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Marvel 616 Comic Book Review – Strange Tales #103

Strange Tales Issue 103 Photo Credit: Marvel

While the Fantastic Four has been consistently stopping bad guys, Johnny Storm has branched out on his own to highlight his own adventures in the pages of Strange Tales. Johnny only gets half of the book of Strange Tales but he is undoubtedly the star of this series.

He’s living in Greenwood and is an average student who just happens to have super powers. There’s a housing developer in town who has been having some trouble. He’s building houses on top of swamp land but reinforcing the foundation first. These houses should be perfectly stable. However, they keep sinking into the ground. The locals swear it’s because “swamp demons” are to blame. Johnny does the smart thing and contacts Reed Richards to help but three fourths of the Fantastic Four happen to be busy so The Human Torch gets to take this one on his own.

Johnny sticks around to investigate and finds out some “unhumans” are turning the foundation into swamp land around these houses. Johnny catches them in the act and it turns out these creatures are from the fifth dimension. They’re preparing to invade earth but they need the area where the houses are being built to enter into our dimension. Johnny is quickly caught and taken to “the 5th dimension” where an evil despot named Zemu is ruling with an iron fist. He figures he’s free to go ahead with the invasion because Torch is out of commission. Unbeknownst to Zemu there is a woman named Valeria who wants to help Johnny and is a little bit in love with him.

With her help and a bit of creative skywriting, Johnny is able to inspire the people of this dimension to rebellion. They overthrow Zemu and swear to leave our planet in peace. Valeria is fairly heartbroken that Johnny is leaving though. And for his part, Johnny seems to have some similar feeling as he daydreams about her in class later on. We definitely get the impression we’ll see Valeria and this dimension again (spoiler, we will). She’s the first real potential love interest for Johnny Storm but she won’t be the last.

There are actually several things in this short story that are significant not just to Johnny Storm but also to The Fantastic Four and all of Marvel 616. Valeria will go on to be a recurring character, the fifth dimension comes up again, and the whole situation, in part, helps the Fantastic Four become the dimension hopping, intergalactic heroes they are known to be.

While the story itself feels a little bit like an episode of Scooby-Doo but with aliens, we do get to see a couple of neat tricks performed by Johnny. He shows he is not just all about the heat as he makes a smoke screen at one point and later he makes what he calls, “a super tornado” which is hot enough to melt metal and wipe out some baddies.

This isn’t what I would call a great story in 616 but it does do the job of laying down the foundations for Johnny to have a really complicated love life.

Next up on the reading list we’re not done with the members of The Fantastic Four just yet as we catch up with them in Fantastic Four #9!

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Marvel 616 Comic Book Review – Strange Tales #102

Strange Tales Issue #102 Photo Credit: Marvel

Strange Tales #102 has several short features in it but the only one that matters in the Marvel 616 continuity is the one starring Johnny Storm fighting a villain called The Wizard.

The issue starts with a recap of what happened in the last issue when Johnny defeated a villain who was trying to destroy an amusement park. While he and his pals are reminiscing and marveling over the feats of The Human Torch, a man named The Wizard overhears them. He is an inventor and a showman, already world famous in his own right. He decides the only way he can really prove to the world he has the smartest brain on the planet is to defeat… The Human Torch? Yeah, you read that right.

I think every Marvel fan gives a bit of a groan when reading this. No disrespect to Johnny Storm but he’s not known for being brilliant. However, Reed Richards most certainly is. But this story stars Johnny so he gets the spotlight.

What’s The Wizard’s brilliant plan for trapping Johnny? Simple, he is going to build a machine that is supposed to dig to the center of the Earth. Then, he’s going to fake getting stuck, knowing a.) he actually built this machine with plenty of air so he’s not in any real danger and b.) The Human Torch is definitely going to come rescue him. After all of this, he’s going to invite Torch over to show off his super cool modern house. Then, while Torch is in the house he’s going to ask Torch to have his picture taken with some special cameras he invented. Those cameras are not cameras though, they’re actually water cannons which will douse Torch, but not his face so he can keep his secret identity, and then put him in an asbestos lined room so he can’t escape. Easy right? And does it work? You bet.

That is not all though, oh no. The Wizard has also built a suit which mimics Torch’s powers. He uses this suit to commit crimes in order to sink Torch’s reputation with the public. That also works. To top it all off he skywrites in flames, “Down with law and order” just to make the point really clear.

Here’s the thing though. As smart as The Wizard thinks he is, he’s not smart enough to realize Johnny can get hot enough to burn out of his prison. Johnny also knows how to defeat The Wizard so he makes a quick phone call. The Wizard lures Johnny back to his home where he holds photographs that will prove Torch’s innocence. For a smart dude, this guy is making a lot of really obvious mistakes. Torch tells him he has greater powers than The Wizard could imagine. At which point the photographs float out of The Wizard’s hands.

The Wizard is convinced Johnny does have some kind of otherworldly powers. Torch then calls the cops and saves the day. If you guessed the obvious then you have a smarter brain than The Wizard does. Of course, Johnny called Sue Storm, aka The Invisible Girl. And if you can’t even be bothered to know who is on the Fantastic Four can you actually be in the running to be a supervillain at all?

This really was one of the most ridiculous of the stories in the continuity so far but I suppose it gave Johnny Storm something to do for an afternoon.

Next on the reading list get your purple pants out because we’re going back to see the big green guy in Incredible Hulk #4!

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Marvel 616 Comic Book Review – Strange Tales #101

Strange Tales Issue #101 Photo Credit: Marvel

Sometimes when you have a hit comic book on your hands the stories in there get too big to be contained in just that book. This was the case for the mega hit superhero team the Fantastic Four. Up to this point there had been seven issues of the first family of heroes and while those were popular, Marvel also had a book of anthology stories that was not selling as well.

When you think back on it now, it seems like it was an easy call to have a prominent character or characters go from a best selling book into one that was only sitting on the shelves. Now, it’s not like there was no audience for Strange Tales prior to the introduction of regular superhero stories but it definitely wasn’t flying off of the shelves. The other problem with anthology books is that you have to think of something to put in there over and over to crank them out. Eventually there are only so many stories you can tell about aliens attacking, scientists creating formulas that go haywire, and communists attacking the population of the country. So what’s the solution? Toss in a superhero!

In this case the book is about Johnny Storm, a.k.a. The Human Torch. He’s moved to upstate New York with his sister, Sue who is, of course, The Invisible Woman. We don’t really see her in this issue (or do we?) other than in a recap of how the FF famously came to be.

The story itself revolves around an amusement park Johnny and his pals are eager to frequent as soon as it is built. While they are there watching the progress of the construction it seems as if one of the rides being tested is about to kill someone on it. Luckily Johnny is on the spot (yes pun intended) and takes quick action to save the man on the ride. The audience knows this was going to happen because we got to see a threatening letter from someone called The Destroyer.

The people building the park ignore these threats and proceed with building. Each time Johnny is there to flame on and save the day. He comes up with more and more ridiculous ways to hide that he is The Human Torch with elaborate distractions so no one will notice the guy next to them literally lighting on fire and flying away.

Eventually, The Destroyer calls Johnny out to battle by advertising his challenge in the newspaper. Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing shows up believing this guy will be too much for Johnny. Johnny tells Ben it’s his fight (after all the story is literally featuring The Human Torch so he gets to shine here) and immediately walks into a trap.

He makes it out okay and then figures out the only amusement rides being tampered with are the tall ones so he flies on up to check it out. There he sees, “A commie sub!!” and knows he has to finish this fight. Which he quickly does. I mean, you try fighting a guy who is actually on fire, it can’t be easy. Turns out the publisher of the newspaper was feeding information to this submarine but if the amusement park was built, he would no longer have cover to do so.

So, to sum up Strange Tales was a little tired of the same old stories about aliens and communists so they dedicated a feature story to a superhero who… defeats a communist. Still, this will not be the last appearance of Johnny Storm in Strange Tales by a long shot. And will absolutely not be the last time a hit superhero ends up in the pages of an anthology magazine published by Marvel. It was a bit original though, in that it was the first Marvel effort to get one of their big stars from a team to have a spotlight shined on them individually. It’s a sort of forgettable story but nonetheless has its proper place in comics history as a new innovation for Marvel that would work very well for them.

Next time on the reading list we’re getting micro once again as we check up on Henry Pym a.k.a. The Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish #36!

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