10 Major Problems With The Fantastic Four No One Wants To Admit

2. The Human Torch Is A Menace To Everyone Near Him

The comics make it clear that Johnny's flames need oxygen to burn. Wherever he goes, his flames consume the oxygen in the air around him. Except, that's pretty damned dangerous in many of the situations he and his teammates regularly find themselves in. Suppose Johnny is battling the armies of the Mole Man deep underground. How long would it take for him to use up all the air in those oxygen-poor tunnels? That's not the only environment where the Human Torch would be just as lethal to his friends as he is to his enemies; there's space as well. Usually, the creators of the comic are clued in enough to avoid showing Johnny flying through the airless void but they make the almost-as-bad error of drawing him on fire inside the ship. Leaving aside the issue that the air supply in real spacecraft used to be 100% oxygen which wouldn't react at all well to Johnny activating his flames, there would be life-threatening repercussions even on board less oxygenated modern space vessels. Such as, again, using up the available oxygen supply and condemning both his teammates and himself to death by suffocation. Additionally, there would be a huge danger of Johnny setting fire to the ship and accidentally burning his friends and sister to death. Still, these dangers assume the ship has artificial gravity. In the more likely case of zero gravity, Johnny's fire would smother itself and quickly go out, since fire can't sustain itself without gravity. Either way, the Human Torch is pretty much a liability underground or in space.