Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #1 (1978)

   On Friday, home sick and propped up in my chair, I binged watched about 5 episodes of CW's The Flash. One of the main storylines was Firestorm. This character has aesthetically been one of my favorite superheroes, since the days of the Nuclear Man being a regular on the Super Friends/ Super Powers cartoon shows and his involvement in Crisis.
 
    As a comic, the book seemed a little too old for me. I liked the art, but the stories were very complicated for a 5-8 years old boy. The premise was that teenager Ronnie Raymond and physics professor Martin Stein were involved in a nuclear explosion that caused the two men to form a single superhero- Firestorm. Many of the stories revolved around the dangers of nuclear power and the struggle for equality amongst the sexes. Like I said, this was some complicated stuff for a grade-schooler to wrap his tiny little brain around. So, I stuck to enjoying Firestorm on TV instead of print.

   Well, finally getting to see Firestorm in a live action version was an awesome treat. I loved how the CW handled the dynamic of having the Nuclear Man made up of two separate people. Plus, having it explained that the reason the superhero looks like Ronnie but has the brain of Stein as a sort of survival of the fittest amalgam of the best of both men made perfect sense to me. Plus, it didn't hurt having the great Victor Garber play Dr. Stein while providing the interior monologue for Firestorm. It all worked really well.

   So let's flash forward to last night. I'm currently reading 'Showcase Presents: DC Comics Presents: Superman Team-Ups, Volume 1', in which I got to issue 17, a team-up with Superman and Firestorm versus Killer Frost. Normally, I would just read on and tried to make connections when previous storylines are mentioned. But in both the introduction and the 'next issue' blurb for DCP #16, it's urged that you first read Firestorm #5.
 
 Well, I'm riding the high from my Flash-binge and I just happened to have the complete 5-issue run of the first Firestorm series. So, naturally, I decided to give the adventures of the Nuclear Man a solid read.

   Issue #1 is the origin story. It's pretty much what I already told you about how it came about that Raymond and Stein have the ability to fuse together. The most Interesting aspect of this story was the character of Ronnie. He's a dumb jock and in a twist that you don't see anymore or ever- he's bullied by a super smart nerd! When Ronnie decides to run with an anti-nuke crowd in order to impress a pretty girl at school, he ends up a patsy as this gang is seeking to blow-up the new reactor in town to keep it from becoming a potential pollution hazard.

   I'd like to know who the brains behind this idea were. Wouldn't the destruction of a nuclear power plant even before it goes online be a bad thing? Wouldn't the uranium rods cause some sort of meltdown?

   Well, nobody said Ronnie Raymond was a rocket scientist.

    Other than that flap, it was a pretty good opening act. The cover was great and the art inside was awesome. But with a story by Gerry Conway, who co-created the character of Firestorm with Al 'Marvel Fanfare' Milgrom, I'd expected a little better thought on the logistics of destroying a nuclear power plant.

   Not bad for a find in a comic book grab bag.

  Worth Consuming

   Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.