Once he has sex with someone, can he just light himself on fire and burn off whatever STDs he may have contracted? And if he does it on a full stomach, does his food get burned and he has to eat again?
AIUI, the Torch’s internal organs don’t catch fire, only his exterior. So things in his body, like lunch, or viruses, won’t burn up. That said, HIV is environmentally fragile, and can only survive in a narrow temperature range. It’s possible that his fire form would raise his internal temperature enough to kill the virus, or at least kill off enough of his viral load to prevent him from developing AIDS.
I think it would depend on what is most convenient for the plot.
You have now given this subject 5 minutes more thought than every Marvel editor combined has given it in the past 50 years.
Have you heard of Civil War? Marvel doesn’t have “editors.”
This doesn’t match anything I’ve ever read on the Torch. (And I started reading with FF8.) Lots of issues show him being fire throughout.
The Marvel Wikigoes both ways at once:
I always took it as his entire body morphing into flame/plasma.
As noted, he’s had things fly through him. If only his skin was on fire, that means a nasty internal injury.
On the other hand, just morphing into flame doesn’t guarantee killing all his germs. (What about his intestinal bacteria? Every time he flames-on, he suffers a week of diarrhea?)
Can the Human Torch suck the heat out of a grilled cheese, and end up with two slices of plain bread and some Kraft singles?
Can the Invisible Girl make a whole armload of snacks invisible, so she can sneak them into a movie theater for all her friends?
How big can Mister Fantastic make his dick?
Abraham Lincoln was once asked how long a man’s penis should be. He said, “Long enough to reach the ground.”
Um… Anyway, definitely yes to question number two: Sue Richards can make external objects invisible.
Almost certainly no to question number one – but The Molecule Man could, because baking and frying are merely changes in molecular composition.
Like most energy casters (Magneto being the notable exception), the Torch actually has two bodies; the one he isn’t using is stored in a pocket dimension. I can’t remember whether he’s ever gotten a virus before, though.
I’d say that, if they’ve ever shown him getting a cold or whatnot, he can get AIDS.
Some supers have enhanced immune systems as a side effect of their power. The Hulks are pretty much immune to all terrestrial diseases, and so, I imagine, are Wolverine (have they resurrected him yet?) and Wolverine. But they’ve shown the Thing and Spider-Man getting colds and influenza. I can’t recall Johnny Storm ever getting sick, but then the purpose of showing Ben being ill was always to highlight that his badassery is psychological as much as it is physical; he’s a guy who won’t give up when his body his begging him too. Johnny’s not that kind of badass.
My guess is that Johnny (and probably Reed too) are changed internally in such a way tat no normal bug can harm them.
I wouldn’t call the two-body thing the norm. Cyclops, Storm, Sue Richards, Jubilee, Polaris, Black Tom Cassidy, Scarlet Witch, Havok, Dazzler, and so on don’t metamorphose. And while Johnny clearly does, injuries from state carry over to the other, so I don’t think it’s a matter of exchanging bodies either in his case.
Well, this would apply to Johnny, but it doesn’t necessarily follow under Marvel canon.
I’m sure they’ve shown various X-Men getting the sniffles etc, but it’s explicitly stated that Mutants can’t get AIDS…because apparently the X-Gene makes them distinct enough from humans that it can’t affect them.
Which is…a terrible idea, but Marvel went with it, so…yeah.
Some of these people generate energy, others just channel energy that’s in the vicinity. Cyclops, at one point, was said to convert solar energy into the red stuff; at another point, they said he’s just a conduit for another dimension that’s full of red blasty stuff. Storm manipulates weather conditions and her flying ability is tied to that. Polaris, like Magneto, likely just manipulates ambient magnetic energy and is powerless without a nearby power source (The only time we’ve seen Magneto use his powers in space, he was on Asteroid M, which likely contained a small nuclear reactor.) Johnny, like Iceman, has a spare body made of pure energy plasma; I’m not sure it’s been established recently that his injuries in one form do carry over to the other.
Graviton has two bodies, and when we saw his other one, it was pretty unnerving. Jubilee, Dazzler and Black Tom Cassidy don’t generate all that much energy so it’s kind of a moot point.
Meh. The numbers don’t work for Cyclops to get his energy from the sun. Storm has to have a source of energy to allow her to manipulate the weather, just as, oh, Spider-Man has to take in calories to use his super-stregnth. But it’s all imaginary physics anyway.
What about Wolverine?
For bonus points, note that Hank Pym retains his full strength upon shrinking down to the size of an ant – and gains superstrength upon growing to become a giant man. Which is kinda crazy even if we agree to ignore the square-cube law.
Thank you!
See, THESE are the important questions we all want answers to.
PS “What was that?” asked Wonder Woman
“I dunno,” said the Invisible Girl, “But my butt sure hurts.”
Also, randomly…
No, and I wouldn’t expect it for at least 6 more months (2 years seems to be the average for the big two letting something like this stick - Batman, Captain America, and the Joker all stayed ‘dead’ for ~2 years…)
I’ve always maintained that Sue Richards was one of the luckier women in the Marvel Universe, for this reason. “What shape do you want tonight, honey?”