Firestorm, the Nuclear Man: Reborn

Firestorm (collected editions)

by Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle (Illustrator), Keith Champagne (Illustrator)

Jason Rusch is an ordinary college student. Lorraine Kelly is a respected United States Senator. Merged together, they wield the atomic forces of the universe as Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. One year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Firestorm must stop a deadly nuclear accident and a threat to his very existence. It all leads to an epic battle with Killer Frost and Mister Freeze that rages from the mean streets of New York City to the very heart of the sun!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2007

About the author

STUART MOORE is a writer, a book editor, and an award-winning comics editor.

Among his current writing projects are THE ZODIAC LEGACY, created and cowritten by Stan Lee and published by Disney, featuring an all-new team of teenaged super heroes in a series of illustrated prose novels and graphic novels; DOMINION: LAST SACRIFICE, a comic book series for Amazon/Jet City; and THANOS: DEATH SENTENCE, an original Marvel prose novel. Recent work includes EGOs, an original comic book series from Image Comics, and GARTER'S BIG SCORE, an original ebook novella for Kindle. He also contributed two series, TEACH and OUT WITH A BANG, to the launch of the online comics app Stela. Other comics work includes WOLVERINE NOIR and NAMOR: THE FIRST MUTANT (Marvel); FIRESTORM (DC Comics); assorted Star Trek and Transformers projects; and the science-fiction graphic novels EARTHLIGHT, PARA, SHADRACH STONE, and MANDALA. Prose writing includes the novel version of Marvel’s CIVIL WAR, and Disney Worldwide's JOHN CARTER: THE MOVIE NOVELIZATION.

Reviews

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Jason Rusch as a character, but this series got consistently worse as it went along. The early, uncollected issues show a hesitant Jason figuring things out, bonding as Firestorm with whoever happened to be near. This made for a really interesting avenue for the stories.
This volume feels chunky and doesn't really highlight Jason well as a character.

We covered this series over on Comic Book Coffee Break: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/fr...

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firestorm is the character that always has so much promise but never has any standout stories. Here, Jamal Igle delivers some fantastic artwork but Stuart Moore's plot is pretty standard and the dialogue is weak. The desire to have fire or ice related villains must be a strong one but its very cliched. Overall, this isn't a Firestorm story that will go down as memorable.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn’t Smallville, where Superman/Clark Kent grew up. Firestorm / Jason Rusch has real life problems.

As the book explains: Jason Rusch is “an ordinary teenager - except in times of danger. Then he glows with the power of an atomic furnace, merges his form with another person, and together they wield the primal forces of the universe”. He’s also a young black man with almost infinite power at his fingertips.

An enjoyable read with layers of social commentary, as well as mystery and excitement. This is a perfect book for someone new to comics, as well as long-time "fan boys and girls" looking for good old-fashioned superhero fun.

Read the full review on my blog.

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dear DC Comics, how many people have been part of Firestorm now? Is it enough to just kind of have a League of Firestorms? Firestorm, for those of you in the cheap seats, is DC's SECOND merged superhero, after Dr. Fate. Merged means there's two minds in there, and the buddy cop movie formula used to be Professor Stein (a physicist) and a teenage kid. This is kind of weird placeholder story between DC's 2007 crisis and whatever the next thing was. Good comics, but nothing groundbreaking, and a character who can manipulate matter at the molecular level should be cooler. Art was good, fun couple of arcs, nice cameos - could have done with less romance drama and less "Firestorm matrix."

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firstorm was one of my brother's favorite characters in comics so he turned me on to them. Of course it has been years since I followed it. Apparently they redid the Crisis of Infinite Earths (guess I need to find out WHY) and something happened to Firestorm and he is now Jason instead of Ron and Professor Stein is missing. It was good to see Firehawk again and Killer Frost (one of my favorite villians) but I think without more background I was too confused. And so I am feeling nostalgia for Ronnie.

[Etienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent plot and characterization. It's a bit hard to suspend disbelief for the Firestorm Matrix stuff, but that's comics for you.

The best part of this series is probably Brian Stelfreeze's covers.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite mediocre.