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Sep 29, 2011 Web Exclusive By Jeremy Nisen

Firestorm #1—or, as written on the cover, The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #1—resorts to somewhat heavy handed racial conflict to make some kind of a point, perhaps to some expense for this rather enjoyable comic with neat sci-fi/super science twists.

On the high school front, it’s jock vs. nerd, as future Firestorms Ronnie, the quarterback, and Jason, the school newspaper reporter, clash over an article the latter’s been assigned to write about the former. Ronnie’s white, Jason’s black, and this becomes a center point for their conflict, where Jason makes Ronnie doubt that he’s as colorblind as Ronnie would like to believe. The split narration and the juxtaposition of each at home with his respective single parent is fairly deftly done, but in my opinion could have carried more weight minus the racial aspect—or at least if it had been an implied issue rather than a club.

On the “international super science intrigue” front, a bunch of mercenary-type schmucks are torturing past associates of apparently deceased genius Martin Stein, attempting to recover “magnetic bottles” which house some sort of “god particle,” one implication being that the proper genetic type can utilize these particles to become a superhuman.

The cerebral debate between the two students suddenly pales when the mercenary crew descends on the school, looking for the last magnetic bottle. They kill the coach and one of the football players. Then, sort of out of nowhere, Jason announces he’s a genius (“All right, you know I’m smart, right? Well double how smart you think I am. Then double that”), and that he was a confidant of Martin Stein. And Jason has the last magnetic bottle. This is where the story flow lost me; any hint of this prior would have improved the readability immensely. In any case, the bad guys figure out Jason has what they want, and are aiming to kill him and probably everyone else. Then boom! Deus ex machina (“god in the machine”), meet god in the bottle! With one not-so-magic word (“Firestorm!”...that’s potentially cheesy), Jason is…Firestorm! But, wait—Ronnie’s a Firestorm too? Wha-huh?

Okay, that’s kind of neat, I liked the idea. And the fact that the female merc appears to have been transformed into something weird as well (probably Killer Frost, a classic Firestorm villain) is fun. But the silly way that the Firestorms start fighting with nuclear blasts and flying around and shouting clichéd statements rubbed me as wrong.

Of course, the end—when the two nuclear men somehow merge into a nuclear monster (cheesily called “Fury”), some of the junky stuff can be forgiven. Although why Fury the Firestorm uses the term “Sweetcheeks” I can’t guess. Have they merged into Mel Gibson after a traffic stop?

So here’s the final score: There are great concepts; awkward transitions; good characters meshed with good characterization; a little heavy handedness; clean, expressive, dynamic art (which I regret not mentioning earlier); some fun surprises; and some really hate-able villains. Potential is there. I wonder if some of the awkwardness stems from a co-writing relationship between Gail Simone and Ethan Van Sciver, but whether that’s the culprit for the odd stuff or not, on balance this is a solid reinterpretation of a classic DC concept. (www.dccomics.com)

Author rating: 6/10