undefined method of incorporating the size-changing into both his and Janet's bodies and activating it by cybernetic enhanced thought. There are several times where the method of the day fails, either because Hank gets cut off from what he needs to change size or because a foe makes use of them instead, but it rarely directly leads to him looking for a new method that will prevent such repetition.

Issue #49 sees the big change when Hank now starts growing and takes on the identity of Giant-Man. (Very rarely is the "Gi-Ant Man" pun actually exercised within these pages.) Yet it's here that his identity problems begin. He retains his power to shrink and for some strange reason he continues to use the moniker "Ant-Man" when he shrinks down, despite the difference between Ant-Man and Giant-Man being merely one of size. There's no attempt to pretend that the two are in any way separate individuals so one has to wonder why he uses the two separate names instead of finding one that can cover multiple sizes. The problem is resolved in issue #68 when it's revealed that his encounter with the Hidden Man's sill absorbing rays in the previous issue has robbed him of the ability to shrink down to Ant-Man (a point that makes no sense as Hank can still shrink to human size, albeit with more difficulty now) but up to this point it has left the hero with an inconsistent confusing identity. The final issues also see Hank settling down into a single size for his Giant-Man form but it's another change to add to the mess. And the structure of the stories isn't one of a long, ongoing journey of development so this doesn't feel like a natural turning point but just one more change in a long line of them.

The stories are also inconsistent on some basic details. For example exactly what communication is received from the ants - is it just normal words or just pictures? Are Ant-Man/Giant-Man and the Wasp's identities meant to be secret or not? Several stories use them as a plot point but in others both are pretty free about taking off their helmets and masks, and Hank is not exactly hiding his connections to the giant hero. He is also quite easy to contact in an emergency, especially when various foes strike.

Quite a number of the villains introduced in these stories have made appearances elsewhere, including Comrade X, Egghead, the Scarlet Beetle, the Hijacker, the Voice (although here he's mainly identified by his real name, Jason Cragg), the Chiltarians, the Porcupine, the Living Eraser, Supremacy, the Human Top (who later underwent a name change to something less hilarious), El Toro and the Beasts of Berlin. We also get the Black Knight, a modern day descendent of a hero from the 1950s "Marvel" (I forget what they were called at each precise stage). However without checking every single subsequent appearance in databases, I'm not sure how many of the "returns" are in fact reprints or flashbacks or other features reliving these adventures. And I suspect if they have shown up in further issues, they've been selected precisely for their ultra obscurity. The villains who appear to have never been seen since include various generic Communists, the Protector (who is running, surprise, surprise, a protection racket), Kulla the ruler of an alien dimension (who, amazingly for an alien in an early Silver Age Marvel, isn't trying to conquer the Earth - but then this is Tales to Astonish), the Time Master, the Kosmosians, Trago, the Magician, Colossus (no relation to the X-Men member), Second-Story Sammy, the Wrecker (no relation to the Thor villain), Madame Macabre and the Hidden Man. Villains from other series are strictly limited to Attuma and hordes of Atlanteans, from the pages of Fantastic Four. So really there are only three villains of any lasting note in this volume - Egghead (a name that back then was the equivalent of "nerd" or "geek"), who is still very much Hank Pym's enemy whatever title he's in, the Human Top who is better known as Whirlwind, and the second Black Knight who didn't last long anyway before being replaced by his nephew as a hero, and in any case was a revamp of a 1950s character. Consequently, the most significant villain to exclusively come out of the pages of these issues is none other than Whirlwind. That says a lot about why these stories are so often overlooked.

As for the stories themselves, they are frankly not at the cutting edge of early Silver Age Marvel. Rather they feel very generic. The artwork is generally okay but suffers from a turnover of pencillers and even though several of them are amongst the biggest Marvel names of the early 1960s such as Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers or Don Heck, few seem to be giving their best. The writing is also rather pedestrian - other than his relationship with his partner the hero experiences no present day problems outside of his adventuring. There's no supporting cast to interact with. Some of the villains are hooded but usually only one suspect is presented - this is especially true of the Protector. Few present any real lasting threat. Nor does the hero face any problems with public adulation, beyond getting irritated by visits from his fan club. This series is very much a conventional superhero feature from a company that was elsewhere doing a lot to beak down the pre-existing conventions.

There are, however, a few signs of the Marvel changes breaking through in the later issues. We get a couple of stories with big name guest-stars, including a battle with Spider-Man that is probably the volume's best known tale, and a fight with the Hulk that set up the latter's transfer to Tales to Astonish. That was the first sign of Giant Man's popularity starting to collapse. Up until issue #59 his page count had steadily grown, even if some of the pages were devoted to the Wasp's stories (which aren't terribly memorable - in most the protagonist finds their cunning backfires on them), culminating in issue #59 containing an eighteen page story plus a five page feature reminding us of our heroes' powers. But then the Hulk took up residence in half the book from issue #60 onwards, forcing the Giant-Man feature to shrink to fourteen pages, then twelve, until finally issue #69 ends on an ambiguous note as Hank worries about the danger he has put Janet in, and she wonders if he's about to retire. Issue #70 saw the feature replaced by Namor the Sub-Mariner.

And it's hard to get upset about the fate. The series was not the most dynamic or ground-breaking being put out even at the time and little was being done to develop the characters. Instead we have a comic pot-boiler, produced by many great talents passing time between more amazing assignments. The result is a series that doesn't try to push against the conventions or really develop the lead character but instead wanders through a succession of generic situations. Ant-Man may have had outrageous powers but in themselves that should have been no impediment to doing something bold with the character. The Wasp is equally not the most developed sidekick and so neither of the characters is really given a strong core for later writers to build on. Many have complained that they've found it difficult to take Hank Pym to a point where his late lashing out at the Wasp is forgotten, but it's clear from the character's roots that there wasn't a lot to the character to fall back on. This volume is very much one for completists.

Essential Human Torch volume 1

The first of the “extra” volumes is Essential Human Torch volume 1, which reprints the Human Torch stories from Strange Tales #101-134 and Annual #2. As previously noted, Strange Tales was one of a number of anthology series produced by Marvel that carried various genres during its run and is best known for introducing Dr. Strange, then also running Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. But before that the Human Torch was given his own solo feature from issue #101 onwards. This was a boom time for Marvel - following the success of the Fantastic Four, the summer of 1962 saw four superhero strips launched in separate anthologies - as well as the Torch there was Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy (although it was cancelled after one issue), Thor in Journey into Mystery and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish (reviving a character from a previous one-off science fiction story - if you’re ever on QI and get asked which was Marvel’s second superhero feature, think carefully before you risk an answer), all launched in June or July (cover dated August or September). But note that in the long run the only one of the strips to last was Thor, with Spider-Man seeing his anthology immediately cancelled whilst neither the Human Torch nor Ant-Man would last more than a few years. These last two strips languished in obscurity and the Human Torch became the very last of the early Silver Age Marvel superhero features to get an Essential volume, with this one not coming out until the start of 2004, just after a period when it seemed the Essentials had died. So was the obscurity deserved or unjust?

Both the writing and art in the series is a little turbulent. All but one issue is at least plotted by Stan Lee who takes over the full writing from Annual #2 and issue #114 onwards, bar #132 which is written by Larry Ivie. The earlier issues are scripted by Larry Lieber, Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart and “Joe Carter” who was a pseudonym for Jerry Siegel (yes that Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman). Most of the art is by Jack Kirby or Dick Ayers, with one issue by Carl Burgos (the creator of the original Human Torch) and the last five by Bob Powell. This is quite an impressive line-up of creators, suggesting the strip wasn’t regarded as in any way disposable, though a more permanent creative team would have been helpful.

The “Marvel Age” saw comics doing things different from the norm. In place of the almost timeless adventures where characters went through much the same pattern over and over again, there was now a stronger emphasis of character growth and development. Heroes were no longer gods in mortal form, but instead real people with real problems. The public were no longer all accepting, all worshipping of their heroes. It was a very changed era in which the same old same old types of strips were superseded by something bold and dynamic.

But not everything reflected the changes. Some strips just presented heroes going through a string of adventures with no real developments, no serious obstacles in their personal lives, and few signs of the changes coming elsewhere. One such strip was the Human Torch.

Obscurity has been kind to these adventures. When compared to many of the contemporary Marvel offerings they feel highly disposable and inconsequential. At the same time Spider-Man was going from strength to strength, the Torch was going from forgettable villain to forgettable villain. In no way was the world being set on fire.

Now some of this could be the restraints of being a spin-off from the Fantastic Four, with the expectation that major developments for the Torch would happen there, leaving his own strip as a mere side offering. But the strip itself tried to offer a different perspective, with the focus being on the Torch’s hometown of Glenville rather than Manhattan and beyond as seen in the FF’s own book. However this volume does not show the setting being really built on. There are very few regular supporting characters and hardly any attempt to build on situations in Johnny Storm’s regular life. In the first twenty-two issues we get some appearances by the other members of the Fantastic Four and more rarely the Thing’s girlfriend Alicia Masters, but otherwise the supporting cast is limited to his girlfriend Doris Evans who appears from time to time (and it may just be the black & white, but there are a number of times when she and Susan Storm look so similar it’s easy to confuse them at a glance). And even she is underused, largely appearing only to berate Johnny for a constant string of broken dates, even though she knows perfectly well why he’s done so.

This is to my mind one of the biggest missed opportunities in the series. In the first few issues Johnny tries to maintain his secret identity, even to the point of staging elaborate gimmicks to disguise his going into action. Yet he’s living with his sister whose identity is publicly known as is the family nature of the Fantastic Four. Why precisely did Johnny ever think people wouldn’t realise he was the Torch? Issue #107 solves this with the revelation that in fact everybody knows Johnny is the Torch and was just respecting his privacy. Was it really the case that up to now his home life was never disturbed by eager fans, anti-fire busybodies, reporters or enemies? Was John F. Kennedy’s America really such a place where public figures were given such respect and privacy? (Okay the President himself may have been doing things in private, but elected politicians usually had the benefit of experience and actively took steps to guard themselves.) Once even Johnny knows he doesn’t have a secret identity, very little is done with this although the odd foe does know where to come looking. But there’s no real exploration of the impact in areas such as his school life. How does he cope with trying to be an ordinary student who has so many distractions? How do his fellow students react to having a celebrity in their midst? Do the school authorities try to capitalise on his celebrity status? Similarly whilst his sister may also have powers and protections, how do the neighbours react to having a superhero in the vicinity? Does he send house prices soaring through fame, or plummeting because of the perceived danger both from his powers and from the foes he might attract? The obvious point of contrast is with the early Spider-Man adventures where Peter Parker’s non-costumed life was quite prominent, especially his experience in school. It is a pity that such opportunities were missed.

The last dozen issues see a change of focus as the Thing is permanently added, turning the strip into a permanent team-up, predating the likes of Captain America and the Falcon, Daredevil and the Black Widow or Power Man and Iron Fist by several years. But there was already a regular team book featuring these two – Fantastic Four. And the similarity is compounded by an even greater use of foes from that title, as well as further appearances by Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Woman plus other supporting FF cast members such as Alicia Masters. Was it really necessary to have “Half the Fantastic Four” when the whole thing was available elsewhere? Indeed several of the stories could easily have been run in Fantastic Four, particularly “The Mystery Villain!” in issue #127, a mystery that is so hard to penetrate that the only reason it takes until page five to deduce is because the villain doesn’t appear as such until then. The very core idea of the Fantastic Four is that it a family of adventurers who all bring different elements to the reckoning. As a result it’s been very rare for any replacement members to actually last and the original line-up invariably reasserts itself. Having only half the team for an extended run just doesn’t generate the same magic, but nor does it offer the special focus that solo stories offer. This run straddles the two and misses the magic of both.

The stories contain a variety of villains who can be broken down into three categories – brand new creations, villains from Fantastic Four and villains from other series altogether. In the first category we have the Destroyer (unrelated to others of that name), the Wizard, Zemu, Paste-Pot Pete, the Acrobat, the Painter, the Sorcerer, Asbestos Man, the Eel, the Fox, Plantman, the Rabble Rouser, Captain Barracuda, the Beetle, “the Mystery Villain” and Professor Jack. You could perhaps add broadcaster Ted Braddock, who wages a J. Jonah Jameson style campaign against the Torch but it lasts less than an issue as he changes his mind, and publicly says so, when the Torch’s actions save his son. Overall this is quite an intense creative rate. But I’m willing to bet many of you are already copying and pasting some of these names into a search engine to find out who the heck they are. Only about four have really made a lasting impact – the Wizard, Paste-Pot Pete (albeit under a new name of “the Trapster”), the Eel and the Beetle. And none of these are remotely A-List villains – the Wizard may have been treated as the Torch’s arch enemy and gone on to be used quite a bit, but the truth is he hasn’t aged as well as some foes and his role in the “Acts of Vengeance” conspiracy was very much punching above his weight. The Beetle and the Eel have been at best third tier foes seeking greater recognition but never really making it, whilst the name “Paste-Pot Pete” has dogged the character and kept him as a figure of fun despite his attempts to become more serious (which begin here, though he doesn’t adopt his new name in this volume). Otherwise the originated foes are generally forgettable and most have only come back on a few occasions to reinforce their lowly status. The Destroyer is the obligatory Evil Communist Agent that many of the early Silver Age heroes fought – this particular one is trying to close tall rides at an amusement park because customers can see the quiet bay where a Communist submarine surfaces. Zemu is the ruler of the other cliché of the era, the alien race seeking to conquer Earth by bizarre methods – here they’re reaching Earth from another dimension by using a portal in a swamp and have to stop a housing estate being built next to it. The other foe who gets referenced quite a bit is the Acrobat, primarily for his second appearance in which he disguises himself as the long missing Captain America!

“The Human Torch meets Captain America” may have won the Alley Award for Best Short Story that year, but soon after it dropped off the radar such that it wasn’t until 1999 (real time) that any Captain America story dealt with the real Cap’s reaction to having been impersonated. Looking at it now it’s easy to see why as it’s actually very silly even by the standards of this volume as there are some major leaps of logic. After having disappeared for many years (precisely how long is never specified), the legend of World War II comes out of retirement to appear at an antique car fair! After an attempt to steal a priceless car fails, Captain America passes himself off as the hero to the acclaim of all but the Torch, then later frees his two accomplices. The henchmen set off in a Ferrari to lure all the cops and the Torch after them, whilst Captain America breaks into a small town banks and steals three bags of money, then retreating to his floating sky platform. When the Torch shows up, Cap escapes via a rocket but with the Torch in pursuit Cap steals an asbestos-lined lorry and traps the Torch inside it. However the Torch burns his flame to turn it into a compressed gas that explodes open the truck and he captures “Captain America” to unmask him as the Acrobat. Later the Torch looks at an old Captain America comic, which gives away his identity as Steve Rogers, and wonders what happened to the real Cap and will he ever return. (A caption confesses the story was a test to see if the readers wanted this. Looking back it’s surprising that Captain America took a few years to be revived, and had to be tested first, whilst the Human Torch was re-envisaged from the start and the Sub-Mariner revived much as before just a few months later.) The whole story just doesn’t work – does nobody see the silliness of Cap coming out of retirement for a car fair? And why does a man with all the resources to have a disposable Ferrari and a floating sky platform go to all this effort to steal a rather small amount of cash? Does nobody see through all this? And finally like so many other villains the Acrobat can get his hands on asbestos quite easily. It’s true that in 1963 asbestos did not have the reputation it does today (although the health and legal communities had been aware of it for some decades), but the number of villains who just happen to have this fire-proof material to hand, even when they weren’t expecting the Torch, strains credulity.

As well as the originated villains, the stories also see several from other series. The ones used from the pages of the Fantastic Four are the Sub-Mariner, Puppet Master, the Terrible Trio – Bull Brogin, Yogi Dakor and “Handsome Harry” Phillips – and the Mad Thinker. This is a more mixed bag as the Sub-Mariner was initially built up to be the main rival to Doctor Doom as the Four’s archenemy, but the Puppet Master and Mad Thinker are again foes who haven’t stood the test of time. And the Terrible Trio is a rather lame team of three villains with different skills. I guess with the Enforcers running about there wasn’t much room for a second version of that concept. Meanwhile villains from other series include the Sandman (from Amazing Spider-Man), Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (from the X-Men; this is when they were still part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) and Kang the Conqueror (from the Avengers). Their appearance here was one of the earliest to show Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch actually trying to escape from Magneto, but finding the wider world hostile, and helped to lay the foundations for their eventual reformation as part of the Avengers. Meanwhile the Sandman’s appearance sees the Torch almost force himself on a foe looking for revenge on Spider-Man, and started the process by which the Sandman became at least as much a Fantastic Four villain as a Spidey one, later becoming a member of the Frightful Four.

As well as the villains we get a few guest stars. The other Fantastic Four members show up in some stories and occasionally help the Torch. Then there are two of the other obvious teamings. Annual #2 guest-stars Spider-Man in his first ever guest appearance, in what seems to be the first ever Marvel story to employ the formula of one hero being mistakenly assumed to have gone bad, leading to the other fighting him before realising the truth and the two team up against the real villain. It’s an okay piece and shouldn’t be blamed for all its imitators, but the villain is the forgettable Fox. (It’s also let down by the worst reproduction in the volume; whilst all the regular issues look pretty good, the reproduction of the annual is far cruder.) Issue #120 features a team-up with Iceman that doesn’t involve a fight between the two heroes but instead sees them fighting crooks who raid a tourist boat, with each hero helping to deal with the other. More surprisingly is issue #130’s tale, “Meet the Beatles!” (a title which probably carries even more weight in the US where an album of that name was released) although the Fab Four only meet the members of the Fan Four very briefly as the Torch and Thing wind up missing the concert to chase crooks who steal the payroll. I wonder if the band’s brief appearance was licensed? (Though given some of the terrible deals made in this era, I doubt the Beetles themselves would have seen anything of it.)

The Torch’s powers in this volume are somewhat in flux, often adapting to suit the purposes of the plot. At times it seems as though he can manipulate fire as if it were a living safe energy like Green Lantern’s energy powers and create constructs such as cages and fake Torches out of fire with seemingly no fuel at all. At other times the Torch finds his flame exhausted, limiting his effectiveness for a while, but again this weakness only occurs when needed. There’s some weak comic book science about the flame becoming a gas in confined spaces that allows him to escape traps with pressure when needs be, but he doesn’t always use this. It’s another sign of how the strip was something of a throwback to the simpler sillier era when powers suited the convenience of the stories and development was rare.

The stories in this volume came out during a time of great change in superhero comics. However whilst the Fantastic Four was setting new standards for bold adventuring and the Amazing Spider-Man was offering developed, ongoing teen angst and soap, Strange Tales’s Human Torch stories were something of a throwback. There were a few brief signs of the changes with a hero who argued with his fellows, but otherwise this is a story of a teen hero who had no real problems that couldn’t be overcome in a single issue, who had next to no supporting cast of his own and who fought a series of largely forgettable villains. Whilst Spider-Man was taking the genre boldly forward, the Human Torch was very much parked at the rear. The comparison between the two strips could not be starker. It’s unsurprising that the Thing had to be brought in to shore up the strip or that it ultimately lasted less than three years and was then mostly forgotten. Marvel had a good string of hits in the early 1960s, but this was very definitely a miss.