Comic Trade Report> Firestorm: The Nuclear Man

In the last two seasons of Super Friends/Super Powers Team, a new DC hero joined the team. His name was Firestorm, soon to become my second favorite DC hero (Superman being #1 and as much as I love Batman he’s #3–which may be heresy nowadays but so be it). When I picked up Fury Of Firestorm #16 it was locked. Suffice it to say the current “New 52” version took too long to get the formula right. The idea of a hero that could not only turn things into other things but had a mentor in his head was a cool idea to young me and gave older me a bit of inspiration in a character I’ve created.

Before Fury, however, was the original Firestorm, The Nuclear Man comic in 1978, co-created by writer Gerry Conway and artist Al Milgrom. I’ve already reviewed the individual issues that make up this trade and I will link to those reviews at the end of the article. For this review we will focus on the trade collection put together by DC and released in 2011, but first some catch-up for anyone new to the composite hero.

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Mini-Comic Report: Marvel/Drakes series 2

I’m not happy that my first Clutter Report in some time is a crosspost from the other site, never mind one I only posted this week. However, I want to get back to writing for this site and this will hopefully be the first step on that front.

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Many moons ago we looked at the first collaboration between Marvel Comics and Drake’s snack cakes, a four-issue miniseries in which Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, and Silver Surfer were slowly drawn into battle with Doctor Doom to rescue Jubilee from his energy experiments. Apparently the promotion was good enough to create a second one in 1994, this time five issues long and drawing in the other X-Men.

Eric Fein returns as the writer of these issues with rotating art teams. Letterer Janice Chiang and editor Glenn Herdling, as well as the Editor-In-Chief at Marvel at the time, Tom DeFalco, are the only other consistent names. So until the Comicstorian (if you don’t know who that is, I think I know what the next “Internet Spotlight” is going to be on) finally goes over these, it’s up to me to complete the review of this event. Good thing we loved our Coffee Cakes and Devil Dogs at the future BW HQ at the time. Never really got into Yodels.

Hey, it’s me. Your clutter reporter.

In case you thought I abandoned this project I haven’t. It’s just things have been difficult when it comes to my clutter cleaning project. We buried my mother’s ashes in May and both my grandparents this week. (In mom’s case we waited for warmer days so people wouldn’t want to get back to their cars quickly, at the suggest of the funeral director. My grandparents’ ashes were spread on their anniversary.) I’ve also been trying to get a handle on my financial problems, which I was hoping the live stream I advertised in my last update would help with. Thanks to many technical issues that didn’t happen, which means bad news for my debt. I’ve also had a video project I’ve been doing for my cousin, which is the only income I’ve had lately and it’s just enough to pay my car insurance. Looking for work hasn’t panned out, either.

But I still want to get back on the clutter cleaning bandwagon. This place is still a mess and I have enough stress as it is. With the funerals over I have some calm time before the conventions start so hopefully I’ll be able to get some stuff done before the next distraction. I hope my problems haven’t deterred any of you from your own pursuits. Actually, that’s a question I hope some of you will answer in the comments if you ARE on your own clutter maintenance projects: how do you keep working at it without putting the rest of life aside and how do you handle long breaks to keep from giving up?