The DC3 decided to take on the Herculean task of covering DC’s weekly books! Our coverage will rotate between creator interviews, issue reviews and annotations, and long-form pieces on featured characters. This, friends, is the DC3kly!
The Premise of Firestorm
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: one’s a super genius wiz kid – top of his class, primed and ready to do great things in the name of scientific advancement. The other is a football star – classwork rarely shows up high on his list of priorities, instead coasting through life on successes on the social ladder, in sports and with the opposite sex. Especially with the opposite sex. Can these two ever see eye-to-eye long enough to be the hero they can be?
That’s been the question with Firestorm for about a decade, but the concept hasn’t always taken the vintage buddy cop approach. As a concept, Firestorm has morphed a lot over the years – sometimes through subtle changes, and sometimes quite the opposite. And so, what a long strange trip it’s been for Firestorm since his creation in 1978. I’m here today to try to sort all of that out in an attempt to explain what makes Firestorm an enduring character, despite his status just outside the big leagues. I’ll recommend a few things along the way and hopefully give you a good primer on a character that the publisher has been featuring very prominently lately.
The Conflict of Firestorm
Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom created the character of Firestorm, whether intentionally or not, as a something in line with the Spider-Man archetype. Ronnie Raymond would develop his own problems as a high school student to go along with his trials under the guise of Firestorm. Firestorm has the ability to manipulate inorganic matter on an atomic level. Effectively, he can “create” whatever he needs out of other matter, providing an endless array of problem-solving possibilities. The essential character elements of Conway’s invention lie in the idea that Firestorm was embodied by two people – in this incarnation it was Raymond and Professor Martin Stein, a father-figure character who still hangs over the character in the modern age. Mostly, this pairing provided banter and a little bit of conflict, which remains one of the draws to the character today.
I’m going to skip over the John Ostrander “Firestorm” years for now, but I’ll come back to them later. The status quo of Firestorm today more closely resembles the early years, while the Ostrander years were quite a departure – though ultimately the most interesting and rewarding run that the character has seen.
The Firestorm of the ‘New 52’ found his roots in 2004, with the introduction of Jason Rusch – a brainy peer that would ultimately share the Firestorm Matrix with Ronnie Raymond and cause much more of a personality conflict as a result. This conflict was merely teased in Jason Rusch’s initial run with the character – Ronnie only co-inhabited Firestorm for a handful of issues. It wasn’t until “Blackest Night” that the pairing truly formed what would ultimately be the status quo of the character that we have today. In ‘The New 52′, “The Fury of Firestorm” co-written by Gail Simone & Ethan Van Sciver played up the personality differences in the characters, as well as even touched on the possibility of racial tensions between the two, albeit briefly. Simone left the book early, and Van Sciver wasn’t far behind her – leaving Joe Harris to try to carry the book, but it never really had a chance to get off the ground or find an identity beyond its buddy cop pairing. Dan Jurgens would end up riding the series off into the sunset, but it wouldn’t be Jurgens’ last turn with the character, as the very reason we’re where we are today is because he’s so heavily featured in “Futures End.”
For that matter, outside of the core “Justice League” characters that everyone knows and loves, Firestorm seems to be a character that DC Comics wants to push more than most. An iteration of Firestorm has had a major hand in nearly every major DC event from Brad Meltzer’s controversial “Identity Crisis” up to “Futures End”, but you might not have guessed it if you weren’t playing attention. Just like a Seth MacFarlane appearance without a Stewie Griffin voice, DC can’t get through an event without putting Firestorm in it.
Continued belowThat’s not a bad thing though, as Firestorm usually inserts into the event narrative pretty well. Even if Firestorm can’t carry his own book, you can otherwise certainly find him doing interesting things in the DCU at any given time. “Infinite Crisis”, The DC3’s personally beloved “52”, and “Blackest Night” are all worthwhile event titles where Firestorm is featured pretty heavily.
He damn near took center stage in “Brightest Day”, but this was also a series that began the trend of running the dynamic between Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch into the ground. A relationship that started out complex feels like it continues to repeat itself, even to this day. Ronnie is a hot head and Jason has a superiority complex. The two don’t get along and yet they have to, if they want to succeed. A relationship that feels like it already should have played out a dozen times over, continues to play on.
The Future of Firestorm
Spoilers for “Brightest Day” lie ahead
“Brightest Day” wasn’t great, but it did leave Raymond and Rusch in a really interesting place. By the end, while they hadn’t entirely reconciled their differences, they were working toward a common goal and you felt like they had made strides. That common goal? Survival. Because in 90 days (fictional time), the Firestorm Matrix would self-destruct if the two of them didn’t figure out a way around it.
Then “Flashpoint” happened, and we would never get to see what would become of that ultimatum. And here we are in a new continuity.
“Futures End” is re-treading the same unstable ground in the relationship between Raymond and Rusch. While DCU event books are traditionally a great showcase for the character, the “Flashpoint” reboot was quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened to this particular character at that particular point in time. A feeling of progress and the intriguing challenge that lied ahead was kind of tossed out with the bathwater on this one. It felt just like starting over, with not much “new” to show for it. At least not with these characters.
I look for “Futures End” to create the same sort of impossible challenge for Firestorm that “Brightest Day” left them with. A challenge that may move the characters that inhabit Firestorm forward and create new conflicts built out of more than just their personality differences. When we left Raymond and Rusch in last week’s issue of “Futures End”, it was stated that their time together as Firestorm was finished “forever.” We know that in comics “forever” is, at most, like 4 or 5 months. In a weekly series, that means we’ll see them back together in no time. A true boon for the character would be for the time apart to actually cause some growth. The growth that we all know is supposed to come with these types of character conflicts.
The Ostrander Years
I must say this right up front: this segment of the column wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for comic columnist Greg Burgas of Comics Should Be Good. Comics Should Be Cheap, but they should, first and foremost, be good. Mr. Burgas inspired me to read the Ostrander run of “Firestorm” what feels like a long time ago, having read his column on it, which I have linked to above. I would highly recommend that everyone read Greg’s column in addition to mine here, as I will be trying not to repeat much of what he says over there. It’s probably the definitive column on this comic run, so I will defer to it. That said, I will give you my personal experience with it.
Ostrander took a core character that was very much cemented in the real world (in a Peter Parker-esque fashion) and brought in a very prominent supernatural, almost spiritual element. I was immediately taken aback at how Ostrander accomplished the balance of real world politics and war mixed with some weird, Vertigo-esque fantasy elements. Firestorm’s place in the battleground of the world somehow made perfect sense, even if his existence seemed more convoluted and fantastical than before. That was really appealing to me, as a reader who had gotten very bored with the status quo and routine of reading the average comic book. At the time, I was trying to seek out oddball runs that were considered “classics”, while still being very much entrenched in mainstream superhero continuity of the time. I was looking for things like “The Death of Superman” and “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” and, ultimately, that also led me to Burgas’ recommendation of Ostrander’s “Firestorm.” It was just what I was looking for, and didn’t disappoint.
Continued belowDuring this run, Firestorm met African gods who taught him more about his status as an elemental – an aspect of his character that Ostrander introduced, and is really very different from the way Firestorm was depicted before or since. There were also the aforementioned political aspects, with Cold War ideas bleeding into his work. Firestorm took a stand against nuclear weapons – juxtaposing his known status as “the nuclear man.” Political bends to mainstream comics have always fascinated me, extending back to Stan Lee’s socially aware Spider-Man comics. Ostrander’s “Firestorm” took a lot of very current ideas (though not very current at all for my own self circa 2009) and filtered them past his titular hero. It was triumphant, maybe slightly dated, and never corny. Some very minor Cold War, arms-race aspects actually made their way into ‘The New 52’ “Fury of Firestorm” series, but pretty much solely on a superficial level. Nonetheless, there was a nice nod or two to the Ostrander run to be found.
If you’ve any interest in the character, this is the run that matters most of all. There are aspects of it that are just as goofy as anything in superhero comics, but once you get beyond the guise of the times, there’s a surprisingly prescient and intelligent comic at its heart. It’s easy to see why DC Comics course-corrected back toward a simpler, lighter version of the character, but that’s what makes Ostrander’s run so unique and important.
Recommended Firestorm:
“Firestorm” #58-100, plus Annual #5 by John Ostrander (and an odd alternate writer here and there) w/ art by Joe Brozowski, Tom Grindberg, Tom Mandrake, and various others.
“Infinite Crisis”
“52”
“Blackest Night”
“Brightest Day”, if you’re nasty.
Crisis on Two Earths – DCAU animated film.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold – Season 2, Episode 7 – “A Bat Divided”
Ronnie Raymond is magnificently voiced by Bill Fagerbakke, of Coach and Spongebob Squarepants fame.
