Scanning My Collection: The Firestorm on Flash Adventures

So we’ve come to the end of my Firestorm comic collection, the trade featuring stories from The Flash. Not all of them, mind you. Just the first five stories, as collected in the trade. Firestorm ended at issue #5 but while that and other titles ended, DC wasn’t always willing to let certain characters go, continuing their adventures in back-up features in the surviving comics. In the case of our nuclear man (not to be confused with Nuclear Man) it was the pages of the Fastest Man Alive, which is why having him show up in the Flash’s new television show is sort of a homecoming.

Instead of trying to review these short stories in the DC Monday edition of “Yesterday’s” Comic I’m going to look at them here. They’re short but continue the adventures of high schooler Ronald Raymond and Professor Martin Stein, ignoring the cancelled comic and continuing from Firestorm #5. Next week we’ll be returning to the 90s in our Monday slot. I’m going to review these as story arcs instead of each one individually.

All stories written by Gerry Conway and edited by Len Wein, “Firestorm” created by Gerry Conway & Al Milgrom

“Firestorm Is Back In Town” (The Flash #289; September, 1980)

George Perez (penciler), Romeo Tanghal (inker), Gene D’Angelo (colorist), and Ben Oda (letterer)

and “The Secret History Of The Nuclear Man” (The Flash #290; October, 1980)

George Perez and Bob Smith (artists), Jerry Serpe (colorist), and Shelly Leferman (letterer)

For readers of the comic it’s a retelling of Firestorm’s origin from issue #1 and a recap of all five issues, but it’s not just another retelling. The hook, which changes Ronnie and the Professor’s relationship, is Ronnie finally telling Martin about their time as Firestorm, which Martin never remembers. He just thought he was having blackouts, driving him to drink and even hiring a private investigator to find out where he goes when he blacks out. (Which is kind of tough to do when the person your tracking literally disappears.) At first Martin doesn’t believe him until the subconscious Martin that advises Ronnie when they fuse suggests taking pictures of the transformation. Now convinced, Martin is still on board with Firestorm. Also, between the miniseries and these backups, Firestorm was asked to join the Justice League.

“The Hyena Laugh Last!” (The Flash #291; November, 1980)

George Perez & Bob Smith (artists), Lynne Gelfer (colorist), and John Costanza (letterer)

and “The Hostages Of Precinct 13!” (The Flash #292; December, 1980)

George Perez & Bob Smith (artists), Lynne Gelfer (colorist), and Ben Oda (letterer)

This feels like another catch-up story. Also there was apparently a story where Multiplex and Hyena did attack Firestorm, but it’s not in this book. We saw Multiplex attack Firestorm with his duploids and later meet up with the Hyena but that’s it. Hyena has also been out of the picture for a few months, the same length of time Summer Day has been resting in Arizona. (Hmmmmmm) Meanwhile, Ronnie has another run-in with Cliff over missing practice (part of Cliff’s continued mission to destroy Ronnie for no discernible reason other than be the reverse of the bully trope and annoy the living heck out me personally) but the basketball player, Jackson (instead of Jeff in the canceled comic I reviewed yesterday) stands up for Ronnie as his teammate, chasing Cliff off. Sadly we’ll see him again.

Later, Martin gets the job at Concordance Research we saw him at during Fury Of Firestorm before John Ostrander turned him into a college professor to keep him close to Ronnie when he moved the cast to Pittsburgh. He also fights the urge to have a drink, since Ronnie read him the riot act over hit if Martin wants to get his life back on track. Then he sees Hyena and summons Ronald to form Firestorm. The Hyena attacks the nuclear man before heading to a nearby police station (the titular Precinct 13 I imagine) to hold a press conference to, as the Hyena says, expose police corruption. Instead a burglar alarm sends the monster to head out while Firestorm saves the old man running the store being robbed. It’s not very interesting and I guess it gives us a bit more insight into the Hyena but otherwise it seems like a re-introduction of the cast and pointing to a missing story. (Maybe one Conway had conceived for later in the Firestorm run?)

“The Deadliest Man Alive” (The Flash #293; January, 1981)

George Perez & Rodin Rodriguez (artists), Jerry Serpe (colorist), and Milt Snapinn (letterer)

This is a slightly longer tale. While most were eight pages this clocks out at 13. While running fast enough to break the sound barrier, Flash (still Barry at this point) realizes he ran under the flying supervillain prison Superman houses his more deadly foes. The sonic boom disrupted the cell of the Atomic Skull and when Flash goes to investigate, he’s hit with so much radiation that his only chance to survive is getting Firestorm to absorb it. Unfortunately it’s more than Firestorm can handle and he ends up “intoxicated”. (That’s two stories in this collection where Firestorm isn’t sober.) Flash kills two birds with one stone by getting Firestorm to release the excess radiation by stopping the Atomic Skull. It’s a better short story thanks to the extra pages but it’s only the Flash appearing that probably got those extra pages, cutting short a Flash battle with the Pied Piper.

Firestorm would continue to appear in backup stories of The Flash until cover date January, 1982 and would include the origin of the Hyena before ending. Firestorm returned to his own title, The Fury Of Firestorm, cover dated June, 1982, as well as appearing in Justice League Of America. In 1984, Firestorm would debut in animation as part of Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, the first of two rebrandings of Super Friends to promote the Super Powers Collection toyline (we’ve looked at some of the mini-comics and now I need to do the Firestorm mini-comic and truly complete the Firestorm comic reviews until I can purchase more issues) and would appear in the final version, Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. These were my first introduction to Firestorm and the concept just seemed really cool. When I saw issue #16 of The Fury Of Firestorm I picked it up and enjoyed it. Firestorm has gone on to be my favorite not-Superman DC superhero and I hope to collect more of his adventures.

On this week’s The Clutter Reports review I’ll take a look at the trade collection the original series and the Flash comics I reviewed here tonight. I highly recommend checking out the good Firestorm stories (as in not the early New 52 tales and I never got into John Ostrander’s run) and hope you’ll enjoy the character as much as I do. And we can all ignore the fact that Cliff Carmichael existed. Because he sucks eggs.