A few months back, we brought you a promotional image for Rick Remender’s highly anticipated upcoming run on Secret Avengers that featured a humany torchy type character, the identity of which was anyone’s guess. This torch notably only appeared in that first teaser from Gabriel Hardman and was seemingly replaced on the team by Hank “Giant Man” Pym on the covers released for the run, leading many (okay, maybe just me) to wonder if plans for the character, whoever they were, joining the team were scrapped.
It seems they weren’t, as earlier this afternoon Remender confirmed that that torch was indeed Jim Hammond, the Original Human Torch (ya know, the one that appeared in the very first Marvel comic) and would indeed be joining his Secret Avengers roster. Hammond recently returned to the land of the living in 2009’s “The Torch” mini-series and had been missing from the Marvel Universe proper since the follow-up to that mini, 2010’s Invaders Now.
By confirming Hammond’s presence on the team, Remender continues to build an immensely varied Avengers team that draws from many generations of the franchise as well as key components of other super teams from throughout the history of the Marvel Universe, now dating all the way back to the pioneer Marvel super-team, The Invaders.
For more in the Torch’s involvement in Secret Avengers, click here and be sure to grab Remender’s first issue on the book, January’s #21.1
