The Fury of Firestorm #4 – Jeff Lemire, Writer; Rafael De La Torre, Artist; Marcelo Maiolo, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: This series, which has now been revealed to be nine issues long, is turning into the dark counterpart to Lemire’s work on The Terrifics a few years back. While that book was a fun, Silver Age-accented reinvention of the DCU’s weird-science roots, this one takes those same roots and twists them into something dark. We knew that Martin Stein was a corrupt scientist who lured Ronnie Raymond into the Matrix, but we didn’t know he was part of something much bigger – Project Superman, an alliance of scientists that aimed to create their own superheroes. They included Niles Caulder, Will Magnus, and Simon Stagg – all of which had close ties to other superheroes. We know one created his own superheroes – but did the others? That’s the question Firehawk asks, and the answer twists just about everything she knows about her relationship with Firestorm in the past.
This series is really rooted in the work of the late great Gerry Conway, who wrote almost the entirety of Firestorm’s longest-running solo series and gave him an extensive rogues gallery and supporting cast. Firehawk is a character who hasn’t gotten a spotlight in a very long time, and most modern fans have never read the run this book references, so it’s pretty amazing how in only a few issues, Lemire has pulled us into this strange world of engineered superheroes and created a tragic narrative that shows how all of them have been pawns for so long. Stein here is a pretty despicable character, but also so pathetic and driven by pain that it’s impossible to fully hate him. The scale of carnage unleashed by Firestorm is such that it’s hard to see where the character and the name can come back from it, but that might be the point. This is easily the best thing to come out of Doomsday Clock since the original series.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
