The Human Torch Is Dead?!

Comic book fans are in limbo after Marvel Comics apparently killed off a member of The Fantastic Four.

Johnny ‘Human Torch’ Storm was axed in Fantastic Four issue No. 587 which hit newsstands this week. The issue is poignantly called “Fantastic Four: Casualty”.

Now I, being somewhat of a comic book geek, have a few questions:

Is this some stupid plot ploy where the Human Torch will be coming back to life in the near future? (Reed Richards, Ben Grimm and Sue Storm, [The other team members] have all died at some point in the comic’s history and somehow found their way back into the storyline.)
If the Human Torch really is gone, do they have to change their name? (The Fantastic Three just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)
If you need a death to sell issues of a comic book, why not kill a villain for once? (It seems more plausible to find a new villain that it does to erase one of the core members of your plot.)

Comic books are notorious for killing and reviving their heroes (Superman and Captain America both come to mind.) And I’m guessing this is just another in a long line of plot twists that will end up being irrelevant in the near future. But you never know, according to FairLawnPatch Marvel is promising big changes with the Fantastic Four.

“Though members have come and gone for brief periods over the team’s 50 year history, the Fantastic Four has always reverted back to the family unit of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben. With one of these four pillars now gone, Hickman promises inevitable change at the very core of the [Fantastic Four].”

We’ll see Marvel, we’ll see.

By the way, Marvel now has lots of their comics digitized and you can subscribe and read them on-line. Nice! HERE is a link with details.