If I was organized, I'd have a big box of mini-series missing one issue.

Somehow, I think I got three issues of this at the last show; and while it feels like the third issue should've been there, it's also not outside the realm of possibility that I have that missing issue, maybe even from the same collection! From 1990, the Saga of the Original Human Torch #4, "The Flaming Fifties!" Written by Roy Thomas, pencils by Rich Buckler, inks by Romeo Tanghal.

Darn, I know the Torch sets Hitler on fire in the third issue, too. This was a mini-series retelling the history of the classic, android Human Torch, and his sidekick Toro. Here, we see the Torch revived from being buried by mobsters and rendered inert, by an atomic test. As an android, it feels like it was easy to take the Torch out of action as needed in his publication history; maybe a bit harder to do the same with Toro; who had been sold to the Russians and brainwashed, long before Bucky got the Winter Soldier treatment! The Torch manages to rescue his friend, who later snaps out of his conditioning when his "pappy" is in trouble. (It kind of sucks that I think both the Torch and Toro are alive in continuity right now, but don't really get the chance to hang out or anything, anymore than Cap and Bucky really do.) The blazing pair have some more adventures, until radiation from the atomic blast finally overheats the Torch, and he flames up over the desert and crashes. Toro covers the hole the Torch melted into, and would later be "killed" by the Mad Thinker, who would then revive the Torch to use against Johnny Storm and the Fantastic Four, in Fantastic Four Annual #4, which really isn't gone into. Furthermore, then a bunch of events don't happen and likewise aren't brought up, as the Torch wasn't rebuilt as the Vision, as was thought for some years. He would return in Avengers West Coast #50, and has been kind of hanging around ever since; although I know he's been depowered or deactivated more than a couple times.

Man, I kind of wish the Torch hadn't been used as set dressing/an Easter Egg in the first Captain America movie: it's neat, but if we're not going to see more, why bother? Maybe if the FF ever get off the ground, they'll come back to it.