HERO OF THE WEEK: FIRESTORM (DC)Real Name: Ronnie Raymond
First Appearance: Firestorm #1 (March, 1978)
Fight Club Ranking: #886
Featured Fights:
- vs BRIMSTONE: Legends #1 (Nov 1986)
- vs BRIMSTONE: Legends #2 (Dec 1986)
What a weekend! Narrowing it down to just one Hero of the Week has not been an easy task!
We had announcement trailers for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3 and Mortal Kombat 11 at The Game Awards on Friday! The first official trailers for Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home, (the latter, albeit, only witnessed by those attending a Brazilian Comic-Con)! There was also last night's broadcast of the first part of the hotly anticipated CW Three-Part Elseworlds crossover featuring previously discussed HOTW The Flash!
With all of these incredible multimedia heavyweights throwing haymakers from the hip -- what ultimately piqued my interest? It turned out it was something from comics! More specifically: Firestorm - The Nuclear Man, who had a major moment in this week's Doomsday Clock! Read on if you don't mind spoilers!
The highlight came in last week's Doomsday Clock #8, where Firestorm became embroiled in the "Supermen Theory", which supposes hostile military conspiracy is responsible for the high density population of super-powered individuals in the United States.
Newsarama documented the key events - most notably Firestorm's pursuit of Pozhar - which resulted in the accidental transmutation of everyone in Moscow's Red Square into glass. This unusual event, along with Superman's attempt to pacify Russia, has apparently brought them to the brink of war.
The political thriller has obvious overtones reminiscent of Watchmen, functioning quite openly as a controversial pseudo-sequel and crossover, but the eighties reference also seems to extend to the pre-New 52 DC Universe, where Firestorm and Pozhar were significant players, emerging together out of the American/Russian tensions that played a major role in late-eighties, post-Crisis DC Comics.
The more DC Comics can evoke the spirit of better days, the more interested I'm certainly going to be. We've been looking back at the period more often on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths, including two noteworthy episodes in this year's featured fights, from Suicide Squad #6 and Suicide Squad #43.
There's still a twinkle of hope that the entire exercise of Doomsday Clock, and its largely unnecessary exploitation of the Watchmen brand, might at last be walking back the damage done with Flashpoint and The New 52. At the very least, it's bringing the Golden Age heroes and the Justice Society of America back into the picture, which is welcome.
Whatever the end goal is: I got a real kick out of Firestorm being back in the spotlight, mixing it up with old enemies (and friends), and having a heroic moment as he reached into the matrix of his powers to restore human beings who were turned into glass.
Yes, I also enjoyed the People's Hero of Russia callously shattering those same people as they and military tanks rushed to attack a Superman desperate to protect the very lives they were ending. Somehow that just didn't seem in the spirit of Hero of the Week. Maybe if Stalnoivolk shows up, eh?
If you like late-eighties DC Comics, be sure to check out the 2018 Feature Fight Recap and vote for those Suicide Squad battles I mentioned. The Top 20 fights of Season 2018 will be crowned this month. All you have to do is click those links as many times as you like to register a hit for the respective battle! Vote for as many fights as you like - as often as you like!
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