Plot by Stan Lee – Script by Joe Carter (Jerry Siegel) – Art by Dick Ayers – Letters by Sam Rosen
Johnny Storm gets his first real recurring supporting character in Strange Tales as we meet Doris Evans, his girlfriend.
Doris is almost the opposite of Alicia Masters. She isn’t particularly interested in Johnny’s superhero life and would much rather have a normal, respectable boyfriend who doesn’t burst into flames.
Her father, meanwhile, has a gardener who believes plants are intelligent and is working on a device that will allow him to communicate with them. When lightning strikes the machine, he shouts, “Fan my hide!” and discovers that he can actually control plants when one of them, well, fans his hide.
I love this origin.
He becomes Plantman and decides to get revenge on Doris’s father, robbing a bank and planting evidence that makes it look like Evans committed the crime. Plantman plants evidence! This guy is amazing!
Johnny gets involved and loses their first fight. He comes back with a plan for the rematch, and Plantman actually gives the Torch a pretty good fight. Johnny clears Doris’s father’s name, but Plantman escapes.
The story still feels like a Golden Age superhero adventure. Plantman gets his powers through a wonderfully ridiculous accident, immediately turns to crime, and spends the issue committing elaborate crimes with his newfound ability to control plants.
Doris gives Johnny a recurring relationship outside of being the Human Torch, while Plantman gives him another villain who can come back. Even Doris’s father becomes part of Johnny’s world.
Strange Tales is starting to feel less like a series of adventures happening to the Human Torch and more like a comic building a life around him.
The story may still play like a campy Golden Age tale.
But the structure is becoming pure Marvel.
Marvel in the 60s Entry #86