Fury of Firestorm 57, DC Comics, cover-dated March 1987.
"Due Monday" by Barbara Randall, with art by Jose Delbo and Steve Mitchell.
What happens when Professor Alan jumps into a fill-in issue of a title he has conspicuously avoided since the podcast began? Will the story's university setting be enough to earn a passing grade from the difficult grader?
Listen to the episode and find out!
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Link: Shag's Firestorm Fan blog
Promo: Is It Jaws?
Next Episode: Solo Avengers 7, Marvel Comics, June 1988.
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Source:In the Ballpark
Music in the episode:Unstoppable Spirit, by Roman DudchykMusic promoted by Pixabay
A fun episode covering what is clearly a fill-in issue. Sometimes these one offs are cult classics.
ReplyDeleteI was a big Fury of Firestorm fan from issue one of the Conway/Broderick run having first learned about the nuclear man when he joined the JLA.
I think I left the book around issue #50 so I have very little knowledge of 'blank slate' or 'elemental'.
But truly I want to talk about your filing!!!
I am an alphabetical kind of filer but I usually ignore preceding adjectives. The Mighty Thor is under T for Thor. The Uncanny X-Men are under X for X-Men.
But 'fury of' is a phrase, not a qualifier. So, like you, I have this series slotted by Fury and not Firestorm.
I cannot tell you the number of times I thumb to 'Fi ...' looking for these books until I remember the 'Fury-ness' of it. F-U indeed.
That sounds about the time I left the title, as well.
DeleteAnd no, this fill-in is not a cult classic.
Now that I associate Firestorm with our buddy Shagg, filing it under F.U. does make more sense 😉
No way around it. This issue isn't particularly memorable. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's actively bad, but anyone might be forgiven for failing to remember it. Thanks, all the same, for covering it.
ReplyDeleteOne quick note: re: continuity. As you noted, this was intended to be a fill-in which might go in almost anywhere. However, as it happens, there's a glitch. Not a big one. But you do have to mentally "rewind" a few issues to slot this story in, as it's clearly *before* the Legends crossover that appeared just before it. During the events of that story, Ronnie had initiated the merger against Professors Stein's will and, after a very tense exchange, it was agreed that Ronnie would NOT initiate the merger again without Stein's okay. I can't help but wonder if less savvy readers were confused when this issue came out just after those events.
(For the record, I guess I think of this title as "Firestorm v. 2" for the purposes of filing. It goes after the original Firestorm series, and before the later ones, rather than having the true "Firestorm" titles together and pushing this one back to where "Fury" would belong.)
Thanks, Mark. I did not know that continuity blip. I would assume the story was written long before the Legends issues were created. That’s the risk with an inventory story!
DeleteThe key to filing these, I think, is that all 100 go together. WHERE they go is up for debate, as long as they are all there TOGETHER.
Thanks for the comment, thank for listening.