{"id":4973,"date":"2025-03-28T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T15:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/?p=4973"},"modified":"2025-01-17T19:30:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T03:30:24","slug":"871-the-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/871-the-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"871 – The Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a>
The Wizard is introduced in Strange Tales #102, Aug 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Human Torch continues his solo adventures<\/a> in Strange Tales #102 (Aug 1962), getting his first recognizable villain in The Wizard<\/a>. The Wizard’s shtick is that he’s a super-genius, a chess champion, an inventor, and has a long craggy face a bit reminiscent of The Ringmaster<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Wizard<\/a>
Wizard spews nonsense in Strange Tales #102, Aug 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Having proven his “mental superiority”, he decides that his last challenge is to defeat the “Humam Torch”. That’s not a typo. It’s what this genius says out loud while staring into space, folks. He triggers a cave-in during one of his escapades to attract Torchy. Johnny Storm shows up and is taken on a tour of the Wizard’s amazing techno-house, but then the Wizard waylays Johnny with some extinguishing foam.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"The<\/a>
The Wizard impersonates the Human Torch in Strange Tales #102, Aug 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Apparently the Wizard’s plan is to impersonate the Torch and destroy his reputation. The Wizard has an asbsestos suit with small holes to jet fire and a back-mounted rocket motor “for lift and speed!”. This guy is a super-genius, can perfectly duplicate the Human Torch’s powers, and his goal in life is to just destroy a teenage super-hero? How petty.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Human<\/a>
Human Torch fools Wizard in Strange Tales #102, Aug 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

So we get three pages of The Wizard doing bad deeds as Torch, but he makes sure to take photos as proof of his Torch impersonation. He then meets up again with the Torch to taunt him with the photo proof. But look at that! The Torch is able to float the photos from the Wizard’s hand to the Torch’s hand. It’s almost like there was an invisible hand at play here…<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Invisible<\/a>
Invisible Girl cameo in Strange Tales #102, Aug 1962<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Yessir, Johnny’s solo adventures have thus far relied on FF cameos. This time, Johnny’s sister The Invisible Girl has made an appearance and befuddled the super-genius Wizard who definitely already knew that Johnny has an invisible super-teammate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really hope that this blog has documented pretty definitively how the early Marvel super-hero revival in the 1960s began with just a whole lot of bad writing. Yes, there was character innovation, but man were there a lot of lame story ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Human Torch continues his solo adventures in Strange Tales #102 (Aug 1962), getting his first recognizable villain in The Wizard. The Wizard’s shtick is that he’s a super-genius, a chess champion, an inventor, and has a long craggy face a bit reminiscent of The Ringmaster. Having proven his “mental superiority”, he decides that his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[754,91,743,90],"class_list":["post-4973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-754","tag-human-torch","tag-invisible-girl","tag-marvel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4984,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions\/4984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/comicbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}