Stumblebum Studios Archives

		Archives	Home

Down But Not Out

by Drew Clements westofmiskatonic@gmail.com

Welcome back to the second edition of Down But Not Out! I hope you found last week’s walk down comics’ past a fun one. This week I dug deep in my collection to find a nice one. Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #14 Original Release Date: July 1983 Writer: Gerry Conway Artist: Pat Broderick Inker: Rodin Rodriguez Letterer: Adam Kubert Rating: 4/5 Plot: Martin Stein’s ex-wife has sold him out to the Enforcer, an armored mercenary out to capture him. Why? Who is Enforcer working for? Comments: I’ll admit that I’m only vaguely familiar with Firestorm (do I HAVE to follow that up with The Nuclear Man?). With that being said, I hope to be able to review this without angering too many of his fans (I can see it now! Hundreds of Firestorm fanboys filling my inbox… okay… the four people that read this filling my inbox with… four letters…). Since this column is about getting people interested (or not, in the case of the ones I review negatively) in older comics I’ll take it that you, the reader, knows very little about the Nuclear Man. I’ll give you a very short history lesson: Martin Stein + Ronnie Raymond = Firestorm. That’s it. Through a freak accident the two were able to join together to form the lead character. Ronnie Raymond controls the body while both inhabit the mind. This is good since Martin Stein is supposedly a brilliant scientist and RR is a great basketball player. Done. See? That wasn’t too bad now was it? This issue opens up with our hero flying through his city and coming a bit too close to a window washer. By mistake Firestorm knocks the guy from his perch, but being the hero that he is, saves him before the pavement below crushes his skull. Firestorm apologizes and admits to thinking too much about being late to work. After returning the window washer to his place on the side of a building, Firestorm comes to his destination: a back alley where the two split apart bringing our loveable normal Joes to center stage. Apparently Professor Stein recently lost his job at Concordance Research and good friend that he is, Ronnie Raymond is getting the Prof’ a job where he works. Stein admits that he doesn’t have any experience in the field, but Ronnie assures the man that if HE could do it, it couldn’t possibly be hard. So what “field” is this? Ronnie Raymond has been nice enough to get Martin a job as a cook at the “Bun ‘N Bun” fast food joint. Unfortunately, the Professor’s fears were right: he doesn’t do too well and ends up getting fired. In defending him, Ronnie also manages to lose his job. It’s just not a good day for our heroes. I really need to say that the whole fast food scene is quite a bit more entertaining than I’m making it seem. The above paragraph is nothing but a fast summary of the high points, but the scene itself is just plain fun. Things gets worse for the boys when Martin Stein’s ex-wife Clarissa Clemens sells out the old man. Soon Enforcer arrives on the scene and quickly dispatches Ronnie and kidnaps Stein. A short while later Ronnie regains consciousness and finds that for some reason he is unable to transform into Firestorm (apparently this transformation can occur across distances). Move to the next scene and we find that Martin Stein has had disrupter-pods locked onto his temples, which prevent the transformation. Stein is quickly stashed in a room that he finds oddly familiar. It’s an exact re-creation of his old lab just before that accident fused he and Ronnie. Determined to get out, Stein finds a soldering iron and puts it to his temples to remove the pods. Very cool! Minutes later RR finds himself and Stein joined as Firestorm in an unfamiliar location. They bust out of the replica of Stein’s lab and take down some bad guys. Unfortunately, Enforcer takes Firestorm down without too much effort. Then it’s time for the big reveal. Who exactly has been pulling Enforcer’s strings? Why did this person want Martin Stein kidnapped? Why it’s no other than Stein’s former humble assistant Danton Black! Who!? Yeah, I don’t know either, but apparently this guy was around when the accident happened that created Firestorm. He calls himself Multiplex and he shows movies… okay not really, but that would have been cool, wouldn’t it? No? Fine, the guy has power over atomic fission. Happy now? That’s the cliffhanger ending. The villain spouts off his origin and that he’s going to whip some ass. The art is fantastic for the year it was produced. You can’t quite compare it to the stuff that’s out now because there really is a different style going on. Why should you pick this up? The bottom line is that this is just a fun book done in an old-school fashion. It ALMOST has a classic Amazing Spider-man feel to it and that’s probably because it came from the VERY capable mind of writer Gerry Conway (a personal favorite of mine, so I’m biased). Despite my near-Firestorm virgin status, this book really got me interested in the character because it was so completely accessible. It doesn’t take itself too seriously (see the fast food scene) and has some pretty fun villains too. While it’s not exactly a book that will go down in history as something absolutely amazing and original, it is still solid stuff worthy of your attention. It’s not the hardest series to come by either so you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating it.