The Return of the Wizard!
by
Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers
In the few weeks since his incarceration, the Wizard has displayed model behavior. So good that the warden has granted him access to the prison's medical facility. Using chemicals found in the medical lab, the Wizard is able to concoct a potion to free himself; his real goal the whole time. Once he returns to his prison cell, the Wizard splashes the potion onto the stone wall. As the chemicals eat away at the wall, creating a large, escapable hole, the prison guards take notice. They all rush outside the destroyed wall, taking no notice of the Wizard who is hiding in a corner of his cell. With the guards all gone, the Wizard simply walks out of his cell door with none the wiser. The Wizard returns to his Frank Lloyd Wright-esque home in Glenville. He plans to get revenge on the Human Torch. As the police arrive to his house, the Wizard creates a forcefield around the domiscile. He then phones the local TV station to broadcast a challenge to the Human Torch.
In their Glenville home, the Storms receive the news broadcast. Johnny is all ready to flame on and meet the Wizard's challenge, but his sister Susan forbids him. She says that members of the Fantastic Four do not get into fights simply out of pride. Johnny defies Sue's wishes, creating a flame duplicate to trick his sister while he goes off to battle the Wizard. Sue returns shortly to apologize for being so frank with him, when she almost instantly realizes the Human Torch she is talking to is a fake.
Fearing for her brother's safety, the Invisible Girl contacts the rest of the FF. Reed tells her that her brother is old enough to fight his own battles. He and the Thing, who is nearby munching a piece of cake, refuse to interfere. As the Torch arrives on the scene, the Wizard lowers his invisible barrier only for him. The moment the Torch appears face to face, the Wizard fires a single, heavy mortar shell at him. As the metal hits his flame, it instantly melts. They both jibe back and forth as the Wizard attacks. He lowers the floor the Human Torch is standing on, but the Torch remains in flight above the hole. He shoots the Torch with nerve gas, but the Torch creates a flame barrier around himself to avoid its effects. Suddenly an alarm alerts the Wizard to another intruder. Looking at a monitor of Room 34, where the alert is coming from, he sees nothing. The Wizard realizes that the Invisible Girl must have entered with the Torch.
The Wizard makes his way to Room 34. He uses a spray can device he invented to reveal the Invisible Girl. Now that he has exposed her, the Wizard triggers automatic walls that come shooting out of the floor and close around the heroine. As she frantically tries to get free, her brother bursts in to renew his fight with the Wizard.
Before the Human Torch can attack, the Wizard explains the trap the Invisible Girl is in. There is a bomb inside the walls set to go off in 5 minutes. The Wizard allows the Torch to enter the room if he flames off. The Torch complies and joins his sister in the room set to explode. The Wizard warns Johnny if he does flame on again to attempt a rescue, it will trigger a thermometer attached to a bell hammer. If the temperature goes up one degree, the hammer will strike the bell, which will make the bomb go off before the 5 minutes are up. After Sue and Johnny struggle to reach the bell mechanism, Johnny flames just a finger on to shoot a fireball at the hammer before it can reach the bell.
With only 10 seconds remaining on the bomb, Johnny works quickly. He finds the bomb hidden in the wall and creates a fire catapult to launch it out of the building. The bomb flies into the sky, exploding harmlessly above the Wizard's home. In the Human Torch's anger, he burns through the Wizard's walls in search of the villain. He shoots fire at the sprinkler system to make his foe slip on the water. The Wizard pulls out a gun, but the Torch saws a section of ceiling with his flame to collapse on the Wizard's head. With the Wizard unconscious, Sue lowers the forcefield so the cops can come in. The police rush to take the Wizard back into custody. When Sue and Johnny return home they playfully quip about the adventure and Sue throws a pillow at her brother.
Notes
The Wizard has come back to menace the Human Torch and the Invisible Girl. He feels like a really poor imitation of Doctor Doom in this issue. He is still adament about outsmarting the Human Torch for no discernable reason.
There's some family stuff with Sue & Johnny Storm, but not enough to make anything that happens in this story relevant. Johnny's "secret identity" seems to have been forgotten this issue.
The Human Torch can make constructs out of his flame, like a Green Lantern, but with fire. Here he makes a fire catapult and a fire saw
Review & Ranking
I'm really not feeling this story. There's some stuff between Johnny & Sue's relationship as siblings and Sue being a surrogate mother figure for Johnny, but even that is a bit of a stretch to make with what we see in this one. The Wizard's plan is completely convoluted, all over the place, nonsensical and they don't even result into any entertaining action sequences between The Wizard and Human Torch or Invisible Girl. It also features one of my least favorite tropes in comics, the bomb countdown. The best I can say is that this story establishes The Wizard as a recurring villain, but he doesn't become all that interesting a villain for awhile.
I am putting this issue just one rank higher than the bottom at #35. Only because The Wizard is a recurring villain who gets better later on, compared to the communist spy who didn't make any sense in Strange Tales #101.
Next Time: Don Blake & Jane Foster are kidnapped by gangsters.
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