Of all the Tsunami launches, this is the one that puzzled me most, for a variety of reasons. First is that I don't think of the Human Torch or indeed any of the Fantastic Four as characters that can support a solo series, second that Skottie Young's exaggerated style seemed an odd fit for the character and third that the character was being so well-handled (and even spotlighted) in Waid's Fantastic Four that a solo series seemed superfluous. At this point, it's hard to judge whether my first impressions were right, because the early issues of the series seem to take place in a flashback to the early days rather than the modern day, but while Kesel and Young do an interesting take on high school drama with a super-powered twist, I'm still not seeing a lot of potential for this as an ongoing series.
Johnny Storm has been, for most of his career, the arrogant hotshot of the Fantastic Four, and while DeFalco explored a maturing Torch, the reset button has been hit on that advancement for the most part, allowing Waid to once again tell the story of his maturing, perhaps without the skrull wife this time. I'm fine with that, but at the same time, I don't know that I'm anxious to read another story of Johnny as arrogant and overcompensating young punk, which is what Human Torch has to offer so far.
Kesel mixes up a little bit of flame power and a way-too-obvious rivalry with a popular kid named Snow (get it? get it? Stan Lee would be proud) with the standard cliches of high school stories. The beautiful girl who likes the hero but doesn't want to get hurt again, the bully who could turn dangerous if provoked, the sudden rise of popularity when our hero reveals that he can back up his wild stories, it's all very familiar. In addition, thanks to the shifting Marvel timeline, the book is set at an unspecified time in the past, which means it can't have topical references to either now or then, which makes it lose out to the king of Marvel's high school books, Ultimate Spider-Man, in terms of characterization and dialogue.
While a lot of what puts me off the book comes from my lack of interest in Johnny Storm as a solo character, I also have to admit that Skottie Young's artwork is not to my taste. His style is reminiscent of Humberto Ramos and other Amerimanga style artists, meaning a lot of exaggeration and bizarre anatomy and expressions, and while that does give his artwork plenty of energy, it brings the whole story into an alien, unusual place that plays against the normal high school setting the book is trying to establish.
Bottom line, I wasn't really the target audience for this book in the first place, and I'm not surprised that it didn't do much for me. However, I do have to admit that the book is better than I expected it to be, plenty readable if a little bit obvious, and I'm curious to see where the creative team will take the story once they move into the present and are exploring a (presumably) completely different supporting cast and set of circumstances.
