Like Avengers/Invaders, this is another collaboration between Dynamite and Marvel. I don’t know the backstory of the latter using the former for packaging (and I assume distribution as well?). It might be interesting. But the comics … Aren’t. I mean, they’re not terrible. In fact, I gave Avengers/Invaders a B/C+ rating. But I read it under a year ago and I can’t remember a damn thing about it.
To be fair: It’s hard to write Invaders comics. They usually suck.
This one is more about Toro than the original Human Torch. And the early pages remind me that Toro was brought back in the Avengers/Invaders series via the Cosmic Cube.
And he’s whiny and pouty about it. The green guy is the original Vision, aka Aarkus. He was also revived by the Cube.
AIM hires Mad Thinker, who creates a new version of Torch (the “Inhuman Torch) intended as a weapon of mass destruction. To build it, Thinker grave-robs the original Torch’s body and captures Toro and experiments on him, using his tissue (which bears the same “Horton Cells” that enable Jim Hammond to burn as Human Torch) to revive Torch.
Torch emerges as a brain-dead shell-much like Frankenstein’s monster. He’s actually revived during a lightning storm–just like the Monster.
If all that sounds familiar it’s because Thinker pretty much did the same think in Fantastic Four Annual #4. That version was retconned as a duplicate android. Torch was also revived, again, by John Byrne in Avengers West Coast. He was then killed in Secret Invasion, buried, and that’s who Thinker dug up in this series. If you’re thinking, “But…I thought he was The Vision! And not the green one from earlier in this same post–the actual Vision that everyone thinks is cool!” Yeah. Okay. Turns out that, too, got retconned. Vision was actually built off a duplicate android who…Never mind. It’s all a mess.
Toro escapes the Thinker and through some comic-book science restores Torch’s mind. But Thinker also has his own android, The Inhuman Torch. Toro and Torch team up and destroy the android.
Along the way, there’s some retconning of Toro’s origin but the real issue is: Do you care? Again, this is actually a pretty good comic–but who really cares in the end?
English (US) · 