It seems your trying to hard to add all the details into the model without having a good base model to work from. Before you get ahead of yourself, you should model a basic looking torso, then start adding in the detail from there, otherwise you end up with using way to many polys (like on your torso, you could do the same amount of detail with half the polygons used...or even put the details on a texture rather than modelling them in).
I suggest redoing the torso, the first one you did looked much cleaner, this one however is looking pretty messy in the wireframe/flatshaded view. Theres just to many polygons in it for what is actually needed. Did you set yourself a limit on how many polys you wanted to use by the end of the model? if you set yourself a limit, it becomes great practice, as you start to see how many polygons you should be roughly aiming for, for each part of the model.
So, my suggestions are he following:
1: Set yourself a polygon limit
2: dont worry about adding in the detail untill you've got a solid base mesh to work from
3: Redo the torso, the head is fine (ok, maybe a bit poly heavy, but still, it looks good) the torso really is the biggest problem, I would suggest using a cylinder and then cut some edges into your model, and rotate/scale them to fit the basic shape of the torso. Only then you should be adding model edge's if you want to add in all the detail. Keep your polyflow as clean as you can, it will pay off if you plan to animate him.
Hope these suggestions help your progress in some way.
Glode
