This picture you see to the other side is the Human Torch, model III. I'm trying to correct a gross mistake that has been around in depicting the various Human Torches since 1939....since Carl Burgos, bless his heart, first made the mistake.

Realism in how you portray the fantastic is sometimes the key. When Carmine Infantino re-imagined the Flash, he portrayed super-speed not with the plain speed lines given the Golden Age Flash, but with a strobe-effect that indicated very well how fast he was moving. It was a brillant artistic effect, and made the new Flash much more engaging and interesting than the original.

So too it could be with a new version of the Human Torch...

The originator of the Human Torch, Carl Burgos, was a young kid when he created him; and it was a brillant idea. The original Human Torch was not human, oddly enough---he was an android, a creation of Professor Horton, who had the propensity of flaming alive, without being consumed, when he was exposed to air. Nobody's perfect.

He eventually got the hang of it, learned to fly and turn off his flames, refused to be used by his creator for exhibition and greed, and later worked for the New York City police commisioner. His most memorable opponent was the Sub-Mariner, a water-based anti-hero. He looked like this. (The guy who looks like a Vulcan in a bathing suit is Sub-Mariner.)

Does anyone else notice something---wrong with this? Granted it's crudely drawn, but...does something not look right?

The same thing happened when, in the Silver Age, they recreated the Human Torch. Stan Lee did to the Human Torch what his conpatriot at DC, Julie Schwartz, did with Golden Age superheroes...he created new versions of the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, many others.

Well, he created a new Human Torch---to fill a slot in a super-team called the FAntastic Four. Indeed, when the Four decided to put on uniforms in their third issue, it was very similar to the Human Torch's old outfit---except it was mainly blue when the original's was mainly red, and had gloves and boots and a "four" symbol.

The new Human Torch was a hot-rodding teenager, and you knew he mainly listened to Beach Boy records. This was the early sixties. It was a great new riff on an old hero, and this one was fully human---even had a sister in the FF.

Yet, when aflame, even Jack Kirby, that great artist, drew him like this or here.

I never liked the lines on the body---I suppose it was to indicate flames, but to me it just looks like the Torch is dirty---but that's not what I'm talking about. Compare that picture with my picture above. Do you get the idea?

If not, let me spell it out.

Red is the coolest of colors. A red flame is the coolest of flames. Yellow is next hottest, white is hotter, and blue is the hottest of all.

Yet Carl Burgos, Jack Kirby---even the painter, Alex Ross---depicted the Torch all wrong.

His body is portrayed as red, with yellow flames surrounding him and spilling off him. That would mean that his body---is cooler than the flames that are pouring off that body, which is obvious nonsense.

The right way to depict the body is as yellow-hot or better still, white-hot, with yellow flames coming off that, cooling down to red flames the further they get from the body. When he really steps up the heat, to "go nova" as Johnny Storm calls it, to its hottest extent, it should be blue-hot with white flames pouring off the body.

Geez. Basic physics, people.

Basic coloring, seen by looking at any fire.

I started out imagining a third Human Torch, as there is now a third Flash and a third Green Lantern. Since the first two Human Torches were blonde, I kept that---but I went with the flow and made his hair even longer than Johnny Storm's. I kept the basic uniform, but made the gloves and boots hip-high or shoulder-length. I did the major color motif purple, as the first one had a red motif and the second one a blue motif. And of course...

I wanted the colors to look like a realistic depiction of a flaming figure---a human torch indeed.

I imagined him as a solo act, able to use backdrafts and other fiery effects. Johnny Storm was too specifically a team player, part of an ensemble. They tried to run his own series for a while, but it never took off. The original Torch, though, was conceived as a star. That's how I look on this guy.

I'd like to make him a guy training to be a fireman, and who has seen his comrades horribly disfigured by fire. I drew him both aflame and as a normal person. I can think of three or four origins, but that's not really important.

Nothing against the current Torch, but he seems basically from a early sixties beach flick. Let's get a guy more in tune with the times, shall we?

And colored right this time? Please?