Nostalgia Week: Firestorm

Ahhhh, my first introduction to my favourite character. If only I hadn't found this issue to suck horribly at the time, I could've been a fan some 15+ years earlier than I actually was.

Firestorm #29 (1984) by Conway, Cavalieri, Kayanan, and Rodriguez.

I bought this from a local dairy. They had a tiny selection of comics, and never the same title twice. I don't know how that worked, but at the time it was the only local place to get comics. As a bonus, it was only 2 minutes walk from my house. As a minus, the comics were right next to the porn, which was pretty embarrassing (and yet strangely alluring...)

Things open up with some guy taking on Firestorm with the power of the wind.

Taking a cue from the bad guy, Ronnie creates a giant fan to blow him away (literally). Not such a good idea when your targets powers are wind based.

Spectators do what spectators tend to, and manage to get blown off the building.

Whew. Stratos was just a distraction though, to clear the way for the terrifyingly monikered Bazooka Joan! Look out Firestorm!

That was close. He rounds things out by turning the top of the building in to a giant magnet, pulling both villains to the ground. Victory! But not all is well- suddenly magnetising buildings might raise some problems.

Hey kids, do you need to turn a bad situation into a worse one? Just call 1800-FIRESTORM.

...

Ok, moving on. A volcano suddenly appears in the middle of the park! This is where the comic really started to lose me when I first read it.

That's pretty odd. Firestorm will have a solution though.

Cool. There's a problem though, not everything is as it seems.

Razor blades! It seems FS is seeing things. What's up with that?

Chalk up another dopey villain to Firestorm's rogues gallery.

Meanwhile Ronnie's scaring the crap out of everyone while he takes on a non-existant volcano.


This issue was really not a good first exposure to the character. As a 7 or 8 year old, this comic just did not make any sense. For a start I knew nothing about his powers, so the whole transmuting thing was puzzling. I totally missed the whole 2-people-fusing thing, which is what would eventually lead me to give FS a second try. Then he's seeing things. It was just... confusing.