Stewman Boulevard

Firestorm

I don’t think it’s a common piece of knowledge but I totally love the frak out of Firestorm!

My one and only submission to DC Comics, back in the 90’s, was an attempt to reboot Firestorm (who wasn’t appearing at the time and had, I think, last been seen in the uber 90’s EXTREME JUSTICE (thankyou to dreadpr for catching me up on that series!). It was actually fairly well received and my rebuke came in the form of a “we think it’s great but we have no publishing plans for that character” style form letter, which is framed on my wall to this day.

My pitch involved a guy by the name of John Raymond who was fresh to University, majoring in writing and a total rock ‘n’ rolla. He meets a young girl by the name of Cynthia Scott and has a best friend called Brett Anderson (who I think was gonna end up becoming some sort of bad guy down the track, but it’s not written down anywhere so I am kinda vague on it)

In much more of a Marvel manner than a DC one, I had John involved in a random accident, a fire in the chemistry lab during a lesson causes an explosion and of course douse’s our hero. He is naturally rushed to hospital. At the very end of the pitch he foils a bunch of druggies who are attempting to steal drugs from the pharmacy within the hospital in his new persona as Firestorm! Security footage is leaked to the press and the ‘new’ Firestorm is revealed to the world. The very last page being a picture of Killer Frost doing something dramatic and swearing to bring this new Firestorm down!

How the chemicals changed John and where the original Firestorm is, were of course all planned, but nothing concrete. Just ideas at that point.

The title of my pitch??

FIRESTORM: REBIRTH

I shit you not!

Obviously years later DC did in fact reboot Firestorm and whilst I haven’t read any of the new series (is it even running still?) I have a terrible fondness for the character, his design, powers and potential (I have an issue in which he takes out the entire JLA by himself, including Superman!).

For years I sought out and eventually tracked down one of the old Firestorm Super Powers figures at a toy fair (this was way before e-bay my friends) and it is this figure which has provided the first two pictures in this post (He stands proudly next to my Super Powers Green Lantern by the way)

This last pic is what prompted todays post