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Target 11 of 30 · Fantastic Four

Human Torch

IdentityConfirmed

Real nameJohnny Storm

CodenameHuman Torch

ContinentFantastic Four

In DoomsdayJoseph Quinn (on Marvel's cast list; role not yet named)¹

First seenFantastic Four #1, November 1961²

Created byStan Lee, Jack Kirby²

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Level 1 // The briefDecrypted · 30 seconds

WhoSue Storm's impatient younger brother and the youngest of the Fantastic Four, who can burst into flame and fly as the Human Torch.³

AbilitiesHe can burst into flame at will and fly.³

In DoomsdayMarvel lists Joseph Quinn in the cast but has not named his role; his most recent released role was Johnny Storm / Human Torch.¹

Last seenThe Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), as Johnny Storm / Human Torch: He cracks the Silver Surfer's language; when he tries to sacrifice himself, she goes instead.⁵

Sources

Level 2 // Surveillance recordOn screen · 5 sightings, 2 in the MCU

Every live-action sighting of Human Torch, and everything Marvel has confirmed.

2005
Fantastic Four FOX
Chris Evans This Johnny is an astronaut on Victor von Doom's payroll, once Ben Grimm's subordinate, who pilots the space-station trip into the cosmic storm alongside his sister Sue. He loves his new powers from the start, sneaks off to a motocross event and hands the press the team's code names. In the final fight he dodges Doom's heat-seeking missile and helps superheat Doom so Reed and Ben can freeze him solid.¹²
2007
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer FOX
Chris Evans Johnny chases the Silver Surfer, who hauls him into the thin upper atmosphere where his flame gutters out and then drops him. The encounter leaves his body in flux, so touching a teammate swaps their powers. In Shanghai he absorbs the abilities of the whole team at once and breaks Doom's hold on the Surfer's board.³²
2015
Fantastic Four FOX
Michael B. Jordan Here Johnny is Franklin Storm's son, a street racer who is put to work on his father's teleportation project after wrecking his car. He joins Reed, Victor and Ben on an unauthorised trip to Planet Zero, comes back wreathed in fire, and is trained by the government as a weapon in a suit that controls his flame. In the final battle he destroys the supports of Doom's energy construct, and the team then names itself the Fantastic Four.⁴⁵
2024
Deadpool & Wolverine MCUCameo
Chris Evans The MCU Wiki files this Johnny under the Void-Analyzing Fantastic Four Universe, while the Marvel Fandom wiki treats him as the Earth-121698 Johnny of the Fox films. Pruned by the TVA into the Void, he breaks up a fight between Deadpool and Wolverine, has his flame snuffed out by Pyro and is taken prisoner. When Deadpool repeats Johnny's crude insults to Cassandra Nova, she strips the skin from his body and kills him, and a tape in the closing credits shows he really did say them.⁶⁷²
2025
The Fantastic Four: First Steps MCU
Joseph Quinn On Earth-828, Johnny is a former Eagle Scout and astronaut who chases the Silver Surfer into space and grabs her board before she shakes him off. He works through years of alien transmissions to crack her language, learns she is Shalla-Bal of Zenn-La, and uses what he finds to shake her loyalty to Galactus. In the battle for New York he tries to sacrifice himself to push Galactus through the last teleportation bridge, but Shalla-Bal shoves him aside and does it herself.⁸⁹

What Marvel confirmed

The film. Avengers: Doomsday opens 18 December 2026.¹⁰

Sources

Level 3 // Deep archiveThe comics · since November 1961

Origin, the comics by era, abilities and recorded feats.

Origin

Johnny and his older sister Sue grew up on Long Island until their mother, Mary, was killed in a car crash that their father, the surgeon Franklin Storm, could not save her from. Franklin fell into drinking and gambling and eventually went to prison for murder; rather than tell her brother the truth, Sue let him think their father was dead. The children were raised by their aunt Marygay in the town of Glenville, where Sue mothered her troublesome kid brother and Johnny, oddly enough given how his mother died, became obsessed with cars and turned into a skilled young mechanic.

At sixteen he followed Sue to Central City, California, where her fiancé Reed Richards was rushing to fly his experimental rocket before the government shut the project down. Reed's pilot, Ben Grimm, warned that the ship was not shielded well enough against radiation, but the four of them took it up anyway. Cosmic rays ripped through the cabin and forced a crash landing, and all four came back changed. Johnny found he could burst into flame and fly, and he took the name Human Torch from the android hero of World War II.

Reed convinced the group to use their new abilities for the public good as the Fantastic Four, and their first case sent them to Monster Isle to stop the Mole Man. Johnny was the youngest and most impatient of the four, forever needling Ben, and he spent his spare time finishing high school in Glenville while pretending to keep a secret identity. After one bust-up he walked out on the team, and while hiding in a run-down flophouse he recognised an amnesiac vagrant as the Sub-Mariner and jolted his memory back by dropping him into the sea, which set Namor on a war path against the surface world.¹²³⁴

The record, by era

1961-1962
Flame on The Silver Age debut
Johnny arrives as the hothead of the brand-new Fantastic Four, flaming on against the Mole Man's monsters in the team's first case. By the fourth issue he has quit in a sulk and, while hiding out, brings the long-lost Sub-Mariner back into the world. Later in 1962 he picks up a solo feature in Strange Tales, balancing hero work with small-town life in Glenville and unmasking a Soviet saboteur who calls himself the Destroyer.¹²³⁴
Key issues: Fantastic Four #1 (1961) · Fantastic Four #4 (1962) · Strange Tales #101 (1962)
1965-1966
Crystal and the coming of Galactus The Lee-Kirby peak
Johnny falls for Crystal, a young Inhuman with power over the elements, and is dragged away from her when Maximus traps her people inside the Great Refuge behind an unbreakable barrier. Soon afterwards the Silver Surfer leads Galactus to Earth, and the Watcher sends Johnny across space to the world-eater's ship to fetch the Ultimate Nullifier, the weapon Reed uses to make Galactus back off. Johnny then enrols at Metro College, where his roommate Wyatt Wingfoot becomes a close friend and joins his long hunt for a way back to Crystal.¹⁵⁶
Key issues: Fantastic Four #45 (1965) · Fantastic Four #50 (1966)
1975-1982
Frankie Raye Bronze Age heartbreak
Crystal eventually leaves Johnny and marries Quicksilver, and after a few false starts he falls for Frankie Raye, a woman with a deep fear of fire. She discovers that her late stepfather, the inventor of the original android Human Torch, had accidentally given her flame powers and then hypnotised her into forgetting them. Johnny helps her learn to use them, but when a weakened Galactus needs a new herald, Frankie volunteers and leaves Earth as Nova, leaving him shattered.¹⁷⁸
Key issues: Fantastic Four #164 (1975) · Fantastic Four #244 (1982)
1984-1987
Secret Wars and Alicia Battleworld and a wedding
Pulled to the Beyonder's Battleworld, Johnny is healed by the alien Zsaji and loses her twice, first to Colossus and then to her own self-sacrifice. Back on Earth he grows close to Alicia Masters while Ben is still away, a romance that badly strains his friendship with the Thing. When a young fan dies after setting himself alight to imitate him, Johnny comes close to quitting as the Torch, but he carries on and marries Alicia.¹⁹¹⁰¹¹
Key issues: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (1984) · Fantastic Four #285 (1985) · Fantastic Four #300 (1987)
1991-1992
Lyja The Skrull bride
Johnny learns that his wife is not Alicia at all but Lyja, a Skrull spy who had taken her place years earlier and then genuinely fallen for him. The team finds and frees the real Alicia, while Lyja seems to die shielding Johnny before being nursed back to health. When Skrull attackers corner him at Empire State University, his flame goes nova and burns down a large part of the campus, leaving him briefly a fugitive until Reed sells off patents to pay for the damage.¹¹²¹³
Key issues: Fantastic Four #357 (1991) · Fantastic Four #371 (1992)
2006-2008
Civil War and Secret Invasion Event era
Angry at heroes after the Stamford disaster, a crowd outside a nightclub beats Johnny into a coma at the very start of the superhuman Civil War. When he wakes he goes with Sue to Captain America's underground Secret Avengers, the pair hiding under false identities as a married couple. During the Skrull invasion he, Ben and the Richards children are stranded in the Negative Zone by a Skrull posing as Sue, who turns out to be Lyja trying to keep them out of harm's way.¹¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶
Key issues: Civil War #1 (2006) · Civil War #5 (2006) · Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #1 (2008)
2011-2012
Holding the door Death and return
When an endless insect army surges through the Negative Zone portal in the Baxter Building, Johnny throws Ben back through to Earth and stays on the far side so the door can be sealed. Annihilus kills him for refusing to open it, then has him revived and killed again and again. Johnny finally breaks out with other prisoners, takes Annihilus' Cosmic Control Rod and comes home at the head of an alien fleet, announcing himself by burning a giant 4 into the sky.¹¹⁷¹⁸
Key issues: Fantastic Four #587 (2011) · Fantastic Four #600 (2012)
2015-2017
A Torch without a family After the multiverse
When the multiverse ends, God Emperor Doom remakes Johnny as the sun hanging over his Battleworld. Reed rebuilds reality but leaves Johnny and Ben on Earth with altered memories, so both believe the rest of their family is dead and the Fantastic Four breaks up. Johnny works with the Inhumans, has a short romance with Medusa, joins the Avengers Unity Division, and later inherits Reed's patents, becoming a billionaire who buys Avengers Mansion.¹¹⁹²⁰²¹
Key issues: Secret Wars #3 (2015) · Uncanny Avengers Vol 3 #1 (2015) · Uncanny Avengers Vol 3 #28 (2017)
2018-2022
Spyre, Doom and a flame that will not go out The family reunited
Ben takes Johnny on a trip across the multiverse to look for their family, and the full team is reunited soon after. A return to the planet Spyre gives Johnny a destined partner in the winged Sky, but he later cheats on her with Victorious, whom Doom plans to marry; when she confesses at the altar, Doom floods Johnny with concentrated cosmic rays so his flame can never switch off. He rallies Spyre's forces during the Reckoning War, then uses a Spyrian machine that reverses cosmic-ray mutations to get his normal powers back.¹²²²³²⁴
Key issues: Marvel 2-In-One #1 (2018) · Fantastic Four Vol 6 #34 (2021) · Fantastic Four Vol 6 #46 (2022)
2023-2024
Jonathan Fairweather The Arizona years
Reed sends the Baxter Building a year into the future to strand some invaders, but the children are still inside, and the furious team splits up. Unable to get hired under his own name, Johnny takes a store job as Jonathan Fairweather and helps his overworked coworkers bring down their boss, a former Maggia thug. The four make up, move into Aunt Petunia's old farmhouse in Benson, Arizona, and get the children back when the building returns.¹²⁵²⁶²⁷
Key issues: Fantastic Four Vol 7 #3 (2023) · Fantastic Four Vol 7 #4 (2023) · Fantastic Four Vol 7 #15 (2024)

Capabilities

Plasma flame form

Turns all or part of his body into fiery plasma on command; bullets that do not melt pass straight through him. A vacuum or heavy soaking puts the flame out.¹

Fire shaping

Throws fire as streams, spheres or skywritten words. Shapes last about three minutes unless he feeds them, and he can steer some fire he did not make.¹

Nova flame

His hottest setting. A full nova burst dumps all his stored energy at around a million degrees Fahrenheit, then needs about twelve hours of recovery.¹

Flight

Rides a cloud of hydrogen and flame jets at about 140 mph, and can push to supersonic speed, enough to keep pace with the Silver Surfer in orbit.¹

Heat control and absorption

Raises or lowers the temperature around him even when not alight, and can soak up outside flames to snuff them out.¹

Fire and heat immunity

Fire and heat below his own peak output cannot harm him, flaming or not.¹

Mechanic, driver and fighter

A gifted mechanic since his teens who helped design the second Fantasticar, an experienced race driver, and a capable brawler trained by the Thing.¹

Source of power

Cosmic rays rewired his cells to make a far richer energy fuel, letting him turn his body into living flame at will.¹

Recorded feats

comics Carried across space with the Watcher's help, he reached Galactus's worldship and brought back the Ultimate Nullifier that forced Galactus to spare Earth. Fantastic Four Vol 1 #49 to #50 (April to May 1966)²⁸⁶¹
comics Threw Ben back through the portal to Earth and stayed behind in the Negative Zone, holding Annihilus's endless insect army back on his own. Fantastic Four Vol 3 #587 (March 2011)¹⁷¹
comics Hauled Ultron toward the Sun, soaking up the heat himself to shield Rogue and the Wasp from it. Uncanny Avengers Vol 3 #12 (October 2016)²⁹¹
screen Chased the Silver Surfer off Earth and into space, grabbing her board with one hand before she knocked him loose. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)³⁰³¹
screen Cracked the Surfer's language from years of old deep-space recordings, then used what he learned to turn her against Galactus. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)³⁰³¹
screen Flew above the atmosphere to catch Ben after Galactus hurled him into space, then brought him back down to strike Galactus. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)³⁰³¹

Notes from the archive

In the comics Johnny chose the name Human Torch in tribute to the android hero of World War II who had used it first, a character he later fights in Fantastic Four Annual #4.¹
According to the comics, his flame burns away dirt and germs, so Johnny has never really needed to shower or brush his teeth since getting his powers.¹
The Marvel Fandom wiki lists 'Cap'n' as a name Deadpool wrongly calls Chris Evans' Johnny in Deadpool & Wolverine, linking it to the MCU's Steve Rogers, a part Evans also played.³²
Jay Underwood, Johnny in the never-released 1994 Fantastic Four film, has a small part as a power plant worker in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.³⁰³¹

Sources