Another great episode guys. I’m glad the show continues in spite of the lack of Firestorm book…

Love it!

Chris’s response to the watch is a simple, “Pig Iron… cool!”

That struck me as a nice tribute to the Zoo Crew… and a hat tip to the old Earth-1/Earth-2 deal where Barry Allen read Jay Garrick comics. The Zoo Crew is real, but they are subconsciously influencing the showrunner for a kid’s cartoon show at the same time, heheh.

And the key issue here: teen insecurity. With the Stuart Moore run we had Jason, an insecure teenager, fusing with an elder mentor (Martin or Lorraine). With this run, I honestly don’t recognize Ronnie. Sure, he’s a jock who likes to have fun. But he’s so *headstrong*, so sure of himself.

The Ronnie I know and love was always putting himself down as a dumb jock. He was *never* sure of himself with girls. I don’t even think the old Ronnie would even *consider* cheating on a test— witness how strongly he reacted to Cliff Carmichael in FOF #40 (vol. II) when Carmichael accused *him* (old Ronnie) of cheating. (It turned out Ronnie aced his science exams because he had some of the Professor’s residual smarts.)

It was important to me as a kid because I was not by any means a jock. I was a classic nerdy kid. But the old Ronnie entailed some important lessons: first, that just because someone isn’t in your clique doesn’t mean they don’t have their own set of problems; second, that just because someone isn’t in your clique doesn’t mean you can’t relate to them. That’s why I loved Firestorm so much in its original incarnation: I could relate to *both* Ronnie and Martin. I related to Martin as the classic nerdy academic type; but, even though I wasn’t a jock, I could also relate to Ronnie’s insecurity and his fiery temper.

The Jurgens Ronnie, not so much. Not that it’s a criticism— I think it’s fine for Jurgens to take the character where he wants to go. But it’s very much *not* the Ronnie I know and love. Therefore, I don’t think it’s fair at all to characterize nostalgia as the primary attraction to the Jurgens book. The closest element it gets right in terms of the Conway origin is the contrast between brain and brawn, with Jason as the Martin surrogate.

It’s interesting how in Stuart Moore’s hands Jason was a Ronnie surrogate, but in Jurgens’ hands, Jason was a Martin surrogate. That tells me that Jason is probably quite a flexible and interesting character. Just an afterthought.

I’ve had one cancellation, 3 guest appearances in Teen Titans and 2 mini-series and that’s it. Oh, and a better left forgotten cameo in Final Crisis.

Oh, and Captain K’Rot (who, coincidentally, is getting cancelled shortly lol).

I want your pity. 😉

Loved the episode. Luke can come back any time. And I love Franks’ suggestion up above (#13, the Power Company etc episode). Get on it, you two!

So I have you guys beat in

1) The time when she turned Ronnie in to the government (unlike Lorraine, who stood by Ronnie).

2) The time when she ran away from Ronnie, convinced he was going to kill her (paranoid much?).

3) The time when she found out Ronnie was Firestorm and she just focused on how hurt and wronged she was instead of asking Ronnie’s actual motivations for keeping his identity a secret from her. She also omits to acknowledge that he saves Cliff Carmichael’s life in this issue (though that will eventually bite him in the ass).

4) The many times when she said “if you fight Cliff Carmichael, I’m leaving you,” failing to notice how thoroughly Carmichael really, really needs a beating at Ronnie’s hands. As mentioned, this happened more than once.

5) Her failure to say “Ronnie, you don’t need to join a bunch of radical eco-terrorists to impress me, I like you just as you are” all the way back in issue 1, 1978.

I’m sure there are many more we could add.

I reviewed the first four issues at length on Frank’s DC Bloodlines blog:

http://dcbloodlines.blogspot.com/search/label/Beowulf

Issue #3 is my favorite … what a trip.

I went through a huge DC Sword & Sorcery binge a couple of years ago and ended up co-opting Bloodlines for my rants.

Here is a link to my Stalker reviews:
http://dcbloodlines.blogspot.com/search/label/Stalker

My Starfire review:
http://dcbloodlines.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-starfire-1.html

My Claw the Unconquered review:
http://dcbloodlines.blogspot.com/2012/06/review-claw-unconquered-1.html

And Ironwolf!
http://dcbloodlines.blogspot.com/2010/12/weird-worlds-and-howard-chaykins.html

DC tried hard to get some of that Conan the Barbarian money, with Arak, Arion, Warlord, Amethyst and such well into the 80s.

What I meant was that except for Warlord, none of them really sold all that well. In the DC Explosion, we got several which were cancelled very quickly, including Stalker (Steve Ditko!), Tor (Joe Kubert!), Claw the Unconquered, Kong the Untamed, Hercules Unbound, and the insanely awesome Beowulf.

Arion and Arak would last a bit longer, and Amethyst was pretty popular as well, though they came a bit later. Obviously none touched Warlord for longevity nor popularity.

Tor is one of Kubert’s home grown characters, a caveman living in the ancient world. He’s been published at various houses over the years, and a lot of it is quite good. Stalker was an odd book, but Ditko brought a very unique perspective to the S&S stuff. And Beowulf is the most wickedly awesome heavy metal comic book of all time. Check it out: http://ljaconesbunker.blogspot.com/2008/07/discount-bin-finds-beowulf-dragon.html