Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The often imitated never surpassed FIRESTORM!

Ronnie had a killer rogue's gallery! Loads of great villains!

Tokamak was a little dull, but I loved Multiplex! (Although his powers were completely changed once he was used outside of Firestorm's exclusive rogues gallery.) The Hyenas were also cool, and I kind of like how they kept getting killed, and then showing up again, like nothing happened. In my head-canon, they are kind of like werewolves, and can only be permanently killed by a special substance / method, but it isn't silver (since they are were-hyenas, not were-wolves, and they'll pretend to be killed by silver, just to confuse the issue...)

Granted, I was much more a fan of Firehawk, because of those awesome fire energy wings (later blue in color than the red above), than Firestorm himself. What an amazingly cool spin-off character!

Firehawk does have an awesome visual with her blue fire wings!

I love Firestorm's ridiculous blousey costume and flaming head. I think of all the JLA Firestorm and Red Tornado had my favourite visuals when I was a kid!

I love that one story where Martin Stein whipped Hector Hammond's ass too, that is one of my favourite JLA stories in general

His work on Firestorm is possibly THE career highlight for Pat Broderick! He and Gerry Conway did a bang-up job on Fury....earning, imo, a favorable comparison to to Lee/Kirby/Romita Spider-man! No, I don't mean it's AS good as all that, but I think Fury was the most well done a teen hero was depicted to that point since early Peter Parker. Since then, you could definitely argue Tim Drake, but between Peter and Ronnie, it was.....a teenage wasteland!

Man... I wish I was at a real computer so I could link to Firestorm's awesome first appearance on Super Friends!

One of the fun parts about Firestorm was I could relate to many of his early problems! I always wished I had such cool powers in real life so I could escape from the awful parts of school

And now I can!

Firestorm was fun to read. Despite Ronnie's problems, there was a light touch to the comic. It's art was good and Ronnie's powers always made things interesting. There were also plenty of new villains and a strong supporting cast. Firehawk for the JLA!

Stormy also brought a lot of energy to the JLA, with his enthusiasm coupled with Stein's knowledge behind him.

Every couple of years, it seems like one company or the other attempts to create a 'Spider-Man' for the new generation, a young hero who has to juggle powers and a life.

Firestorm felt like one of the more successful attempts at capturing that dynamic, and the decision to have the young hero not be the genius in and of himself, but to have a genius sort of on-call in his brain, with the Professor, was a neat touch, and might have even made him a tad more relatable than Peter himself, as Peter, for all his woes, is far from the 'everyman' that he's sometimes touted as.

It's funny how often they attempt to recapture that dynamic. The last version of the Ray, the post-death of Superman Superboy series, the Ronnie Raymond Nova, Speedball, the new Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, etc. That sort of 'young hero, grappling with self-discovery and life events' gets recycled quite a bit.

Unlike the mentored heroes (Robins, for instance), there's a lot of uncertainty and false starts with these stories, which can make them fun. After a time, we expect the heroes to grow up (and stop making dumb mistakes), so it allows a kind of storytelling and character growth and learning curve that we wouldn't tolerate if it happened to Batman or Captain America (who we expect to be pretty darn near the top of their 'learning curve' by now!).

Poor Ray. Having such a manipulative &!&!&!&#& for a dad. (I'm looking at you Golden Age Ray!)

But I digress...

Firestorm's earnestness and ability to laugh at himself was very refreshing. Having him be so powerful only added to likability of the character. And I have to say, despite his young age and inexperience he seemed to fit right in with the rest of the League!

The influence of Stein, I think, gave him a sort of Captain Marvel vibe, in that he could act more mature than his years, 'cause he had an adult in his head to keep him from saying anything too dumb.

I think there could have been some good interactions between him and others, particularly Batman, who likes to 'figure people out,' based on this sort of contradictory output from him, one minute saying something mature, that an experienced teacher with many years of dealing with students might say, or something scientific and technical with the Flash or Atom, and the next acting more like a high school kid who is getting B's in science and has to work to not make a fool of himself in front of a pretty girl. (And I can imagine it being distracting for a hormonal hetero teenage boy to hang out with Wonder Woman, Black Canary and Zatanna, in their typical fishnets, sports bras and / or star-spangled panties.)

Batman being Batman, I could see him getting awfully suspicious about Ronnie's personality / knowledge inconsistencies and it turn into some sort of comedy of errors...

I just searched this to make sure: Did you know DC has never reprinted the old Firestorm series....not even in the massive cheapy B&W "Showcase Presents..." series! What the hell?!?!

There is a TPB of Firestorm's first series, however, which I believe I reviewed here somewhere!

Oh! I overlooked that one! I never read any of his short-lived original series, and I don't think I read those back-ups it reprints, either! eBay, here I come....

The Jason Rusch Firestorm had a weird fascination with Doctor Light in her "covers everything" costume, and didn't really so much as glance at Zatanna in her fishnets or Vixen with her V-necked costume. Hmmmmm!

Any idea where the review is?

Okay, not actually much of a review, but at least a few comments can be found here and on the next page.

Yep, about as long-winded as I expected! For a guy of your profession, your reviews tend to be incredibly......concise?

So....did you kinda love it, really love it or totally love it?

Honestly, I don't remember it too well, other than the generally positive feeling towards it!

Definitely an early Spider-Man kind of vibe to it, though!

I'm on such a huge '70s comics kick lately (Avengers & X-Men mostly, with cravings for defenders, Dr. Strange and JLA) that this trade suddenly feels like a MUST-HAVE!

I am all about the Silver/Bronze age right now. Here's Firestorm trying out for League membership in "Another Nail" alongside new takes on the Astral Mage and Halo.

Firestorm, along with Flash, was the first DC hero I loved as a really little kid, because of his awesome costume, name and issue covers. Later I loved the powers, duel-person motif and of course Spidey vibe, which I agree was done perfectly.

It's criminal that DC allowed what was essentially their brightest "new" star fade away in the late 80's--especially since he was probably the last truly iconic hero DC had ever had. Ostrander's run, while well written, is partially to blame I think.

Still, there's never been a reason why the series couldn't work again. As much as Jason Rusch's addition always felt lame and forced, even with him as part of the series it would still be easily doable. All you need is a creative team that actually loves teen protagonists and superhero comics.

Preach it, my bruthah!

Honestly, I was looking forward to the New52 relaunch of the book because: a) Ronnie was back to being a part of Firestorm, and b) Gail Simone was co-writing it. But, OMG, was this an abortion or what?!?!

I think DC was so intent on making this Firestorm different and cutting edge that they forgot that the original concept was already all of those things and so much more! Just tell a goddamn story working with the amazing core concept, and it'll be fucking GREAT! This is FIRESTORM, Not Captain Planet meets Psi-Force meets someone's crappy wet dream of what a great comic should be!

Yeah, I was really hoping Firestorm would be a book I would really like again. A big disappointment. Like Lardy, sticking anywhere near the core concept of the book would have kept me around, but they couldn't even do that.

Yeah DC, don't fix what ain't broke!

Oh wait...

Old habits die hard, sadly.

I've always loved the totally bizarre randomness that is the inclusion of a one-shot Superboy villain (Astral Mage) as a JLAer in that story.

Halo is looking fine! (And her costume synergizes nicely with Ronnies!)

Is Halo the only original Outsider to have been pretty much abandoned? I've seen Katana in the new 52, and Geo-Force, Metamorpho and (Black) Lightning got some use before the reboot, in the Justice League, no less!

Astral Mage, meh. From what I can read, he could do anything, including accidentally give people the power of Superboy! That's a little more power than I'm comfortable with.

Halo is looking especially curvy, and since the original Halo is dead this Halo could happen ... oh wait ... she's dead but active in Batman Incorporated as part of an undead squad .... "The Dead Heroes Club"

I swear, I didn't make that up!


I would like to reimagine Astral Mage as a super hero with astral powers ... and not all the rest. Maybe Native American or from the East.

I'm scared to ask but... Halo is dead? When did that happen?

I remember the original Violet Harper body dying in the 90s series but since Halo is an incorporeal alien entity, she then just inhabited Marissa Baron's body.

Has that body, or the alien entity, also died now?

I have no idea. at all. i didn't even know about Marissa. Maybe new 52 Halo is different.

oh I read up. Halo went back to Violet's body ... after marissa ... no explanation ... then after a long time and the blackest night battle ... violet went to heaven or something ... and halo went back to earth (in violet's body i presume?)


the current halo operating in the new 52 batman incorporated dead heroes club is not dead but was presumed dead after a (failed) trap explosion. now they perform covert ops for Bats.


ive not read any of these issues though and am relying on wikipedia.


(i couldve sworn she died in blackest night. my mistake.)

^ Oh who can even keep up with the DCU anymore.

They've all died at one point or another... and they're all dead to me now anyway.

I finally read the Firestorm TPB last week that Eryk and I alluded to a few pages ago. It collected the five issues of the first, short-lived (because of the DC Implosion) series, plus the Cancelled Comic Cavalcade of the unpublished sixth issue and several of the backups that appeared in Flash.

I thought it was utterly fantastic! These were teen superhero comics done right, even if some of the "hip" lingo seems terribly dated. But the stories were fun, the villains interesting, the subplots engaging and the core dynamic between Ronnie and the Prof still feels fresh.

I'd forgotten entirely, for example, that Prof Stein didn't remember anything about being part of Firestorm when they were separated. The Flash backup stories had Ronnie come clean to Stein and explain their double life to him. I wish the original series had somehow never been cancelled because I feel this fascinating twist got short shrift because of having to truncate everything due to the uncertainty of being a backup, not knowing that the much more successful second volume would eventually come. Interesting and brave, though, that Stein turned to alcoholism as the missing, unexplained time took its toll on him.

There are other intriguing plotlines from the original series that I wonder if they ever got picked up in "Fury", such as Doreen's sister and the intrigue surrounding Ronnie's principal. I'm going to dig out my Fury collection and read it sometime in the near future to see. I've never read every issue that I bought as back issues many years ago, and I'm unsure of how complete I managed to get it. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

It's disappointing, though, that the TPB didn't include the entirety of the run of backups on the Flash. There's still probably a good 6-10 stories from that run that they could have easily included. A lot of what IS reprinted from those backups is a bit repetitive as it (understandably) recaps Firestorm's origin and early adventures for those who missed the original series. So including the entirety of the backup run would have given us a lot more bang for the buck and helped me fill in the holes.

The art by Al Milgrom on the first series is surprisingly good. Al has always been a much better inker than a penciler. His work on the Kitty Pryde and Wolverine mini and on West Coast Avengers are some pencilling examples that don't stand up well. But working on a solo book on a character he co-created must have been more his thing. It's not the most beautiful work ever or anything, but the work is solid, even inspired.

None other than George Perez did the pencils on the backup stories. While solid work, though, it's hardly vintage Perez. It looks more like he did layouts and relied on the inkers more than anything.

So, once again, my '70s/Bronze Age frenzy pays off by revisiting a character I've always loved by reading a trade of his earliest adventures I'd never read before. Writer Gerry Conway seems to have as many misses as hits, but this collection reaffirms my feeling that Firestorm was most definitely one of his hits!

My introduction to Firestorm was not the comics, but the final two seasons of the Super Friends TV show. I was intrigued that this super-powerful, kinda weird and scary-looking character had the voice of an average adolescent. Around the same time, I had a similar reaction when I first watched reruns of the early 80s Spider-Man cartoon, having a passing familiarity with the character, but having been scared of him until I heard him speak. Many years later, having read lots of comics featuring both characters, I don't think that's a coincidence. Chronologically, Ronnie Raymond was the most convincing teenager since Peter Parker in the early years of Spider-Man. That Ronnie was more of a jock than a nerd was a refreshing twist, showing that neither stereotype is valid.

I have the first couple years of "Fury of Firestorm", but I won't say anything that might spoil Lardy's re-reading fun. I'll just say that Pat Broderick's art is gorgeous, and the stories are, for the most part, "Good Conway" rather than "Bad Conway".

Honestly, as a kid I was convinced that Firestorm was a villain....and then a reformed villain! I'm sure this has something to do with his unusual (for the time) appearance.

(Oddly enough, I thought that Condo Arlik must have been a reformed villain himself. After all, "Chemical King" sounds more in line with the LSV names than the LSH!)




Also refreshing is that jock Ronnie was actually being bullied by nerd Cliff Carmichael!



Fury is part of the reason I've always admired Pat Broderick's art. That and his run on Captain Atom were both exceptional artistically. (Oddly enough, iirc, on both titles his eventual replacement was Raphael Kayanan--not a bad artist but a letdown after Pat in both cases.)

And I fully expect to enjoy re-reading Fury! Even if it wasn't the best thing ever, I'm sure my nostalgia for it would take up some of the slack!

Cliff Carmichael was a great creation of Conway's for sure.



Agreed 100%. Broderick also did some nice work for Marvel on Captain Mar-Vell and Doom 2099. Part of me still wishes he had stayed on Legion of Super-Heroes for more than just a few issues.

Gerry Conway is returning to Firestorm in a new mini beginning in January. As co-creator of the character and it being, imo, one of his best writing stints, Gerry returning has me cautiously optimistic. I hope that: 1) he ditches the terrible new 52 version, and 2) actually revisits the classic version courtesy of Convergence making other realities still existent. Ronnie as a teenager/college student with Prof Stein as his other half would be ideal!

Thanks for the news, Lardy. Like you, I think Conway's Firestorm stories are some of his best work, and like you, I'm cautiously optimistic. That said, I really hope it doesn't turn out like the Retroboot Legion.

Coincidence that Conway is returning to this so soon after the criticisms of DC's royalty programmes?

I hope this captures the fun of the original, and not the bitterness of the JLD.

Yeah, you've got to wondered if his sudden change of attitude on that issue isn't somehow connected to their throwing work his way.

It's kind of weird, because Conway was the one comic book writer of his generation who was able to break away and make a niche for himself in the live-action adult-oriented prime-time TV arena. If he's been reduced to scrounging for comic book work like all the others, that's really sad.

Yeah, just checking on IMDB, it doesn't look like he's getting a lot of tv work post-Law and Order.

Wow. It's like almost any writer who got his or her start in comic books is somehow cursed to keep coming back long after they've said what they had to say.

^^Note that I'm not sure how much you can read into that, as I think he'd actually be pretty well off after serving as a co-producer on a Law and Order spinoff, and he's just a few years shy of retirement age anyway, so it may not be any sort of financial necessity or anything that's leading him back into comics.

I hope you're right, EDE.

Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing. And he's still relatively young at 62. However, he's also gotten some recent work from Marvel doing a Spider-Man arc, so it's not his first work in the field recently. I would hope that having had several successful stints as writer/producer on recognizable shows, he's probably made some good money that he hopefully didn't burn through.

I like to think that he's doing okay but has had the itch for comics again recently. And, hell, if DC wants to give him some work AND address some of their creator rights fallacies, I say more power to him!

^^And....basically Edie beats me to the punch by making all the same points!!!

BTW, I wouldn't mind at all if this revival were accompanied by Pat Broderick on art....

That's a long shot, though. No artist announced yet nor length of the mini.

Anyhow, I hope the Firestorm mini-series is a return to the original concept of a fun series about free-spirited high school student Ronnie Raymond and sensible Professor Martin Stein.

Unfortunately, when Broderick parted ways with DC in the early 90s, there was reportedly a great deal of acrimony involved. IIRC, it involved a lack of health benefits.

Yeah, definitely. If DC is smart (er... not that I'd put too much faith in that), they'll use this Convergence stuff as a kind of springboard to allow creators to tell stories that don't have to be tied to the main DC continuity.

LOL

I met Broderick last year at a convention and trust me when I say he has no lost love for DC.

I'd like to think that too. However, since Conway's retraction & related articles didn't really indicate that DC was doing anything other than continuing to screw people over, I don't think that was the case. So, it looks as though Firestorm is a sop to keep him quiet. Perhaps it will allow him to "create" lots of characters that he can them claim royalties for when they get ripped off for TV.

I imagine that someone will come out and say there's no link, but the test will be on how DC handles their royalty programme.

There's always the chance the new work is off the back of DC hearing Conway's grievances from 30 years ago after they had a chat. Giving him this out of some sympathy, even if they are unwilling to change the royalty issues.

Like a lot of folks, Broderick's art was a draw to the book, although he wasn't the only one on Firestorm I think.

I quite liked at least one of Ostrander's storylines. Prof Stein's illness and Firestorm's stance leading up to the new matrix. I got the feeling that the book had stagnated after Ronnie had gone to college. But that could have been Conway on his way out of DC, which doesn't sound as though it went at all well.

After that, the book never really picked up again, and there was no return to the things that made it a hit in the first place.

The recent discussion in the Legion Forum of Pat Broderick's brief 1982 run on LSH sent me digging into the longboxes for my back issues of "Fury of Firestorm."

I've re-read the first 4, and...O-MI-GAWDS, Broderick's art is GAW-GEOUS! Doing a solo book rather than a team book, and a less-densely written one than the Legion, seems to have made all the difference! And that guest appearance in issue 4 by the JLA...Ohhh, WOW!

And Conway's stories are, if a bit dated, at least they're forgivably dated, and they're still some of his purest, most unforced writing.

What fun!

More thoughts to come as I get through the rest of the issues in my collection.

Just finished issues 5 through 7 -- a rare special-guest-villain appearance by the PIED PIPER, and the delightful debut of PLASTIQUE!

The book's just been getting better and better. How is it that DC has collected such a relatively small amount of Firestorm stories, and none at all from "FoF?"

Next two issues have Ronnie & Prof Stein fighting TYPHOON, which seems like a surefire pleaser, but then we have the return of HYENA, who is *cough* my least favorite Firestorm rogue (werewolves, or variants thereof, have always given me the willies) and I also remember that story running way overlong.

We shall see.

I heard that the letter page in issue #7 was particularly good.

Yes, I believe they printed a letter by a certain law school graduate from...Teall, is it?

^ THIS!!!

I'd definitely want to have the entire Conway run (spanning the first series, the Flash backups and his entire approximately 50+-issue FoF run--and, hell, maybe a few key JLA stories thrown in) collected over a couple of omnibuses or, at least, a series of TPBs!

I have to believe there's a market for these to justify DC putting them out. I mean Marvel has done several Werewolf By Night and Deadly hands of Kung Fu omnibuses for Chrissakes!!!

High-Five, Lardy!

And before I read your post, I had already taken the step of e-mailing DC at their website, saying pretty much what you did.

I've been meaning to reread the entire Conway Firestorm storyline for years. The final issue of the first series was one of the first superhero comics I remember reading at the tender age of 7. Good thing I had the attention span of a 7 year old, or the DC Implosion might have broken my young heart.

I found the Ostrander run readable but unspectacular, and I don't feel they ever managed to quite get the idea right since. It's a hard prospect, since revision is essential: going back to the Conway status quo could never work today, and revised takes are always a crapshoot.

The only Conway work I have really enjoyed as an adult is his Amazing Spider-Man. (Less the death of Gwen Stacy, but that is what it is.) I tried his JLA not long ago, and I found my feeling depended almost entirely on the artist. Basically, I liked his Perez drawn stories. Firestorm always seemed like the "purest" Conway, another reason to reread it. I have heard good things about his Thor, but I just have trouble getting my head around the idea that 70s Conway and 70s Thor could really be two great tastes that taste great together. Conway seems best at "feet of clay" Spider-Man type stories, not the high drama that Thor needs to succeed.

When I was 10, a really dumb-assed Ecuadorian President made ridiculous cutbacks on products imported from foreign countries -- including comic books. My little heart WAS broken!



I consider that run to be the worst thing Ostrander wrote in his 80s prime. The fun aspects of the book had already started to get discarded even before Conway left, and Ostrander just turned the book into a stupid, pretentious imitation (as opposed to emulation) of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run.



Fun fact: Part of the reason Mike Carey started doing a lot of superhero work for Marvel in the mid-late 2000s was because DC had turned down all of his superhero proposals, including one for Firestorm which was especially close to Carey's heart. DC's loss was Marvel's gain -- I loved how he found organic ways to evolve and advance and mature Rogue.



Conway's Thor is worth sampling, IMHO. At the very least, it's sure pretty to look at, thanks to Big John Buscema.

Conway's JLA...hang on a sec, gotta edit a link into this reply...

EDIT: http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=916864#Post916864

FoF was one of the two books (the other being LSH) I regretted dropping the most after I cut all DC books to switch over to Marvel after a friend got me hooked on the X-Men. I was 13 and fickle and just fell head-over-heels for the grittier and more serialized aspects of the MU. I sold every DC I owned to buy more X-Men and soon spread to other MU titles like old favorite Spidey. But Fury and LSH were the main two DCs that I would look at their covers and occasionally flip thru to see what was up.So there was definitely regret, but having a $6-$8/week allowance kept options tight.

While I had bought LSH for a year and a half, FoF was only about 7-10 issues in when it was dropped. But it clearly made an impression.

After Crisis provided a gateway back in to DC, I would eventually make my way to both. For LSH, it was the death of Superboy. For Firestorm, it was the advertisements and press for a big change in the character that would eventually result in his being revealed as an elemental. At that age, I was attracted to big status quo changes as jumping on points. Honestly, I enjoyed the take on the character at the time, probably because I wasn't aware of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and how the Firestorm take could seem derivative of it. I was aware, though, that it was a much different tone from the issues I'd loved so much years before. I was so into "serious" comics at the time that it was little more than an itch in my memory.

I'm conflicted about the elemental stuff these days. I don't like to deny my initial enjoyment of anything, but it's hard not to acknowledge how much it irrevocably destroyed the character in its wake. If this had happened in recent years, someone would have just undone what Ostrander did, but back then, creators tended to respect deaths and major status quo changes--at least more often than they do now and more likely on lower tier characters. (I think there was some usage in Extreme Justice, though, that attempted some kind of restoration? Not totally sure.)

Ultimately, I'd just have to read it all again to gain more perspective. I suppose the book must have been nearing cancellation if the decision was made to try to create some excitement around the character again. Certainly, its ultimate fate would suggest that. But I would have liked to see how the book would have evolved over time naturally with its basic concept still intact. I'm sure he wouldn't exactly be the same, but I would have liked to see how he turned out--certainly more than where we're at now.

Ostrander definitely had an obsession with Moore's Swamp Thing. He literally made Firestorm and Captain Atom elementals, and for all practical purposes he made Spectre a "justice elemental," although in that case it worked very well. I feel like there was a fourth example when I first assembled this argument in my head, but if there was I can't recall it now.

On the subject of Ostrander's Firestorm: I remember reading an interview in which Ostrander kept insisting he wrote the story in which Professor Stein discovered that he was part of Firestorm, even though Conway had actually done it shortly before he left. Eventuallly the interviewer dropped the subject because they were irritating Ostrander. I suspect that this is something that had long bothered Ostrander about the book and, since it wasn't handled to his satisfaction, he created the "Ronnie forced a merge against Stein's will" storyline to cover the same emotional territory of betrayal and distrust. Then over the years, his memory blurred the details, and he just remembered that he disliked the nonconsensual aspect of the character, and that he wrote a story to address it.