By now, everyone and their ancient ancestor knows about the death of Johnny Storm, the member of the Fantastic Four known as The Human Torch. If not, you obviously have not read an online comicbook article since late last year. And if that's the case, boy did you pick the wrong blog to choose for your first read.
Personally, I feel his death was empty. Like they killed off that one Skrull on the left of that one panel in that comic. "So?"
Storm's connections within the Marvel U are only within the Fantastic Four. He's a brother, a brother-in-law, uncle and buddy. I suppose he has hung around with Spider-Man a few times, too. But what did his death change?
It changed the FF. It changed... Hmm... It changed that... The people it affected...
Nope, that's it. It changed the Fantastic Four. It affected the object of his taunts and jabs and the two people he relied upon the most.
What if Thing had died? There would have been fallout in a ton of books. New Avengers losing a teammate, the FF losing the brawn, a dozen assorted Marvel characters would have lost a poker buddy, Alicia Masters would have felt bad, Dr Doom would have respected the fact Thing had lived...
What if The Invisible Woman had died? The fallout would have been less noticible, but at least Sue appeared in more than one book over the past 24 months. Storylines revolved around her, she created a charity, she banded together with She-Hulk, Valkerie and others to help people, she's the heart of any team she's part of...
What if Mr Fantastic had died? The science community would have gone nuts. Reed's lab would have been raided. Dr Doom, The Wingless Wizard, The Mad Thinker and others would have gone to war for the chance to plunder Richard's hidden treasures, killing thousands in a battle over Manhattan...
So, as Johnny died? The Fantastic Four have become the Future Foundation and recruited Spider-Man. People were sad for an issue of The Fantastic Four. He had no connections outside of that book.
Lyja, his estranged Skrull wife was left in the Negative Zone I believe, thus unable to mourn him. Not that she would have done so in a non-FF comic. He had no other friends. He did have a child with a normal human, who jumped into the time-stream in a done-in-one story, but again that's a solely FF story.
It's not like Secret Avengers is going to pause for a moment so Steve Rogers can mention "I don't want to lose anyone like the FF lost Johnny Storm...". Storm didn't play poker with Rogers like Ben Grimm. Storm wasn't a big brain like Reed Richards. Storm didn't have empathy like Sue Richards.
When all is said and done - The Death Of The Human Torch may have ended a comic that was going almost-continuously since 1961, but it doesn't actually matter.
