Panel Vision - The History of DC Comics' Many Firestorms

Edited by Robert Beach 

This past week CW’s The Flash featured an episode entitled "The Fury of Firestorm." The character of Firestorm has been a major part of the show’s continuity since about mid season 1, but this latest episode has had to deal with the tricky situation of Ronnie Raymond actor Robbie Amell dropping out of the series due to scheduling conflicts with his film career. 

This means working out a way to swap in a new Firestorm actor, a task that would normally be pretty tough if this was any other hero but Firestorm. Firestorm is one of those weird superhero cases where multiple identities and various characters are built right into the characters DNA as well as populating his thoroughly bizarre history. 

FAILED BEGINNINGS

Firestorm began his, initially, very brief existence in 1978 at the hands of comics legends Gerry Conway. Conway had spent most of the ‘70s turning Spider-Man into one of the most popular superheroes on the planet, penning a lot of the now legendary Spidey stories including the death of Gwen Stacey and the 1976 Superman/Spider-man crossover comic that I’ll probably cover somewhere down the line. That particular crossover had more or less decided Conway’s future. From 1977 on, he would spend the next decade writing fairly exclusively for DC Comics.  

Though Conway had a lot of success with DC, his initial start with Firestorm in 1978 ended up pretty unfairly tarnished. The book, which is well remembered now, was pretty much exactly translated to the screen on CW’s Flash, with athletic student Ronnie Raymond and genius scientist Professor Martin Stein getting caught in a nuclear meltdown and merging into the composite being Firestorm.  Unfortunately, DC had the bad luck to be part of the DC implosion of the late ‘70s.

From 1975 to 1978, DC comics underwent a retrospectively ill-conceived marketing stunt called the ‘DC Explosion.’  In an effort to make up for dwindling sales, they announced a full 57 new comic titles over the course of that three-year period as well as an increase in the size of a standard comic issue. Despite DC spending mega-bucks on the endeavor, it did nothing but backfire, leading to even poorer sales and DC cancelling a ton of its new titles in what was sardonically referred to as the ‘DC Implosion.’ Firestorm ended up one of the unfortunate books that got canceled in the fall of 1978 with issue #5; however, Firestorm had the stroke of luck of being written by an incredibly popular and well-regarded author. 

When Conway was moved over to writing Justice League of America, he added Firestorm to the team’s roster. That popped Firestorm into the mainstream and, unsurprisingly, he gained some major traction with audiences as it turns out Gerry Conway is a legendary author for a very good reason. This renewed interest and popularity led to DC giving Firestorm a back-up feature in the pages of The Flash, which is why he usually ends up linked to the character in terms of continuity. Eventually, Firestorm returned to a solo comic in 1982.

A NEW SOLO SERIES

Never a huge success, Firestorm’s 1982 series entitled Firestorm: The Nuclear Man did prove solidly popular and lasted the entirety of the ‘80s with Firestorm developing a pretty well-developed supporting cast of arch enemies like Multiplex, Killer Frost, and even a fellow nuclear hero named Firehawk. Conway also used the book to play around with elements he had wanted to experiment with during his Spider-Man run, but didn't get the chance: examples like increasing the comedic elements and even delving into the nuclear arms race heating up again in the ‘80s. Personally, this is my favorite period of Firestorm history because this was when we got the most Professor Stein. Stein has always held a special place in my heart as one of the few explicitly Jewish superheroes in the mainstream, and I’m fairly certain the only major Jewish hero at DC. 

THINGS GET WEIRD

In 1986, Conway abruptly left the series for reasons he’s never felt the need to make clear. That’s when things started getting weird. It was John Ostrander picking up the book. Ostrander is a fairly decent author who’s always favored strangeness in his work with notable installments being curiosities like Hawkworld or the Michael Holt Mr. Terrific. Ostrander was the first author to introduce the idea that additional people could become part of Firestorm. See, even though Firestorm is actually two different people fused together and chalk full of nuclear bolts and transmutative energy, Conway never felt the need to actually explain how Firestorm’s powers worked in-universe.

So when Ostrander came on the scene, he penned a thoroughly bizarre story in which, during a failed attempt to blackmail the US and Russia into nuclear disarmament, Firestorm and a Russian superhero named Mikhail Arkadin were nuked in a joint strike by both nations. The result explosion ended up fusing the two together while Professor Stein controlled their body. This is more or less the start of the so called Firestorm Matrix, an energy system that can contain a seemingly infinite number of humans and store within their combined body an extra-dimensional energy source and not necessarily a nuclear one.

In 1989, Ostrander continued his radical and bizarre reinvention of Firestorm by having him become a “Fire Elemental.” See, in the DC Universe there are a collection of characters who have amazing power over the classical elements thanks to their connections to a mystical realm of existence known as the elemental planes.  Characters like Swamp Thing, Red Tornado, Terra, and Geo-Force are all connected to these elemental planes, and in 1989, it was revealed that Firestorm was also connected to it. 

Though uniquely interesting, this era of Firestorm isn’t particularly great as the weirdness of the concept overpowers the interesting ideas on display.  For instance, during this period Firestorm was made up of three people: Ronnie Raymond, Mikahil Arkadin (the Soviet Superhero), and a Soviet clone of the original Firestorm.  Professor Stein was still on hand to provide logistical support and such, but his role was greatly diminished.  During this period, Firestorm’s stories became a lot more political as he evolved into something more in line with an environmental crusader. He even met the elemental “gods of Africa,” during the run and got a spiffy new design to match his more mystical and elemental identity. 

ENTER JASON RUSCH

Eventually, Firestorm dropped off the map for about 10 years.  There was some nonsense in the interim time where Professor Stein turned into the sole Fire Elemental and became involved in the shockingly dull comic event War of the Gods as well as a thoroughly out of place story about Ronnie Raymond dying of leukemia. And none of it was all that interesting. In 2002, Firestorm ended up putting the past 10 years of weirdness behind me when Ronnie Raymond took up the mantel once more, re-dawning his original costume, and becoming an active member of the Justice League. 

Unfortunately, the return proved short lived as Ronnie was killed in the 2004 event comic Identity Crisis. We don’t have time to get into everything wrong with Identity Crisis right now, but one of the big mistakes is Ronnie’s death was essentially there for shock value and completely divorced from the actual plot of the comic. It was a lame end to the character that underscored a lot of poor decisions and a negative ethos that was infecting far too much of DC in the mid-2000s; however, Firestorm wouldn’t stay down for long as the mantel was taken up soon after by Jason Rusch, a new character created by Dan Jolley. 

DEATHSTORM

Jason Rusch is a weird part of the Firestorm mythos. He came about as part of DC’s scramble for increased diversity, one of the better elements that arose from the bad decisions of the mid-2000s, though he never really found his feet. The story was that he was a Detroit teen who accidentally encountered the Firestorm matrix and fused with it. For most of his tenure, Rusch didn’t really have a solid partner: swapping among a good friend named Mick; the ghost of Ronnie Raymond; a returned Professor Stein; and Gehenna, a mysterious metahuman Rusch eventually started dating. That fluttering about without much focus plagued most of Rusch’s initially 3-year run from 2004-2007.  It wasn’t till around 2009 that Rusch’s character gained any legitimate direction. 

In 2009, rising DC comics star Geoff Johns was given his shot at the big time with the maxi-event Blackest Night. Spinning out of Johns’ Green Lantern work at the time, Blackest Night was about the rise of the Black Lanterns, a horde of ring-animated zombie monsters that feed off of emotions.  On Earth, a whole bunch of the Black Lanterns were evil zombie superheroes complete with all their powers and abilities. 

One of the most deadly ones was a resurrected Ronnie Raymond nicknamed Deathstorm. Deathstorm ended up a major threat to the heroes, killing Jason’s girlfriend and absorbing him into his weird black lantern Firestorm Matrix. Eventually, Deathstorm was defeated, and Ronnie Raymond was resurrected as part of Blackest Night’s conclusion. With Ronnie back, he and Jason were first to combine to become the new Firestorm and re-established Firestorm’s position as Earth’s fire elemental. 

The fairly clever wrinkle to this story was Jason and Ronnie actively hated each other as Jason still blamed Ronnie for the death of his girlfriend. That same dynamic is pretty much where the character still is in the New 52 continuity. Even though the backstory isn’t there, the general idea remains that the two make up the Firestorm Matrix while also hating each other. Deathstorm also got to show up again as the evil Earth-3 counterpart to Firestorm in the regrettably terrible Forever Evil comic, which Deathstorm uses the Firestorm Matrix to trap the entire JLA inside of Firestorm. Since then, Firestorm hasn’t been seen anywhere in the DC Universe. 

FINAL THOUGHTS:

After going over Firestorm’s extended history in full, it’s become increasingly clear why the character has never really found mainstream popularity. Firestorm hasn’t even found mild success in the world of adaptation like similarly bizarre heroes such as Swamp Thing, Red Tornado, and Captain Atom, appearing only once prior to his appearance on CW’s Flash. The main reason for this is actually pretty simple; nobody knows how Firestorm works. So much of the character’s history has ended up accidentally predicated on the weird and incredibly vague mechanics of the Firestorm Matrix, which itself goes more or less unexplained to this day. So much of Firestorm’s history is based around introducing new powers and wrinkles to the Matrix without ever explaining the old ones. It’s no wonder fans have found the history pretty alienating and difficult to follow.  

Honestly, the best period for the character really was the stretch from 1978-1986 under Gerry Conway’s stewardship, it’s the only time that wasn’t so completely wrapped up in developing things Firestorm could do without explaining how he does them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when it came time for Firestorm to get his shot at the big time on The Flash the writers more or less jettisoned most of the character’s history outside the bare bones and made explaining the Firestorm Matrix their first priority. Hopefully, this new Firestorm will catch on with the mainstream, and the comics will file suit. After about 20 years of floundering around, I think Firestorm could seriously stand to get back to basics.   


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