87 Years Later, Marvel’s First Superhero Remains The Company’s Best Hero Not Created By Stan Lee

All the best Marvel heroes were created by Stan Lee, right? Well, close, but not 100%. In fact, one of Marvel’s most underrated, underused characters is one of its first superhero creations ever, predating even Captain America, the other greatest character from before Lee’s time. We’re talking about the original Human Torch.

The Torch was Marvel’s first superhero, but his legacy is complicated by the fact that Stan Lee and Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby straight-up lifted the Human Torch’s design and name and gave it to a brand-new character of their own making. The Human Torch 2.0 is a pop culture icon today, while 1.0 remains a trivia answer; occasionally brought back into the Marvel canon fold, but never consistently integrated into modern Marvel, or given his proper due.

Which is a shame, because Jim Hammond, the original Torch, was a great character. He was one of the first characters to learn the classic heroic formula, “great power = great responsibility,” decades before Stan Lee put it into those words in Spider-Man. He started out as a literal technological “marvel” set loose in a world that wasn’t ready for him, before ultimately learning to wield his powers to protect instead of destroy.

Yet the coolest thing about the Human Torch also precipitated his downfall: he wasn’t actually human. The Torch was an android, created in the image of humanity. And when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to resurrect the character in the ’60s, they “corrected” this quirk of the hero’s identity, inadvertently Torch 1.0 to obscurity in the process.

The Original Human Torch Was The Peak Creation From The Pre-Marvel Comics “Timely” Era

The Human Torch 1.0, The First Marvel Superhero; Created By Carl Burgos

Before there was Marvel Comics there was…Marvel Comics, a series published by Timely Comics. Timely was founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman, a magazine magnate, who wanted in on the craze that was sweeping pulp publishing at the time. The previous year, a nascent company called DC Comics scored a huge hit when it introduced a new character, an alien who looked like a man, who possessed all kinds of powers that made him superior to the average human. Early in ’39, DC introduced another similar character, a rich man who used his superior wealth to fight crime.

These wild new “superheroes” first appeared in books titled Action Comics and Detective Comics. Martin Goodman and his new company, Timely, countered with Marvel Comics, about modern marvels like robot, in the form of a human, who could burst into flames. Goodman’s business gamble paid off. The Human Torch was a hit, and Timely soon followed this success with two more popular characters: Namor the Submariner, and Captain America. Of course, all three characters are prominent today, nearly 90 years later, but that almost wasn’t the case.

The first superhero boom period in pop culture faded down the stretch of the 1940s. While DC soldiered on with Superman, Batman, and its stable of superheroes, their Timely counterparts fell off. Captain America, Namor, and the Human Torch made sporadic appearances during the 1950s, at which point Timely had become Atlas Comics, but Atlas mainly subsisted on Western comics, horror books, spy thrillers, and other non-superhero genre pieces.

In the late ’50s, Martin Goodman’s company rebranded again. This time, it looked back at its history and took the name Marvel Comics. Just a few years later, in the early ’60s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby saved the company, and changed the course of pop culture forever, by resurrecting the superhero genre. They created a host of iconic new characters, and brought back the classics. Except the Human Torch came back in body, you could say, but not in spirit.

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby Adapted The Human Torch Concept For “The Fantastic Four”; What The Meant For Torch 1.0

Carl Burgos’ Pioneering Hero Was Repurposed For “Marvel’s First Family”

The Human Torch was actually the first Timely character Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived in the 1960s. When Kirby and Lee were putting together their superhero team the Fantastic Four, they appropriated, or perhaps a kinder word would be adapted, a mostly defunct character concept owned by Marvel. They repurposed the Torch idea to fit their concept: regular humans altered by radiation and given fantastical superpowers. But the name, the powers, and the look were all indebted to Torch 1.0.

The case can be made that this, in itself, testifies to the Torch’s status as the greatest Marvel hero not created by Stan Lee, or Jack Kirby. They recognized the conceptual greatness of the Human Torch. Two of the greatest creative minds in comic book history looked at an existing character concept and decided they couldn’t top it.

So, Human Torch 2.0 went on to be the precocious kid brother that rounded out “Marvel’s First Family,” and Johnny Storm is still one of Marvel’s most recognizable characters to this day. But what about 1.0? The android with the “average guy” name of Jim Hammond? He’s never been totally gone, nor completely forgotten, in Marvel canon, but he’s lived in the shadow of his successor for 60+ years now.

Human Torch 1.0 Has Become A Novelty In Marvel Lore; But Could He Still Be A Star?

Or Is The Original Torch Just A Relic Of Comic History?

The first Human Torch made his official Marvel Comics debut earlier than you might think. In 1966, he met his counterpart, and the rest of the Fantastic Four, briefly fighting against them after being reactivated by the villainous Mad Thinker. A decade later, it became canon that Avengers’ resident android Vision was, essentially, a retrofitted version of Jim Hammond. And then, in the late 1980s, this was retconned, in order to facilitate Torch 1.0’s famous revival in Avengers West Coast #50.

In the 37 years since, Torch 1.0 has had a prominent role in the Marvel Universe at times. He’s also been killed off and put on the shelf for significant stretches. Lately, he’s lapsed into a kind of “legacy” role, where the big story is that he’s back; the most recent version of this occurred in Marvel’s Ultimates series, in which he was recruited to join the team.

Among Marvel fans, Torch 1.0 is iconic for his place in Marvel history, but he is always saddled with the qualifier of being “the Human Torch before the Human Torch.” Yet now, more than ever, might be the best time for Torch 1.0 to return to the mainstream Marvel Universe, and maybe even lead his own series. Because the same thing that made the Jim Hammond character expendable in the 1960s makes him perfect for the 2020s.

In the ’60s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wanted a human Human Torch, because they were interested in human characters who became superhuman. Now, 65+ years later, in the age of AI, the story of a heroic android is a meaningful one. And while Torch 1.0 might have been supplanted in that role by characters like Vision, and other sentient Marvel machines, he set the precedent for all of them, which is why he’s the greatest Marvel hero Stan Lee didn’t create.