Firestorm Fan

We’ve got a really special treat today!  “The Rev. O.J. Flow” is a truly dedicated comic book fan.  In fact, some might say he wears it on his sleeve, or to be more exact he wears it on his right leg.  O.J.’s right leg features some of the coolest comic book tattoos you’ve ever seen.  You may already know “The Rev. O.J. Flow” from his Newsarama.com contributions to their blog and book reviews (Best Shots).  He was kind enough to grant me permission to display some of his tattoos here and provided us with the following narrative.

For the last 5 years or so, I have developed a passion for getting tattoo work, and it’s virtually all exclusive to comic book art.  I’m well into my 30s now, and even some middling work I got in my early 20s has been since covered up by my more recent graphic art interests.

As a ten-year resident of Chicago, my preferred tattoo artist is Patrick Cornolo of Speakeasy Custom Tattoos.  Anyway, over the span of our working relationship, I’ve in most instances had a character in mind and I would give it to Patrick to get his artistic interpretation.  During this time, I developed a theme for characters that have been tattooed on my right leg below the knee.  I call it “Fire Leg.”  It started with one character, and after I coincidentally ended up with the first two characters done on the leg being fire-based in terms of their abilities (Green Fury, Starfire), I decided to keep the theme going.

In 2005, I added a headshot of the first Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond.  The image was pulled directly from Justice League of America (vol. 1) #200.  My all-time favorite comic artist is George Perez, so this was a natural combination for me of character and artist, if Patrick Cornolo was just going to do a straight reproduction.  A year later, I had Patrick redesign an image of Firestorm’s longtime partner Firehawk based off a Perez sketch I ran across years prior.  Another year later, in 2007, I ran across a perfect headshot of the latest Firestorm, Jason Rusch, in the weekly DC series 52.  They ran a regular 2-page backup origin story on an assortment of heroes and villains, and this image was originally done by Jamal Igle, one of my favorite artists in comics today.

Eventually, once I ran out of room for new characters (after having included Wildfire of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Human Torch, and Firestar), I had Patrick fill in the empty spaces with flames to make it all one cohesive piece.

Wow!  That is truly awesome!  My sincerest thanks to O.J. for allowing me to showcase his tattoos here at FIRESTORM FAN.  Those tattoos are gorgeous and inspired.  In addition to the Firestorm tattoos, I especially like the Firestar and Wildfire tattoos.  Really cool interpretations!  Be sure to keep up with “The Rev. O.J. Flow” at his own Blog, Newsarama’s Blog, and Newsarama’s Best Shots book reviews.

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