JB, I've always been interested in the original Human Torch and I enjoyed the way he returned in your West Coast Avengers run, and your later Invaders reunion in the Namor series. 

I've also been interested in your take on intelligent robots and androids...specifically how such characters are not really alive and cannot really have feelings like true life forms.  (And please forgive and correct me if I'm mistaken about this.) 

So, my question is...is the original Torch a life form or is he a toaster?  You showed him as being very emotional and human when you handled him.  (Falling in love with Ann Raymond for example.) 

I understand in the golden age comics, the Torch's origin as an 'android' was mostly ignored after his first appearance and he was protrayed as being very human.  And then there's the fact that he has blood...that he could give a transfusion to a human that would not only save the person's life but give them super powers.  That last fact has always made it hard for me to picture the Torch as a machine. 

Do you view the Torch as a person or a machine?  Do you think he's closer to humanity than the Vision? 

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.

In other words, not a toaster.

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Although he could be, in another sense of the word.

The question becomes, I suppose, one of value. Knowing that the Vision's complete personality/memory/intelligence was downloaded into a computer in Titan (was it Titan? Memory blurs) allowed me to scrape his brain in my VisionQuest story, since everything could be restored with a literal flip of a switch. Should something that can be so easily copied and retrieved be treated as having the same intrinsic value as a human being? Should any of the human Avengers, for instance, ever risk their lives on behalf of the Vision? My vote would be no (as some of you have probably already guessed) -- but I would say that even if it were not possible to restore or "save" the Vision in any other way. He is a "toaster".

We know that the Vision is concious - we can see his thought balloons.

OK, the other Avengers can't see his thought balloons, but he certainly passes the Turing test. While that doesn't prove conciousness, if I was an Avenger I'd risk my life on his behalf.

When I read this, Machine-Man sparang to mind. I always thought of Aaron Stack as being more human than machine, even though he could do all that 'stretching' with his obviously mechanical limbs. He always seemed more like a person than did, to use the current example, the Vision (to me, anyhow). His realtionship with Abel Stack (his 'father') was what gave me this impression, I suppose.