Fizzit

Even if you're not a Firestorm fan, you've probably heard the recent news that Victor Garber is joining the cast of The Flash tv show as Professor Martin Stein, one half of the Firestorm character. News like this always has websites throwing together graphics of the actor next to their comic book counterpart as part of their coverage of the story. I thought we'd have a bit of a look at what people came up with.

The most widely used artwork came from this panel out of Brightest Day #1

Veezo.com went with a generous shot of the comic panel, with Victor Garber a bit squeezed out.

Variety.com had the same idea, but went for a closer view.

Not to be out-done, comicbook.com cranked the close-up even higher. I've gotta give them bonus points for finding a picture of Victor Garber with a similar pose, rather than just sticking on the first photo they found.

For my money though, the winner when it comes to the use of this panel is comicbookresources.com, who actually spent a bit of time making things look all fancy rather than just pasting two pictures next to each other. Even if it looks like Victor's shoulder is trying to talk.

Next up on the popularity stakes, and the most obvious choice when you want a basic visual explanation of the characters involved, is the cover to the third Firestorm annual.

Wegotthiscovered.com and firestormfan.com both had the same idea.

Starburstmagazine.com took the "Ronnie Raymond who?" route and cropped him out of the picture entirely. OK sure, this is all about the Professor, but that's a bit harsh right?

The "if you only knew how close you were" award goes to tvline.com for this little gem. They got both Firestorm actors in there (nice job!), but gave us "the floating head of Ronnie Raymond" instead of it being the other way around. So close to being (accidental) genius!

Scifi4me.com put in a valiant effort but this looks kinda goofy to be honest. Good idea, good execution, but the wrong Firestorm picture to use for the situation in my humble opinion.

The cover for Firestorm v4 #0 was used quite frequently when Robbie Amell was announced as Ronnie Raymond. Sharetv.com dust it off again for Martin Stein.

Similarly, the variant cover for Brightest Day #2 was used a lot for the Robbie Amell announcement. Here it is from geekynews.com...

... and also from deadline.com.

It seems there's a version of this cover with The Atom removed from between Firestorm's hands and replaced by some fancy fire effect. I noticed this when the picture was used for Robbie Amell, but I wasn't sure if it was just a random photoshop one of the news sites had come up with or what. It must be a thing if multiple sites are using it? Here's the original for anyone that's wondering: