I AM FURIOUS (SMACK)
The Fury Of Firestorms: The Nuclear Men
Oh my god, that is the longest title of a comic. Firestorms is bad. Which sucks, because Gail Simone is awesome, and the idea for Firestorm is awesome, and they deserve better than this.
The original Firestorm was a composite hero, the joining of teen middle-of-the-roader Ronnie Raymond and Nobel Prize-award winning nuclear physicist Martin Stein. It was an attempt by DC Comics to try a more Marvel-style superhero during the Bronze Age of comics. There was an accident at a nuclear power plant (Stein was there to unveil new, safer technology, and Ronnie was there to try to look cool for his love interest). They merged and created the transmogrifier Firestorm, physically an enhanced Ronnie, but with Stein's voice in his head, giving advice and scientific know-how. But there were problems. Firstly, there was the traditional teen hero with bad time management stuff (like Marvel's Spider-Man). Also, Stein would black out and lose all memory of his time as Firestorm when he woke up. This eventually led him to alcoholism, but he did get better and manage to reconcile his mind and things looked good. But lots of stuff happened and eventually Ronnie became Firestorm on his own, and died, and a new Firestorm, Jason Rusch, took over. He could form Firestorm by joining with anyone, but certain people made better fits.
I'm not going equivocate: Jason Rusch was a jerkface. I believe that there are no bad characters, just bad writing, and for the longest time, Jason was written TERRIBLY. He was an asshole, and lots of people are when they're teenagers, but the problems were only exacerbated when Ronnie somehow came back and joined what was called the "Firestorm Matrix" for a few issues. Ronnie was a dolt, but he was always well-meaning and actually really insecure about his image as a dumb jock. Jason Rusch was an intellectual bully.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a bright guy myself, and have no problem with taking people down a notch while showing how smart I can be. But Jason . . . was not that way. He'd just be smarter and cooler than everyone and it got really annoying really fast, and he never really developed past that. Ronnie, with Stein's help, grew and he was always kind of a dolt his heart was always always ALWAYS in the right place, but Jason was always a cooler-than-thou type and that? Is really irritating. And the reason I make a big deal about it is because if anything, he's even WORSE in the new book.
Because he's also an entitled brat who attacked Ronnie for being a racist for NO GOOD REASON other than that he doesn't like sportos.
I honestly don't want to talk about it anymore. There's a group of government mercenary-types who are hunting down the method that Martin Stein developed to create Firestorms before he died, and for some reason (it's not explained in the first 3 issues) Stein sent the method to Jason before dying, and Jason triggers it, and both he and Ronnie became Firestorms, and they can merge to become a new being, called Fury.
And if any part of that sounds cool to you, have at it. It doesn't sound cool to me, it sounds ridiculous, and I could actually feel my head start to hurt just summarizing that. And that's just the first issue! The next two issues aren't any better, as the Firestorms' personality conflicts just seem to cause more trouble than the nominal bad guys of the issues!
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; there are just so many bad choices in this series, it hurts.
Oh my god, that is the longest title of a comic. Firestorms is bad. Which sucks, because Gail Simone is awesome, and the idea for Firestorm is awesome, and they deserve better than this.
The original Firestorm was a composite hero, the joining of teen middle-of-the-roader Ronnie Raymond and Nobel Prize-award winning nuclear physicist Martin Stein. It was an attempt by DC Comics to try a more Marvel-style superhero during the Bronze Age of comics. There was an accident at a nuclear power plant (Stein was there to unveil new, safer technology, and Ronnie was there to try to look cool for his love interest). They merged and created the transmogrifier Firestorm, physically an enhanced Ronnie, but with Stein's voice in his head, giving advice and scientific know-how. But there were problems. Firstly, there was the traditional teen hero with bad time management stuff (like Marvel's Spider-Man). Also, Stein would black out and lose all memory of his time as Firestorm when he woke up. This eventually led him to alcoholism, but he did get better and manage to reconcile his mind and things looked good. But lots of stuff happened and eventually Ronnie became Firestorm on his own, and died, and a new Firestorm, Jason Rusch, took over. He could form Firestorm by joining with anyone, but certain people made better fits.
I'm not going equivocate: Jason Rusch was a jerkface. I believe that there are no bad characters, just bad writing, and for the longest time, Jason was written TERRIBLY. He was an asshole, and lots of people are when they're teenagers, but the problems were only exacerbated when Ronnie somehow came back and joined what was called the "Firestorm Matrix" for a few issues. Ronnie was a dolt, but he was always well-meaning and actually really insecure about his image as a dumb jock. Jason Rusch was an intellectual bully.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a bright guy myself, and have no problem with taking people down a notch while showing how smart I can be. But Jason . . . was not that way. He'd just be smarter and cooler than everyone and it got really annoying really fast, and he never really developed past that. Ronnie, with Stein's help, grew and he was always kind of a dolt his heart was always always ALWAYS in the right place, but Jason was always a cooler-than-thou type and that? Is really irritating. And the reason I make a big deal about it is because if anything, he's even WORSE in the new book.
Because he's also an entitled brat who attacked Ronnie for being a racist for NO GOOD REASON other than that he doesn't like sportos.
I honestly don't want to talk about it anymore. There's a group of government mercenary-types who are hunting down the method that Martin Stein developed to create Firestorms before he died, and for some reason (it's not explained in the first 3 issues) Stein sent the method to Jason before dying, and Jason triggers it, and both he and Ronnie became Firestorms, and they can merge to become a new being, called Fury.
And if any part of that sounds cool to you, have at it. It doesn't sound cool to me, it sounds ridiculous, and I could actually feel my head start to hurt just summarizing that. And that's just the first issue! The next two issues aren't any better, as the Firestorms' personality conflicts just seem to cause more trouble than the nominal bad guys of the issues!
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; there are just so many bad choices in this series, it hurts.