The Human Torch is flying over the city late at night when
he spies flaming footprints in the asphalt. He traces them from a sewer to a
dark alley where he discovers a Lava Man; the Lava Man takes him for an
assassin sent by his enemies and there is a scuffle. Lava Man eventually
realizes Johnny is not an enemy; he collapses and confesses he is dying and
needs to see Thor or the surface world will be destroyed….
On his way to a meeting, Dr. Donald Blake sees a message to
Thor written in flames in the sky. He makes an excuse to the cabbie, changes
into Thor, and flies out to the Statue of Liberty’s torch as per the message.
There he meets Johnny and his old friend Molto the Lava Man. He explains how
Jinku, witchdoctor of the Lava Men, had a vision in which his people conquered
the surface world. Jinku persuaded the king to follow this vision and they
captured a superweapon from the Moloids, planning to use them to simultaneously
activate all of the volcanoes on Earth. Molto recoiled at this and fled to warn
the Avengers but Jinku caught him and zapped him with his energy staff. Molto
now dies, crumbling into dust. The Thunder God then snatches up Johnny and in
an instant, they are in Hawaii, watching as Mauna Loa erupts. Thor quickly
carves a ditch in the volcano to draw the lava away from the inhabited part of
the island while Torch absorbs the intense heat and releases it to fuse the
volcano closed. That doesn’t quite accomplish the feat so Thor calls down a
rainstorm to extinguish the flames. Thor detects emanations from under the
ground at his feet so he and Torch tunnel down where they encounter the Lava
Men and their stolen weapon. There is a fight and the two heroes are overcome….
They awaken to Jinku telling them it was all a trap so they
could seize Thor’s hammer to provide the power they need to run their deadly
weapons. Jinku orders Johnny tossed in a magma pit. Jinku conjures up a huge
hand of stone to pick up Mjolnir and plug it into the earthquake machine. The
machine starts up…for sixty seconds, the time it took for Thor to transform
back to Don Blake without his hammer. So Don snatches his stick back,
transforms into Thor and smashes the machine to pieces. Human Torch arrives
having easily escaped the magma pit and recruited an army of Moloids to defeat
the Lava Men. The good guys win, Thor warns the Lava Men not to do this again,
and Jinku wants to know where his vision came from. No one knows...
…except the mysterious trio watching from another world and
laughing….
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