Sidekick to the Human Torch, collaborator with All-Winners Squad and Young Allies during the Golden Age, and co-laborer with Kid Commandoes and Invaders in the Silver Age, Thomas Raymond got his start in the sidekick trade the way most sidekicks do. He was orphaned.

Thomas joined Pop’s Traveling Circus after his parents were killed in a train wreck. Pop noticed that Thomas’s young body held an inordinate amount of heat, so he trained him as a fire-eater.

When he and the Human Torch crossed paths, the superhero’s heat activated Toro’s super-flaming abilities.

Over the decades following their first encounter, Toro was a popular sidekick and intriguing independent young hero. A Golden and Silver Age staple, Toro battled Nazis, rescued his mentor, joined forces with several other supergroups, took a sabbatical to care for a sick foster mother, married, survived brainwashing, and apparently died.

After the apparent death of the original Human Torch in 1955, Toro retired from the superhero game. He married, moved to the suburbs, became a father.
In 1966 (Fantastic Four Annual #4), the criminal genius the Mad Thinker located and dug up the android body of the original Human Torch. Since android technology was one of the Thinker’s areas of expertise, he repaired and reactivated the Torch, under his mental control, and set him against his longtime foes, the Fantastic Four. The Torch ultimately broke free of the Thinker’s control, and sacrificed himself to save the FF and defeat the villain.

Three years later, in Sub-Mariner #14 (June 1969), someone claiming to be the original Torch showed up to battle his former long-time ally, Namor the Sub-Mariner. During the battle, the pseudo-Torch’s true memory awakened, revealing him to actually be Toro, the original Torch’s partner. We’re told that, following the death of the Human Torch in 1966, the Thinker skulked around the funeral, ambushing, drugging and kidnapping Toro. He brainwashed him into believing he was the Torch, and sent him to battle Namor. In final battle with the Thinker, Toro apparently died in the destruction of the Thinker’s aircraft.

In 1990-1, in a story arc appearing in Power Pack #s 57-62, a mysterious homeless man is saved from flaming death by Frankie Raye, fiery girlfriend of the modern Human Torch, Johnny Storm. Strangely unharmed by his ordeal, the man stared at her, thinking “…It can’t be! Is it-is it-HER?…” Later, aboard the Power Pack’s sentient starship, the stranger observed young Franklin Richards, thinking “…there are a lot of things I haven’t thought of in a long while…and seeing this poor kid Franklin here makes me think of my own!…Who’da ever thought this is the way my life would wind up?” The ship treated him to a clean-up and grooming, and its medical scanners observed, “…his readings are quite similar to those I took earlier on…the human form of Frankie Raye.” Raymond ultimately proved heroically indispensable in a battle involving Galactus and interstellar invaders, but revealed to no one where he developed his expertise in battle.

In the ensuing issues, clues were planted that pointed more and more to a planned reveal of the man called “Raymond” to be Thomas “Toro” Raymond, father of Frankie Raye and sidekick to the original Human Torch. However, the subplot was never resolved due to cancellation of the book. Raymond’s final soliloquy found him musing, “…I was foolish to believe I could re-enter a world filled with super heroes. When I was a boy it was different. But the world has changed too much for me to ever fit in.”

An ironic footnote stated, “We’ll see Raymond again in the future, of that you can rest assured!” To date, no other writer has yet picked up the thread. A rather anticlimactic end to a heroic life.

He is a true homage to the spirit of the early super-sidekick concept: plucky, ambitious, courageous, and just plain loyal. We thought we’d pay him tribute this week and remind our readers of his contributions to Human Torch, Marvel Mystery, and Sub-Mariner comics over the years.