Spider-Man / Human Torch round1: Hit My Head and Call Me Shorty!
You know you're in for it when the comic proudly declares itself a "Special Tribute-to-Teenagers Issue!!"
Buckle yourselves in, this is gonna suck...
And, suck it does. First of all, despite having been much better as a single story magazine, for some reason they revert to an anthology with this issue.
Then there's the first story, 'The Terrible Threat of the Living Brain'. It's pretty terrible alright. So bad that I'm not going to waste much space on reviewing it, except to say that Spider-Man faces off against a big dumb looking robot in a story filled with hoary cliches - even for the time it was written.
Then there's the second story, 'Spider-Man Tackles the Torch'. Much like the Hulk and Thor's first battle began as part of a team fight (when the Avengers were fighting Sub-Mariner and the Hulk), Spider-Man and the Human Torch's first conflict came in Amazing Spider-Man #1 - but their first one-on-one wasn't to happen until several months later, here in issue #8.
This is a thoroughly terrible story. It begins with Spider-Man coming to Doris Evans' (the Human Torch's girlfriend) house to try to steal the Human Torch's girlfriend away by showing the Torch up. He starts off by throwing a spiderweb bat (seriously) into a party full of mostly girls who make eeking noises and call on Johnny to get it. When he discovers it's not real, Spider-Man walks in and picks a fight with among other insults, 'Who writes your dialogue, squirt? Frank Merriwell?' which is ironic given that Spider-Man himself says things like, 'Well hit my head and call me shorty!', etc. In other words, all the dialogue - and I do mean all the dialogue, even that coming from Mr. Fantastic - is wretchedly bad, even by Silver Age standards.
This leads to a several page long fight where the two make ridiculous uses of their powers - flame buzz saws, web scoops, fire nets, etc. - until the rest of the Fantastic Four intervene. At that point, Sue Storm makes the inevitable pass at Spider-Man, just knowing that he must be handsome under his full face mask, and Spider-Man eventually flees, leaving behind only a web valentine for Sue.
Idiotic and juvenile is how Spider-Man and The Human Torch act, and idiotic and juvenile is how the story comes off.
