I love the Will Payton Starman series by Stern and Lyle! Came across that at a pretty early age and just devoured it. Looking at it in hindsight, it seems to fill the same sort of niche or target demographic for DC that Firestorm originally did when he launched. He fills the role of DC’s Spider-Man, a younger hero who accidently happens across his powers and has to balance these mysterious new powers with the stresses of life as man in his early 20’s. Throw in an alien invasion and super team of xenophiles hunting him down, and you have a pretty cool new dynamic that is younger audience friendly in the darker post-Crisis DCU.

Man this series is a lot of fun!

I think I did a podcast episode or two covering the first 10 issues or so a while back. I really recommend tracking this series down, it’s cheap, like Professor Alan Quarterbin cheap!

Shag, I myself do not believe the Ronnie Raymond character is dead. We shall see. I have a feeling we will see Ronnie again on THE FLASH in a… ah, flashback first — and I still have hope that one of those flashbacks will be the “deleted transmutation scene” from the series one finale…

I had actually always seen Professor Stein as the “Mr. Wizard” of the Firestorm comic book… and recall him giving Ronnie (and the readers) brief lessons of scientific principles that were a little out of the scope of his expertise (like how to disrupt a tropical storm, for example). I had always rationalized that as Stein having a basic knowledge of various fields of science from his earlier studies before he became an expert in nuclear physics…

I also enjoyed the “Atom Smasher” naming scene. It evoked the same “hint of a mad scientist” feeling as the scene in “Fallout” when Stein was talking about Barry being able to time travel…

Despite its faults (and it was never a perfect show), I and my family do enjoy watching THE FLASH programme together and we will continue to do so… even if going forward the show will be speaking of me as if I am the bad guy…

(However, Candice Patton at DragonCon was quoted as saying “Xum is going to be bad-ass”, so at least there is that…)

I would donate to any cause that has Rob Kelly play FDR throughout… especially if on occasion he has a debate with the SuperFriends Darkseid…

And the new rendition of your closing theme sounds really good. Nice to keep us long-time listeners on our toes…

As for the Flash premiere, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as WOW as I expected. I agree with Shagg that the Firestorm CGI was a bit more noticeable than past episodes. I don’t think Ronnie’s dead-dead. No body and parallel universe plots probably mean he’s out there for guest spots.

Henry Allen’s sudden and inexplicable exit MUST be some plot point coming up. Did Harrison Wells put his mind in Henry’s body or something? Why else would he be so nice as to confess and free Henry? I sure hope there is more to this, because it was very unconvincing.

Great to hear Doug again on the show, and I really enjoyed his Hawkman Companion. Great, great book. I jumped in with issue #1 of the Stern/Lyle Starman, but I didn’t stick around too long. I enjoyed it, but it just wasn’t really lighting up my comic reading world. I did get those David Knight issues later, and enjoyed how Robinson tied him into his series. If only there was a podcast covering Robinson’s Starman series. Oh wait…

Chris