Okay, time for me to rain on this parade. I didn’t know he had kids. Young kids. This alters the mix considerably. This makes him an asshole. Cops and firemen, to name but two, place their lives on the line every day to protect others. There was nothing Steve Irwin was doing that he could not have done—as did, say, David Attenborough—without putting his life at risk. This takes this from tragedy to stupidity, and, worse, irresponsibility.
Imagine, 24 pages of superhero adventures produced by the same writer and artist every month!! How did they do it?
Androids (i. e., artificial humans) tend to blur the line between living and non-living. Especially in a case like the Human Torch, where his origin tends to establish him as something much more than a clever assemblage of non-organic parts. The instability” which originally caused him to burst into flame spontaneously indicates there’s an unknown factor involved. Push come to shove, I would put Jim Hammond into his own category, and grant that, altho he is not of woman born,” he is, in a true sense, alive. In other words, not a toaster.