Jim Hammond | Human Torch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
originalflameon) wrote2014-01-12 03:56 pm
originalflameon) wrote2014-01-12 03:56 pm
App to Tushanshu
Player Information:
Name: Al
Age: 20+
Contact: Crotalus @ plurk | daiannecrotalus @ AIM
Game Cast: Superman / Clark Kent + Frank Zhang
Character Information:
Name: Jim Hammond
Canon: Marvel
Canon Point: The Torch
Age: He looks between 25 and 30. He’s a robot born in the very late 30s, but he hasn’t spent more than 20 years alive at the most. He has the emotional intelligence of a toddler. It’s… complicated.
Reference: Wiki | Marvel Wiki | Comics vine
Setting:
The year is 1939, the planet is Earth. Earth-616 actually, since in Marvel the multiverse theory is true and there are literally endless Earths around. It is almost the same to our own Earth, except… it isn’t.
Marvels
Good old Earth, with its people and its environment and the Nazis invading Poland in Europe. The world has its attention focused on the war hanging over them. And some of these people take action themselves- putting on masks, jumping to the streets, and helping out people who couldn’t help themselves. Normal people like us who did their best behind a cowl, normal people without any kind of powers.
Until Jim came. Jim is the first ‘Marvel’, the first human being to have some ability that deviates from the norm. Until he appeared the notion of someone like him was unthinkable- not only he was a synthezoid, which was itself a rarity, but because he lit like a torch without burning and he was able to fly. Which scared some… and made the rest run away in fear. Horton had to bury Jim in concrete to stop the panic, even though he expected Jim to be able to get out with time.
A short while after that came Namor the submariner who made it clear for everyone Atlantis existed and the Atlanteans weren’t exactly happy with how surface-dwellers were treating their realm and poisoning everything around them.
And then the scientist managed to make the super-soldier serum and gave America their Captain. Slowly but surely the view on superpowered beings changed, especially thanks to Captain America- the USA were glad to have one of their own, and eventually accepted Jim and Namor as one of the ‘good guys’, and cheered for them as they would cheer for Steve. The age of Marvels had begun and America was adapting to it.
Now, synthetics beings and Atlanteans aren’t the only deviation from the norm in Marvel canon. There’s aliens, people who suffered from some kind of radiation, genetic manipulations, god-like beings and literal gods… the list is long and over the years it got bigger and bigger. And finally there’s mutants.
Mutants (or Homo Sapiens Superior depending on who you ask) have an X-gene that allows them to develop superhuman abilities. Mutants are born with this potential and the ability develops at puberty- and Namor and Toro, Jim’s sidekick, friend and son were one of the first mutants ever registered. Mutants have a lot going on in politics wars and world domination, but Jim is hardly related to all that except when it comes to helping his friend Namor rebuilding utopia, and how both Namor and Toro are one of the few remaining Mutants left after a spell cast by the Scarlet Witch.
Synthezoid
Horton was said to be so smart he made Einstein’s relativity theories look like chicken soup. Being so smart and as obsessed as he became with the secret to life itself, he decided to begin working on a synthetic human being. A being that wasn’t born from a human, yet was still alive. And thus came the Horton Cells, and finally Jim.
Jim isn’t the only android/synthezoid/AI in the Marvel universe. Horton’s co-worker, James Bradley, stole part of the prototype and made Volton. Horton made another android himself, Adam II (then III) who would turn against him and all humanity. Jim’s body was used to create the Vision thanks to Immortus, who split Jim’s body in two. Jim’s cells were used to create ‘pyronanos’, giant robots who would also have fire around them. Tara the Torch-girl was also made based on Jim’s own cells, along with other endless drones (like those in New Berlin, or the Descendants).
Do you see the pattern here yet?
Not all of the androids are related to Jim, there’s of course AIs like the famous Ultron who were creates from other means. But a lot of the synthezoids in the Marvel world are related to Jim in one way or another- which comes as no surprise, since how Horton managed to do what he did is still a mystery nowadays.
Teams
…Now, onto all of the teams Jim has been in. The list is long so I tried to focus on the important ones, skim through the ones only had a little role on.
Golden age (Invaders, Liberty Legion, All-Winner’s squad)
Let’s go back to WWII. Jim woke up around the time Germany invaded Poland, so once people stopped being afraid of him he (alongside his guard Toro) didn’t doubt joining Captain America, Bucky and then Namor in their crusade to stop the Nazis. The little team was named ‘Invaders’ by Churchill in a visit to England, after a little adventure there where Spitfire, now a speedster thanks to Jim’s blood, and Union Jack joined their team. The team went on a lot of missions against the Axis, like fighting a Nazi invasion of Atlantis or against the battle-Axis (why this team was created is obvious just with the name isn’t it). They fought foes like Doctor Death, U-man, Volton, Spider Queen, Strong Man…
The war developed more or less the same for the normal populace, just a lot more superheroes fighting the superheroes from the other side like Tom and Toro watching Pearl Harbour and doing his best to help… and finally ending with Jim killing Hitler. Hitler made the only soldier who saw lie and tell everyone he’d committed suicide, but most of the superhero community know the truth by now. There was also a bit more of technology from each sides thanks to geniuses like Horton or Zola.
At one point, while his team (including Jim) was brainwashed Bucky Barnes created the Liberty Legion himself to go fight and rescue them, and the team didn’t disband after that.
And after the war, the team would become the ‘All-winners Squad’ instead of the Invaders and keep on crime-fighting , but that’s a Golden Age mess where we can never be sure how much of that is actually canon. It is canon Bucky and Steve were seemingly killed, and replaced by others so the American spirit would be kept.
Modern Age (Avengers West Coast, Oracle Inc, V-Batalion. New Invaders)
The Avengers were a team that was created by mere luck when a couple of heroes got together to respond to an emergency call. No, really. But the team seemed to work well together and over time it’s become the most well-known team in the Marvel universe and has a lot of spin-offs. The Avengers Weast Coast is one of these ramifications, created so the team would have a larger influence. The second time Jim was brought back to life after his death it was thanks to the Scarlet Witch as she looked for clues about her husband, the Vision… and he ended up joining the team. He didn’t spend long in it and was soon involved in a mess investigating his son Toro’s death where he lost his powers.
Oracle Inc is a foundation bought by Namor, basically focused on fighting contamination of the waters. Jim was appointed as the head of security, and eventually created ‘Heroes for Hire’ with the superhero Iron Fist. Heroes for Hire was basically an on-call hero team, and much of the cast was hired for missions as necessary. Jim was the ‘boss’ but everyone actually relied on Iron Fist, and eventually it was dismantled.
V-Battalion was meant to be a team to hunt down Nazis in the modern age, but honestly Jim was only there as the head for an extremely short while and soon took a leave of absence to serve as field leader of the New Invaders.
Finally, the New Invaders, the last team Jim has been in the canon point I’m taking him from (there’s two more since then and he’s been alive for a year at the most Jim what the-). The New Invaders were meant to be a revamp of the actual Invaders team and it was created by the Fifth Captain America, U.S. Agent John Walker…. But it was actually a manipulation from the Red Skull. Tara, the android Jim felt protective of (and, along with Spitfire, the only reason he joined the team) was used to try to kill them all and Jim died taking her overheat.
Personality:
First, let me make it clear that Jim is supposed to learn by mimicry. That means that supposedly, his personality is born from how he adapts to what he sees and hears. I say supposedly because there’s instances of Jim being completely mind-wiped, ‘reprogramed’ under someone else’s control and still fighting to not harm people, telling them to run… his core personality is more than a tabula rasa. It’s pretty obvious it’s indeed thanks to the people he’s known in his life that he is who he is today, but can’t we just say that about everyone? Like the new Vison says, we are all mirrors of everyone around us.
I’m mentioning this first because the canon point I’m bringing Jim from is a little after an instance of the mentioned reprogramming. It’s the time it has affected him the most, and at first he’s completely at lost on how to learn how to feel again, forcing himself through hours and hours of TV until he manages to get the emotions behind it… but eventually he realizes who he as before is more than simples mindless osmosis of feelings, and that the more time he spends around Tom the more he adapts to truly being human. At the end of the Torch mini he’s his usual self again, smiling and reaching for shoulder pats and physical contact with Toro.
My point is: what I’m going to point out about his personality here is how Jim usually is and how I intend to play him, but being mechanical reprogramming him is kind of an usual plotting device and his personality isn’t always like this. With that in mind…
At his core personality Jim is sweet, nice, gentle… he’s what you would call a good man; you can’t be one of the avengers and not be a good person. He’s always there to help everybody, always there to help you if you need it. Even right after his ‘birth’, when he had just gotten up from his slumber and knew nothing from the world apart from what Horton had left for him to listen, he already knew some things people did were just bad and some things were good.
He choose to be good, to the point where he actually got extremely offended some thugs used him a as a weapon to set fire to an innocent person’s warehouse without him being aware of what he was doing. His secret identity was a police officer because he wanted to help them be good, to be one of the ven without using his powers.
But he also knows he has to do wrong to do right sometimes, and he isn’t afraid to do it. He’s killed Hitler, and said plenty of times he’d do it again if he found himself in the same position. He doesn’t like getting blood on his hands but he knows sometimes there isn’t another way to go about things. He is neither a fighter nor a killer, but he will become one if innocent lives are at a stake.
Jim is generally well-liked and admired. Not everybody will like him, of course- but he’s that kind of man that gets a laugh or a smile out of most people. Especially if they have fire powers, for obvious reasons.
He’s also somehow everybody’s father figure, trying to get everybody to feel better and do the right thing. Like a humanoid Jiminy Cricket he’s everybody’s conscience, always telling everybody to calm down and think before acting. His teammate (and sometimes enemy) Namor the sub-mariner is always trying to offend him with his hurtful words and snarky attitude, but Jim just gives him the other cheek and a smile nine times out of ten. (…Maybe it’s more of a 50/50 thing, but Namor does get on everyone’s nerves when he wants to.)
When he met Toro, his sidekick it didn’t take long for him to adopt the kid and treat him like an equal, like a partner. Jim might be an adult body-wise but he’s still a kid when it comes to emotions, and Toro is still a kid to most people’s eyes but he’s pretty mature to his eyes. Their roles as big brother and little brother keep switching, because they both learn from the other. The way he relates with most people could be described like that, actually. Captain America, Bucky, Namor… all of them treat him like a father one moment and the kid they are babysitting the next.
Because yes, Jim is still like a kid inside. Curiosity, naivety, optimism… he has all the qualities of a young person that wants to make the best of the world. Steve Rogers describes him as having the naivety of a 3 years old. He’s level-headed (he wouldn’t have been accepted as field leader of the New Invaders if he wasn’t) which makes most people forget that side of him, but it’s still there. It specially shows when it comes to affection. He doesn’t know how to deal with it most of the time- especially in the canon-point I’m pulling him from, when he’s still kind of recovering from being completely emotionless. For a while, if you hugged him he would hug back because it’s what he’d seen people do and what feels right, but it took a few hugs for him to understand the purpose the hug had.
He also has special views on love and relationships. He’s… crushed on quite a few girls. Let’s just say he has a tendency to fall for any girl that’s nice to him, or any girl he feels linked to in a way- and I personally think he simply latches onto that feeling because he’s supposed to have someone for whom he has strong feelings for and like I said he learns by mimicry, but that’s just speculation.
And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love them for who they are either, but much like a kid he just can’t help latching onto people if they are nice to him, and back in his times those who showed him that kind of gentle affection where mostly women. Even if his feelings of affection could be considered sudden doesn’t forget about them as time goes by, as shown by how he still obviously have feelings for Jackie (Spitfire) after all the years they spent apart. An no matter what he feels he knows when to pursue a girl and when to look the other way- Using Spitfire as an example again she was dating Union Jack so he let her go even if she was rather obviously interested in him and the feelings were mutual.
I’m focusing on the women, but Jim is also very quick to show affection and close bond to men as well. One of the most obvious ones is the one with his sidekick Toro, who he wouldn’t hesitate to call his son. He was the only one able to bring him back from the deep emotionless end he had fallen into, they had each other’s back during the war and after it, they depended on each other for almost everything. Even when he was still getting the hang of emotions he still says the way Toro calls him ‘Pappy’ manages to make him happy, to his own surprise.
And I should also speak about his relationship with his father. Phineas Horton… he wasn’t a bad man, he really wasn’t. He did what he thought was best for Jim, and without his help Jim wouldn’t be the man he is today. But he was also fully aware Jim was his creation, and he wanted profit from it. Either monetary or something else- Jim does say at one point that he thinks Horton made him the way he is so he could one day make the Nazis pay- which I’m pretty sure it isn’t true considering the Mad Thinker’s conviction the combustion is a side effect (and the fact that when he wants to build a weapon he makes Adam-II), but the point still stands that he sees Hammond as someone who’d do something like that. Jim was a creation, born out of Phineas’ need to understand humanity better.
Hammond was a good man, but in the end his priorities didn’t align with Jim’s. In Jim’s own words to Horton’s eyes he was Jim’s creator, not his father. He will forever thank him for making him and everything he taught him, but Jim knows than while he saw him as a father the moment he was born, Horton never saw him as a son…. He saw himself as Prometheus, and Jim as the fire he had stolen from the gods to give to humanity. (Horton was also a tad overdramatic, that much is obvious).
Jim stays out of trouble if he can, and tries to go about life without bothering anybody… but he isn’t push-over. He won’t do anything he doesn’t want to, or feels like he shouldn’t do. Sometimes he goes against direct orders or wishes from people above him if it’s about something he truly believes in, and sometimes he just goes with the orders because it’s the easier way to get what he wants, or to stay close to people he wants- and deviates from plan as soon he thinks it deviates from his priorities.
A sure way to push his buttons is to treat machines or synthetic humanoids as lesser beings. He will not stand for artificial men and women to be treated in a different way than natural ones, even in the simpler ways. He threw a fit because the new Invaders made Tara, a female human torch made out of his cells (again, they have freaky powers) stay naked when she would keep burning her clothes. She thanked him later, when they made a special suit for her. Because Jim is fully aware he’s a synthezoid but that doesn’t make him less of a human being thank you very much, and his father Horton made it very clear when he picked ‘Human torch’ as his moniker. He will never deny being what he is but he will fight until having he same rights as a human being with the passion of a supernova (get it?).
But that doesn’t mean he lets his powers define him. When he lost them, he just married the woman he was in love with (Toro’s ex-wife, Jim what were you even thinking-) and tried to live a normal life while the super-heroes would let him. He refuses to be just the Human Torch; he wants to be Jim Hammond too. Again, just because he wasn’t born like everybody else doesn’t mean he should be treated as a weapon or a tool. He wants to help everyone, and he will- even in simpler ways like being a police officer, or like becoming the head of Security at Oracle, Inc. He just hates not feeling useful, so he ends up looking for ways to help even without his powers.
To end this maybe I should mention he was the very first of the Marvels, the very first superhero and set an example to everybody else… but Jim doesn’t really see himself as that nor likes to be called so. He’s actually pretty awkward around ‘fans’, never quite sure how to react or what to do when someone praises him.
He was only doing what must be done, after all.
On the turtle
Honestly, Jim is one of those people who depend highly on the environment so how he reacts would depend on the people he finds and how they explain everything to him. That said he wouldn’t throw a fit, he hasn’t been involved in time travel himself (that he knows of!) or multidimensional stuff but he knows they exist, so while he would have a moment of ‘wait what’ at first he’d take it in stride and understand they are here to help in a war. And he knows a bit of those.
The dreaming/death thing will honestly confuse him a bit since he can’t really die, and he doesn’t so much dream as go into stasis mode while still being alert of everything around him in the back of his mind. He will ask a lot of questions about it, and… if the chance presents itself he’ll want to visit them.
Appearance:
Jim looks like your usual tall, blond human male with blue eyes. He’s a bit on the tall side but not crazily so, and pretty muscular... he’s honestly kind of average, but easy to remember. Even if you were aware he’s a synthezoid when you met him, there is nothing on him different from a normal human being at first sight.
When he has his flames on, he’s the one torch you can distinguish facial features on (this is to make him different from his sidekick Toro, whose face is expressionless when he’s in torch mode.) This isn’t always true and it depends on the writer/artist, but it’s an easy way to tell them apart.
His ‘insides’, what you can see when you take off his skin are a bit weirder to explain. As seen in the Torch Special they don’t look exactly human, but they aren’t truly mechanical either. His Horton did his best to have Jim’s cells adapt to a human body’s form, but they are still made of long plastic/carbon polymers so are still, basically, non-organic- and so is his body.
Abilities:
Hokay so here we go.
Horton Cells:
First let’s explain what being synthetic means to his body. He isn’t exactly a robot: he eats, he breathes, and he sleeps like any normal person. The only difference is that every one of his cells is made out of artificial materials. His cells are called ‘Horton Cells’ in honor of his creator and Jim’s ‘father’, Phineas Horton (with a little help with technology from Khan the Conqueror, ugh time travel.) These cells are basically like human stem cells, with the difference that human stem cells differentiate into all the specialized kind of cells and Horton cells always stay undifferentiated and able to do all the functions the body needs. This is why Jim regenerates tissues with relative ease, and why they adapt so quickly when they get in contact with a human body.
Getting a transfusion of Jim’s blood and thus getting Horton cells inside of her body gave Spitfire super-speed powers in one occasion, reverted her aging the second time- they also allow him to ‘feel’ her and vice versa. He was able to set vampires on fire from a distance once they drank her blood because his blood and thus some Horton cells were in her, too… even though logically there couldn’t have been more than a few cells on their bodies.
We also know now Toro has human torch powers as well thanks to said cells being inside his body because his mother worked for Horton. He was born a mutant, but the manifestation and nature of his powers as a torch were an effect of Horton cells getting in contact with his X-gen.
“Bullshit. It doesn’t make sense”? I know, but comics.
They were also used to create ‘pyronanos’, basically helped create Vision, were used to create a virus that would get into people’s brains and erase their ability to think and- yeah they have kind of freaky powers, not even Horton himself quite knew what they could do. They are steam cells, able to adapt and grow into anything.
Most of what I do is fire-related though and Jim would hardly be announcing his cells’ powers to the world anyway. If I really need to use them at some point I’d contact the mods first.
Moving on from the cells… now, to the cool parts of his abilities.
Human Torch
He’s a human torch, the name itself should tell you what he can do. Jim is able to set his body on fire without harming himself, which lets him heat the air around him and fly. He’s also able to control the flames he creates and send them like projectiles. His flame is so powerful he can even turn as hot as a supernova, but that’s extremely dangerous to everything and everybody around him and even himself. He’s only used that kind of power three times, and two of those times he died. It also takes a lot out of him.
His powers came to be because his skin sets on fire when oxygen contacts his cells, and an eventual accidental dose of Nitrogen into his skin made Jim able to control the reaction.
When he finds himself trapped in a place without oxygen his body kind of… shuts down. He doesn’t die though, just enters into a stasis mode. Even if he cannot move in that state he can think, see and listen. His creator used that to teach him about the human world with recordings while he was buried 6 feet under inside of a case for a few months. He already knew Jim could spend extremely long times without eating or drinking when in stasis. In some issues he’s able to survive underwater, in others being underwater shuts him off from any source of oxygen. Since the second makes sense, I’ll have him not be able to survive underwater without going into stasis for more than a couple seconds.
Jim
Finally Jim also has the ability to mimic human emotions, feelings and socialization. He is not human, but with time among them he eventually learned to ‘become’ one. And on a more… human level, Jim was a police officer and an Avenger. He’s got a lot of training when it comes to fight and battle strategy.
Inventory:
Nothing, only his bright red skin suit.
Suite:
I was going to say Fire sector for obvious reasons, but after reading carefully again I think he'd fit better in a little house in the Wood sector... even if that would make it prone to disasters. He isn't aloof at all, he's pretty non-combative and he can be pretty damn stubborn when he sets his mind to it.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
“Toro-- does it seem to you as if my flame’s getting hotter by the minute?”
He knew the answer to that already. He’d been feeling it from a while ago, day after day keeping his flames down had become harder and harder to the point where he’d almost not been able to set them off. He’d thought it had just been his exhausted mind playing tricks on him but there was really no denying it now- something was wrong, something had been wrong since the moment the bomb awoke him. Toro’s answer only confirmed it, but it all happened so fast, too fast for him to react any differently.
I should have known kept on running inside his head like a mantra. I should have known, but I didn’t and now I’m putting Toro in danger.
“-to yellow, that is even hotter! And you’re not stopping there-“
He was barely paying attention to what Tom was yelling, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care, not while his mind raced to find a possible solution, something that would prevent him from hurting anyone. He knew what was going to happen; it didn’t take a genius to guess. The bomb had somehow twisted around with his powers, charged his cells and made the exothermic reaction more powerful than it had ever been. A bit like the sun, his mind sarcastically provided, except the sun consumes itself.
What to do about it was his focus at the moment. He had to act fast. He had to act right on that moment where there were no bystanders, no innocent that cut get hurt. Well, no one except-
“-can’t even get close to you—“
I should have known
“DON’T TRY!”
He hadn’t meant to yell, but he didn’t really mind if it would get Toro to listen. He had a plan now, a plan that snapped into place as soon as he realized this kind of heat would hurt even his little Torch. But Toro wasn’t going to like it. Jim could have maybe come up with another plan if they had had the time, a plan where he could simply let himself consume in a inhabited lonely place, but they hadn’t… and Jim wasn’t alone.
And what he was going to do… he could deal with it if it mean saving Earth. Saving billions of people. Saving Toro. That was something he was not willing to negotiate. He could sacrifice himself if it meant saving people, but he could not sacrifice Toro. He was more than a partner or a friend-
“Promise you won’t try to follow me.”
- he was almost a son.
Toro’s eyes pierced on him, flame still on. He just kept looking at him, he didn’t answer. Not good enough for Jim, and he was running out of time.
“PROMISE!”
Toro spat out a word.
Years later, when he was woken up from his rest, he would regret his last words to his partner had been so frantic. But there hadn’t really been time for good-byes, and he simply turned towards the ground once he had his answer.
Network:
[A slight frustrated grunt follows the ‘click’ as the network turns on. For someone born at the very end of the 30s Jim has quickly gotten used to more advanced technology, back at home. Not to mention technology he could actually toy around with, which is actually one of the points of this post.
The fact that he’s living in a tree doesn’t help making him feel any less on edge, but as long as he keeps his flame down so far there hasn’t been any problems.]
I was told there had once been… some sort of an attack, a satellite dropping from heavens to this place. And that it was used to improve the technology used at the moment. I’d like to know if possible what sort of technology the satellite had, and what you guys found in it. I know it was long ago, but I’d appreciate it.
[He reaches to hang up, but then he stops himself. He isn’t about to take credit for all the little fires he’s set here and there to warm people up, but-]
Also, if someone dislikes this weather as much as I do and would like to keep themselves warm, I can help. I can’t go around flaming on considering where I live, but I’m still a torch. I’d like to help out if anyone needs to stay warm.
[And then, he does turn off the feed.]
Name: Al
Age: 20+
Contact: Crotalus @ plurk | daiannecrotalus @ AIM
Game Cast: Superman / Clark Kent + Frank Zhang
Character Information:
Name: Jim Hammond
Canon: Marvel
Canon Point: The Torch
Age: He looks between 25 and 30. He’s a robot born in the very late 30s, but he hasn’t spent more than 20 years alive at the most. He has the emotional intelligence of a toddler. It’s… complicated.
Reference: Wiki | Marvel Wiki | Comics vine
Setting:
The year is 1939, the planet is Earth. Earth-616 actually, since in Marvel the multiverse theory is true and there are literally endless Earths around. It is almost the same to our own Earth, except… it isn’t.
Marvels
Good old Earth, with its people and its environment and the Nazis invading Poland in Europe. The world has its attention focused on the war hanging over them. And some of these people take action themselves- putting on masks, jumping to the streets, and helping out people who couldn’t help themselves. Normal people like us who did their best behind a cowl, normal people without any kind of powers.
Until Jim came. Jim is the first ‘Marvel’, the first human being to have some ability that deviates from the norm. Until he appeared the notion of someone like him was unthinkable- not only he was a synthezoid, which was itself a rarity, but because he lit like a torch without burning and he was able to fly. Which scared some… and made the rest run away in fear. Horton had to bury Jim in concrete to stop the panic, even though he expected Jim to be able to get out with time.
A short while after that came Namor the submariner who made it clear for everyone Atlantis existed and the Atlanteans weren’t exactly happy with how surface-dwellers were treating their realm and poisoning everything around them.
And then the scientist managed to make the super-soldier serum and gave America their Captain. Slowly but surely the view on superpowered beings changed, especially thanks to Captain America- the USA were glad to have one of their own, and eventually accepted Jim and Namor as one of the ‘good guys’, and cheered for them as they would cheer for Steve. The age of Marvels had begun and America was adapting to it.
Now, synthetics beings and Atlanteans aren’t the only deviation from the norm in Marvel canon. There’s aliens, people who suffered from some kind of radiation, genetic manipulations, god-like beings and literal gods… the list is long and over the years it got bigger and bigger. And finally there’s mutants.
Mutants (or Homo Sapiens Superior depending on who you ask) have an X-gene that allows them to develop superhuman abilities. Mutants are born with this potential and the ability develops at puberty- and Namor and Toro, Jim’s sidekick, friend and son were one of the first mutants ever registered. Mutants have a lot going on in politics wars and world domination, but Jim is hardly related to all that except when it comes to helping his friend Namor rebuilding utopia, and how both Namor and Toro are one of the few remaining Mutants left after a spell cast by the Scarlet Witch.
Synthezoid
Horton was said to be so smart he made Einstein’s relativity theories look like chicken soup. Being so smart and as obsessed as he became with the secret to life itself, he decided to begin working on a synthetic human being. A being that wasn’t born from a human, yet was still alive. And thus came the Horton Cells, and finally Jim.
Jim isn’t the only android/synthezoid/AI in the Marvel universe. Horton’s co-worker, James Bradley, stole part of the prototype and made Volton. Horton made another android himself, Adam II (then III) who would turn against him and all humanity. Jim’s body was used to create the Vision thanks to Immortus, who split Jim’s body in two. Jim’s cells were used to create ‘pyronanos’, giant robots who would also have fire around them. Tara the Torch-girl was also made based on Jim’s own cells, along with other endless drones (like those in New Berlin, or the Descendants).
Do you see the pattern here yet?
Not all of the androids are related to Jim, there’s of course AIs like the famous Ultron who were creates from other means. But a lot of the synthezoids in the Marvel world are related to Jim in one way or another- which comes as no surprise, since how Horton managed to do what he did is still a mystery nowadays.
Teams
…Now, onto all of the teams Jim has been in. The list is long so I tried to focus on the important ones, skim through the ones only had a little role on.
Golden age (Invaders, Liberty Legion, All-Winner’s squad)
Let’s go back to WWII. Jim woke up around the time Germany invaded Poland, so once people stopped being afraid of him he (alongside his guard Toro) didn’t doubt joining Captain America, Bucky and then Namor in their crusade to stop the Nazis. The little team was named ‘Invaders’ by Churchill in a visit to England, after a little adventure there where Spitfire, now a speedster thanks to Jim’s blood, and Union Jack joined their team. The team went on a lot of missions against the Axis, like fighting a Nazi invasion of Atlantis or against the battle-Axis (why this team was created is obvious just with the name isn’t it). They fought foes like Doctor Death, U-man, Volton, Spider Queen, Strong Man…
The war developed more or less the same for the normal populace, just a lot more superheroes fighting the superheroes from the other side like Tom and Toro watching Pearl Harbour and doing his best to help… and finally ending with Jim killing Hitler. Hitler made the only soldier who saw lie and tell everyone he’d committed suicide, but most of the superhero community know the truth by now. There was also a bit more of technology from each sides thanks to geniuses like Horton or Zola.
At one point, while his team (including Jim) was brainwashed Bucky Barnes created the Liberty Legion himself to go fight and rescue them, and the team didn’t disband after that.
And after the war, the team would become the ‘All-winners Squad’ instead of the Invaders and keep on crime-fighting , but that’s a Golden Age mess where we can never be sure how much of that is actually canon. It is canon Bucky and Steve were seemingly killed, and replaced by others so the American spirit would be kept.
Modern Age (Avengers West Coast, Oracle Inc, V-Batalion. New Invaders)
The Avengers were a team that was created by mere luck when a couple of heroes got together to respond to an emergency call. No, really. But the team seemed to work well together and over time it’s become the most well-known team in the Marvel universe and has a lot of spin-offs. The Avengers Weast Coast is one of these ramifications, created so the team would have a larger influence. The second time Jim was brought back to life after his death it was thanks to the Scarlet Witch as she looked for clues about her husband, the Vision… and he ended up joining the team. He didn’t spend long in it and was soon involved in a mess investigating his son Toro’s death where he lost his powers.
Oracle Inc is a foundation bought by Namor, basically focused on fighting contamination of the waters. Jim was appointed as the head of security, and eventually created ‘Heroes for Hire’ with the superhero Iron Fist. Heroes for Hire was basically an on-call hero team, and much of the cast was hired for missions as necessary. Jim was the ‘boss’ but everyone actually relied on Iron Fist, and eventually it was dismantled.
V-Battalion was meant to be a team to hunt down Nazis in the modern age, but honestly Jim was only there as the head for an extremely short while and soon took a leave of absence to serve as field leader of the New Invaders.
Finally, the New Invaders, the last team Jim has been in the canon point I’m taking him from (there’s two more since then and he’s been alive for a year at the most Jim what the-). The New Invaders were meant to be a revamp of the actual Invaders team and it was created by the Fifth Captain America, U.S. Agent John Walker…. But it was actually a manipulation from the Red Skull. Tara, the android Jim felt protective of (and, along with Spitfire, the only reason he joined the team) was used to try to kill them all and Jim died taking her overheat.
Personality:
First, let me make it clear that Jim is supposed to learn by mimicry. That means that supposedly, his personality is born from how he adapts to what he sees and hears. I say supposedly because there’s instances of Jim being completely mind-wiped, ‘reprogramed’ under someone else’s control and still fighting to not harm people, telling them to run… his core personality is more than a tabula rasa. It’s pretty obvious it’s indeed thanks to the people he’s known in his life that he is who he is today, but can’t we just say that about everyone? Like the new Vison says, we are all mirrors of everyone around us.
I’m mentioning this first because the canon point I’m bringing Jim from is a little after an instance of the mentioned reprogramming. It’s the time it has affected him the most, and at first he’s completely at lost on how to learn how to feel again, forcing himself through hours and hours of TV until he manages to get the emotions behind it… but eventually he realizes who he as before is more than simples mindless osmosis of feelings, and that the more time he spends around Tom the more he adapts to truly being human. At the end of the Torch mini he’s his usual self again, smiling and reaching for shoulder pats and physical contact with Toro.
My point is: what I’m going to point out about his personality here is how Jim usually is and how I intend to play him, but being mechanical reprogramming him is kind of an usual plotting device and his personality isn’t always like this. With that in mind…
At his core personality Jim is sweet, nice, gentle… he’s what you would call a good man; you can’t be one of the avengers and not be a good person. He’s always there to help everybody, always there to help you if you need it. Even right after his ‘birth’, when he had just gotten up from his slumber and knew nothing from the world apart from what Horton had left for him to listen, he already knew some things people did were just bad and some things were good.
He choose to be good, to the point where he actually got extremely offended some thugs used him a as a weapon to set fire to an innocent person’s warehouse without him being aware of what he was doing. His secret identity was a police officer because he wanted to help them be good, to be one of the ven without using his powers.
But he also knows he has to do wrong to do right sometimes, and he isn’t afraid to do it. He’s killed Hitler, and said plenty of times he’d do it again if he found himself in the same position. He doesn’t like getting blood on his hands but he knows sometimes there isn’t another way to go about things. He is neither a fighter nor a killer, but he will become one if innocent lives are at a stake.
Jim is generally well-liked and admired. Not everybody will like him, of course- but he’s that kind of man that gets a laugh or a smile out of most people. Especially if they have fire powers, for obvious reasons.
He’s also somehow everybody’s father figure, trying to get everybody to feel better and do the right thing. Like a humanoid Jiminy Cricket he’s everybody’s conscience, always telling everybody to calm down and think before acting. His teammate (and sometimes enemy) Namor the sub-mariner is always trying to offend him with his hurtful words and snarky attitude, but Jim just gives him the other cheek and a smile nine times out of ten. (…Maybe it’s more of a 50/50 thing, but Namor does get on everyone’s nerves when he wants to.)
When he met Toro, his sidekick it didn’t take long for him to adopt the kid and treat him like an equal, like a partner. Jim might be an adult body-wise but he’s still a kid when it comes to emotions, and Toro is still a kid to most people’s eyes but he’s pretty mature to his eyes. Their roles as big brother and little brother keep switching, because they both learn from the other. The way he relates with most people could be described like that, actually. Captain America, Bucky, Namor… all of them treat him like a father one moment and the kid they are babysitting the next.
Because yes, Jim is still like a kid inside. Curiosity, naivety, optimism… he has all the qualities of a young person that wants to make the best of the world. Steve Rogers describes him as having the naivety of a 3 years old. He’s level-headed (he wouldn’t have been accepted as field leader of the New Invaders if he wasn’t) which makes most people forget that side of him, but it’s still there. It specially shows when it comes to affection. He doesn’t know how to deal with it most of the time- especially in the canon-point I’m pulling him from, when he’s still kind of recovering from being completely emotionless. For a while, if you hugged him he would hug back because it’s what he’d seen people do and what feels right, but it took a few hugs for him to understand the purpose the hug had.
He also has special views on love and relationships. He’s… crushed on quite a few girls. Let’s just say he has a tendency to fall for any girl that’s nice to him, or any girl he feels linked to in a way- and I personally think he simply latches onto that feeling because he’s supposed to have someone for whom he has strong feelings for and like I said he learns by mimicry, but that’s just speculation.
And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love them for who they are either, but much like a kid he just can’t help latching onto people if they are nice to him, and back in his times those who showed him that kind of gentle affection where mostly women. Even if his feelings of affection could be considered sudden doesn’t forget about them as time goes by, as shown by how he still obviously have feelings for Jackie (Spitfire) after all the years they spent apart. An no matter what he feels he knows when to pursue a girl and when to look the other way- Using Spitfire as an example again she was dating Union Jack so he let her go even if she was rather obviously interested in him and the feelings were mutual.
I’m focusing on the women, but Jim is also very quick to show affection and close bond to men as well. One of the most obvious ones is the one with his sidekick Toro, who he wouldn’t hesitate to call his son. He was the only one able to bring him back from the deep emotionless end he had fallen into, they had each other’s back during the war and after it, they depended on each other for almost everything. Even when he was still getting the hang of emotions he still says the way Toro calls him ‘Pappy’ manages to make him happy, to his own surprise.
And I should also speak about his relationship with his father. Phineas Horton… he wasn’t a bad man, he really wasn’t. He did what he thought was best for Jim, and without his help Jim wouldn’t be the man he is today. But he was also fully aware Jim was his creation, and he wanted profit from it. Either monetary or something else- Jim does say at one point that he thinks Horton made him the way he is so he could one day make the Nazis pay- which I’m pretty sure it isn’t true considering the Mad Thinker’s conviction the combustion is a side effect (and the fact that when he wants to build a weapon he makes Adam-II), but the point still stands that he sees Hammond as someone who’d do something like that. Jim was a creation, born out of Phineas’ need to understand humanity better.
Hammond was a good man, but in the end his priorities didn’t align with Jim’s. In Jim’s own words to Horton’s eyes he was Jim’s creator, not his father. He will forever thank him for making him and everything he taught him, but Jim knows than while he saw him as a father the moment he was born, Horton never saw him as a son…. He saw himself as Prometheus, and Jim as the fire he had stolen from the gods to give to humanity. (Horton was also a tad overdramatic, that much is obvious).
Jim stays out of trouble if he can, and tries to go about life without bothering anybody… but he isn’t push-over. He won’t do anything he doesn’t want to, or feels like he shouldn’t do. Sometimes he goes against direct orders or wishes from people above him if it’s about something he truly believes in, and sometimes he just goes with the orders because it’s the easier way to get what he wants, or to stay close to people he wants- and deviates from plan as soon he thinks it deviates from his priorities.
A sure way to push his buttons is to treat machines or synthetic humanoids as lesser beings. He will not stand for artificial men and women to be treated in a different way than natural ones, even in the simpler ways. He threw a fit because the new Invaders made Tara, a female human torch made out of his cells (again, they have freaky powers) stay naked when she would keep burning her clothes. She thanked him later, when they made a special suit for her. Because Jim is fully aware he’s a synthezoid but that doesn’t make him less of a human being thank you very much, and his father Horton made it very clear when he picked ‘Human torch’ as his moniker. He will never deny being what he is but he will fight until having he same rights as a human being with the passion of a supernova (get it?).
But that doesn’t mean he lets his powers define him. When he lost them, he just married the woman he was in love with (Toro’s ex-wife, Jim what were you even thinking-) and tried to live a normal life while the super-heroes would let him. He refuses to be just the Human Torch; he wants to be Jim Hammond too. Again, just because he wasn’t born like everybody else doesn’t mean he should be treated as a weapon or a tool. He wants to help everyone, and he will- even in simpler ways like being a police officer, or like becoming the head of Security at Oracle, Inc. He just hates not feeling useful, so he ends up looking for ways to help even without his powers.
To end this maybe I should mention he was the very first of the Marvels, the very first superhero and set an example to everybody else… but Jim doesn’t really see himself as that nor likes to be called so. He’s actually pretty awkward around ‘fans’, never quite sure how to react or what to do when someone praises him.
He was only doing what must be done, after all.
On the turtle
Honestly, Jim is one of those people who depend highly on the environment so how he reacts would depend on the people he finds and how they explain everything to him. That said he wouldn’t throw a fit, he hasn’t been involved in time travel himself (that he knows of!) or multidimensional stuff but he knows they exist, so while he would have a moment of ‘wait what’ at first he’d take it in stride and understand they are here to help in a war. And he knows a bit of those.
The dreaming/death thing will honestly confuse him a bit since he can’t really die, and he doesn’t so much dream as go into stasis mode while still being alert of everything around him in the back of his mind. He will ask a lot of questions about it, and… if the chance presents itself he’ll want to visit them.
Appearance:
Jim looks like your usual tall, blond human male with blue eyes. He’s a bit on the tall side but not crazily so, and pretty muscular... he’s honestly kind of average, but easy to remember. Even if you were aware he’s a synthezoid when you met him, there is nothing on him different from a normal human being at first sight.
When he has his flames on, he’s the one torch you can distinguish facial features on (this is to make him different from his sidekick Toro, whose face is expressionless when he’s in torch mode.) This isn’t always true and it depends on the writer/artist, but it’s an easy way to tell them apart.
His ‘insides’, what you can see when you take off his skin are a bit weirder to explain. As seen in the Torch Special they don’t look exactly human, but they aren’t truly mechanical either. His Horton did his best to have Jim’s cells adapt to a human body’s form, but they are still made of long plastic/carbon polymers so are still, basically, non-organic- and so is his body.
Abilities:
Hokay so here we go.
Horton Cells:
First let’s explain what being synthetic means to his body. He isn’t exactly a robot: he eats, he breathes, and he sleeps like any normal person. The only difference is that every one of his cells is made out of artificial materials. His cells are called ‘Horton Cells’ in honor of his creator and Jim’s ‘father’, Phineas Horton (with a little help with technology from Khan the Conqueror, ugh time travel.) These cells are basically like human stem cells, with the difference that human stem cells differentiate into all the specialized kind of cells and Horton cells always stay undifferentiated and able to do all the functions the body needs. This is why Jim regenerates tissues with relative ease, and why they adapt so quickly when they get in contact with a human body.
Getting a transfusion of Jim’s blood and thus getting Horton cells inside of her body gave Spitfire super-speed powers in one occasion, reverted her aging the second time- they also allow him to ‘feel’ her and vice versa. He was able to set vampires on fire from a distance once they drank her blood because his blood and thus some Horton cells were in her, too… even though logically there couldn’t have been more than a few cells on their bodies.
We also know now Toro has human torch powers as well thanks to said cells being inside his body because his mother worked for Horton. He was born a mutant, but the manifestation and nature of his powers as a torch were an effect of Horton cells getting in contact with his X-gen.
“Bullshit. It doesn’t make sense”? I know, but comics.
They were also used to create ‘pyronanos’, basically helped create Vision, were used to create a virus that would get into people’s brains and erase their ability to think and- yeah they have kind of freaky powers, not even Horton himself quite knew what they could do. They are steam cells, able to adapt and grow into anything.
Most of what I do is fire-related though and Jim would hardly be announcing his cells’ powers to the world anyway. If I really need to use them at some point I’d contact the mods first.
Moving on from the cells… now, to the cool parts of his abilities.
Human Torch
He’s a human torch, the name itself should tell you what he can do. Jim is able to set his body on fire without harming himself, which lets him heat the air around him and fly. He’s also able to control the flames he creates and send them like projectiles. His flame is so powerful he can even turn as hot as a supernova, but that’s extremely dangerous to everything and everybody around him and even himself. He’s only used that kind of power three times, and two of those times he died. It also takes a lot out of him.
His powers came to be because his skin sets on fire when oxygen contacts his cells, and an eventual accidental dose of Nitrogen into his skin made Jim able to control the reaction.
When he finds himself trapped in a place without oxygen his body kind of… shuts down. He doesn’t die though, just enters into a stasis mode. Even if he cannot move in that state he can think, see and listen. His creator used that to teach him about the human world with recordings while he was buried 6 feet under inside of a case for a few months. He already knew Jim could spend extremely long times without eating or drinking when in stasis. In some issues he’s able to survive underwater, in others being underwater shuts him off from any source of oxygen. Since the second makes sense, I’ll have him not be able to survive underwater without going into stasis for more than a couple seconds.
Jim
Finally Jim also has the ability to mimic human emotions, feelings and socialization. He is not human, but with time among them he eventually learned to ‘become’ one. And on a more… human level, Jim was a police officer and an Avenger. He’s got a lot of training when it comes to fight and battle strategy.
Inventory:
Nothing, only his bright red skin suit.
Suite:
I was going to say Fire sector for obvious reasons, but after reading carefully again I think he'd fit better in a little house in the Wood sector... even if that would make it prone to disasters. He isn't aloof at all, he's pretty non-combative and he can be pretty damn stubborn when he sets his mind to it.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
“Toro-- does it seem to you as if my flame’s getting hotter by the minute?”
He knew the answer to that already. He’d been feeling it from a while ago, day after day keeping his flames down had become harder and harder to the point where he’d almost not been able to set them off. He’d thought it had just been his exhausted mind playing tricks on him but there was really no denying it now- something was wrong, something had been wrong since the moment the bomb awoke him. Toro’s answer only confirmed it, but it all happened so fast, too fast for him to react any differently.
I should have known kept on running inside his head like a mantra. I should have known, but I didn’t and now I’m putting Toro in danger.
“-to yellow, that is even hotter! And you’re not stopping there-“
He was barely paying attention to what Tom was yelling, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care, not while his mind raced to find a possible solution, something that would prevent him from hurting anyone. He knew what was going to happen; it didn’t take a genius to guess. The bomb had somehow twisted around with his powers, charged his cells and made the exothermic reaction more powerful than it had ever been. A bit like the sun, his mind sarcastically provided, except the sun consumes itself.
What to do about it was his focus at the moment. He had to act fast. He had to act right on that moment where there were no bystanders, no innocent that cut get hurt. Well, no one except-
“-can’t even get close to you—“
I should have known
“DON’T TRY!”
He hadn’t meant to yell, but he didn’t really mind if it would get Toro to listen. He had a plan now, a plan that snapped into place as soon as he realized this kind of heat would hurt even his little Torch. But Toro wasn’t going to like it. Jim could have maybe come up with another plan if they had had the time, a plan where he could simply let himself consume in a inhabited lonely place, but they hadn’t… and Jim wasn’t alone.
And what he was going to do… he could deal with it if it mean saving Earth. Saving billions of people. Saving Toro. That was something he was not willing to negotiate. He could sacrifice himself if it meant saving people, but he could not sacrifice Toro. He was more than a partner or a friend-
“Promise you won’t try to follow me.”
- he was almost a son.
Toro’s eyes pierced on him, flame still on. He just kept looking at him, he didn’t answer. Not good enough for Jim, and he was running out of time.
“PROMISE!”
Toro spat out a word.
Years later, when he was woken up from his rest, he would regret his last words to his partner had been so frantic. But there hadn’t really been time for good-byes, and he simply turned towards the ground once he had his answer.
Network:
[A slight frustrated grunt follows the ‘click’ as the network turns on. For someone born at the very end of the 30s Jim has quickly gotten used to more advanced technology, back at home. Not to mention technology he could actually toy around with, which is actually one of the points of this post.
The fact that he’s living in a tree doesn’t help making him feel any less on edge, but as long as he keeps his flame down so far there hasn’t been any problems.]
I was told there had once been… some sort of an attack, a satellite dropping from heavens to this place. And that it was used to improve the technology used at the moment. I’d like to know if possible what sort of technology the satellite had, and what you guys found in it. I know it was long ago, but I’d appreciate it.
[He reaches to hang up, but then he stops himself. He isn’t about to take credit for all the little fires he’s set here and there to warm people up, but-]
Also, if someone dislikes this weather as much as I do and would like to keep themselves warm, I can help. I can’t go around flaming on considering where I live, but I’m still a torch. I’d like to help out if anyone needs to stay warm.
[And then, he does turn off the feed.]