Upside-Down Torch

I've been thinking a lot about the Fantastic Four lately. Especially the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run that started it all. I love those first 100 issues. There are various reasons for this phase of interest. I recently read a book about that era of the Fantastic Four, and found a podcast about it. So it's been on my mind.

I spent a week at work with this image as my desktop background.


A classic. A beautiful cover that never gets old. But every week one of my Monday morning tasks is to change my desktop background. So the following week I chose to stay in the same era and choose a cover I remember from my childhood.


It was then that I noticed that both covers have the Human Torch upside-down. This struck me as an odd coincidence. So later that night, I flipped through some Superman comics to see if I could find instances of him upside down. I found a few.








But in these incidences there's a cover-story reason for him to be upside down. The Torch just seemed to enjoy it. There was a difference.


Eager to join the fervor of useless analysis of 1960's comic books, I quickly formulated an opinion that the Human Torch was always depicted by Jack Kirby as flying upside down. Unfortunately, the research did not bear out this crackpot claim.


But... there are enough to make me think there's something there.





I was at work on a Saturday waiting for a 20 minute job to finish running and got into a friendly argument with a pal about the Torch being upside-down. We played the situation for laughs, to the amusement of our bored and frustrated co-workers. (We all wanted this job to finish running!) During this argument, I realized I needed to better define upside-down! My non-comic-reading friend was making the argument that the Torch wasn't necessarily upside down in relation to the ground in the picture.


I realized that he had a point. But an interesting one. The Torch himself wasn't upside down in relation to his surroundings, but we as observers can see him as upside-down in relation to the bottom of the comic book cover.

So... this is how Jack Kirby conveyed the idea of the freedom of flight.

It's so... simple.


On this cover, the cover of FF #67, all the characters are floating. It's a conceptual cover rather than a realistic depiction. Yet at first glance, it's obvious to the observer that only the Torch is flying while everyone else has their feet planted.

Why?

It's a trick of the mind and eye. We look at Mr Fantastic on the uppermost left hand corner, and know that he's not flying. We see the Human Torch on the right, and know that he is.

I find the concept interesting. It speaks to the human brain and natural interpretations we make on cartoony art. Very few artists can make characters look like they're actually flying. Usually we get poses in the sky and other cues that let us know this character is not grounded. But there are a few artists that can convey the pure freedom of flight. Jack Kirby's Human Torch is one example. Mac Raboy's Captain Marvel Jr. is another that I can think of.


It seems like such a simple idea. Obvious. But if it were so obvious, why do the flying characters drawn by the geniuses of this medium look so different from the rest?

Thanks,
DCD