Review - Firestorm, The Nuclear Men 1-6 (New 52)

Issues Reviewed: Firestorm, The Nuclear Men 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (New 52)

Written by: Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone

Art By: Yildiray Cinar

How I Read it: Single Issues

Where Collected: The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men Vol. 1: God Particle 

This new, violent Firestorm series sets up a very interesting new status quo for the character(s).  In the old DCU, there was only one Firestorm.  Ronny Raymond was killing during Identity Crisis and Jason Rusch replaced him.  The big idea here is that there are multiple Firestorms.  Ronny and Jason are BOTH main characters and BOTH can turn into a Firestorm.  Even more interesting, they are not alone.  There are several other people/countries that have Firestorm tech, some aquired incomplete on the black market.

The first issue kicks off by introducing a very violent special ops team (working, of course, for a mysterious corporation) searching for items that belonged to Martin Stein.  Ronny, the star quarterback, and Jason, the smart kid, both go to the same high school.  They do NOT get along.  An attack by the special ops team on their school causes Jason to activate a device in his locker, unexpectedly turning BOTH Jason and Ronny into Firestorms.  The two firestorms also have he ability to fuse together to form another, monstous intity, Fury.

The fight with the special ops group continues through next few issues.  The mysterious corporation, known as Z-Tech, throws more special ops troops at the Firestorms, followed by a hulking, failed firestorm experiment, Helix.  The fight with the corporation goons goes on a bit too long, and the second set of "powered up" soldiers seemed unnessessary and had a silly gimmick.

By the time the chaos is over, Z-Tech turns on one of there ops teams, and convinces the boys to join with them.   This leads into the last few issues, which I enjoyed the most.  The boys go on a mission and interact with other firestorms, leading to lots of emotion and big explosions.

The art by Yildiray Cinar is very dynamic, especially during the big fight scenes involving the multiple Firestorms.  For all the dark themes, the comic is firey bright, with the colors really popping when the Firestorms interact. 

Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone co-write these first 6 issues.  Simone leaves after this and I wonder how much influence she had on the last few issues.  The first issue was full of great ideas, but the next few drag quite a bit.  Things pick back up in the last 3 issues with the introduction of even more Firestorms and the boys' first mission.  There was enough good material and ideas here to make me want to continue on and see what Van Sciver can do on his own.