Initially, I was luke-warm over this title. Back in May I wrote a quick "eh, so what" post about the first issue. I picked up #5 today and I like what's going on. It may be a stretch, but this new Firestorm's origin is like Spider-Man's. The guy's not innately heroic... and he hasn't found any real motivation to aspire to such ideals. The origin isn't finished yet, so there's plenty of length to go.

Next issue (#6) will explain "whatever happened to Ronnie Raymond" and is set to tie into "Identity Crisis". That might be worth my 2.50.

Has anybody out there read any other issues of this new series? Should I be anxious to track them down?

Have you picked up any issues since his one? Firestorm has been one of my top three characters since the early 80's (the other two are Ambush Bug and Blue Devil). I've been waiting for a new series since the odl one got cancelled (actually, I've been waiting for a new sereis since about #50 of the old series once they started fucking with the Firestorm matrix). I've liked what I've seen so far on this new series, especially with jason being able to affect organic material, and teh explanation of how Stevie died is that Firestorm "used him up" trying to heal Jason's wound. Now, with Ronnie (for now) playing the part of the professor, and being able to switch between old school and new Firestorm is a cool twist, too.
So far, thumbs up from me.

Hey Jim. Glad to see you here, on what's essentially become my Message Board of Solitude.

I picked up Firestorm #6, the "big" Identity Crisis tie-in. It's been a tough book to find around Denver. I don't have it on my pull-list and tell myself to look for it when I'm browsing at the shops. Trouble is, I never see it. The updates you cited sound interesting. Is the title doing okay, sales-wise? DC's been rather trigger-happy with cancellations lately.

Not surprised they brought back Ronnie. I just wish all the nostalgia for Ronnie had kicked in about 18 years ago. Like you, I could have done without the "Fire Elemental" crap. It's funny that you mention issue #50. I had been reading (but never buying) Firestorm at my local grocery store around issue 40-49. I remember Moonbow and Firehawk giving me a chubby. I bought the third annual, which was cool in how it was all written in novel format ---few panels, all typed out with ..gasp, paragraphs and stuff! I finally decided "I'm gonna' start buying Firestorm with issue 50". I bought the double-sized issue 50 and was extremely dissapointed. The big plot was that someone had cut a football player's chin-strap, and he was paralyzed. Bad story, but freaked me out everytime I strapped on MY helmet for the next eight years!

The title was on lame-o cruise control, but became extremely cool when Prof. Stein began to die. His dying wish was to rid the world of nukes, so Ronnie took Firestorm on a global disarmament mission. He finally got nuked and that's when things really went south. The Russian guy came along...and Firestorm got lamer and lamer, culminating in the Neal Adams-ish Elemental junk. The "nuke our hero and make him disappear only to re-emerge in a different manner" was ripped off almost panel-by-panel in Hulk and Iron Man. In Hulk, it marked the transition into Mr. Fixit and in Iron Man it marked the end of red/silver Iron Man and the Armor Wars.

Oh yeah, another nifty aside story: the first "Super Powers" figure I bought was Firestorm. The toys had been out for years, but I had thought the JLA/SuperFriends concept was too childish for my 10-12 year old self. I remember seeing a close-out sale on all the figures at K-Mart in late 1986, and picked up Firestorm for a buck. He made several appearances in my GI Joe stories of the time. I think I used my old "Hawk" figure as Ronnie Raymond and imagined he had enlisted.

I was thinking about doing a write-up of a Firestorm/Superman team-up from that recent batch of DC Comics Presents I picked up. It was inspired by the real-life "Falcon and the Snowman" story and featured a villain named Kriss-Kross (he'll make ya JUMP-JUMP!). Might be a one-joke write-up, but if I get a number of requests greater than ZERO, I'll probably add it to the ol' site.

Consider this request Number One!

I am greatly dissappointed in lack of follow-up to said promised write-up.
Also, have you pick up Firestorm lately? I think they've done a fantastic job with this series so far. Also, over on DC's message board, the writer and artist, Stuart Moore and Jamal Ingle, continually post and answer fans questions. it's really interesting.

Oh, it was followed up. Albeit on the main site, under "Comics > Tales of the Bargain Bin".
Linky:
http://www.estragand.com/comics/dcp45.asp

Haven't been following the book lately... heard it was going to be cancelled?

Ahhhhhhh, memories. Back in the day, I had every issue of DC Comics Presents.....
As for Firestorm being cancelled, I don't think so. The sales have been inching up the past few months, and I think last month it broke the top 100, coming in at about #88 I think. Like I said, Stuart has had some pretty interesting stories (granted, teh past few have been IC tie-ins) and Jason Rusch is now merged with Prof Stein (but from what I hear for only a few months) but I've dug them.