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Firestorm (Jason Rusch)

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Firestorm
Jason Rusch, Firestorm Cover to Firestorm: The Nuclear Man vol. 2, #23 Art by Brian Stelfreeze.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Firestorm vol. 2 #1, (July 2004)
Created by	Dan Jolley (writer) ChrisCross (artist)
In story information
Alter ego	Jason Thomas Rusch
Team affiliations	LexCorp Justice League S.T.A.R. Labs
Notable aliases	The Nuclear Man
Abilities	– fire energy bolts – become intangible – fly at great speed – absorb energy and radiation – superhuman strength – superhuman durability – quark vision – able to restructure matter.

Jason Rusch is a fictional character, a superhero in the DC Universe; he is the third person to take the mantle of Firestorm. Jason Rusch first appears in Firestorm vol. 2 #1, (July 2004), and was created by Dan Jolley and ChrisCross.

Fictional character biography

Beginning of the new Nuclear Man

In 2004, DC revived the Firestorm comic for the second time, with writer Dan Jolley and artist Chris Cross, but instead of the original Firestorm, Ronald Raymond, there was a new protagonist; Jason Rusch, an African American teenager. Subsequently, Raymond was killed during the Identity Crisis miniseries. It was revealed in Identity Crisis #5 and Firestorm #6 that during a battle with the Shadow Thief, Raymond was impaled by the Shining Knight’s sword, which the villain had stolen. The magical sword ruptured the nuclear man’s containment field, resulting in Firestorm’s body exploding, and his residual essence funneling into Jason Rusch’s body, perhaps activating a dormant metagene.

Jason was a seventeen year old teenager living in Detroit, who wanted nothing more than to escape his home city. He lived with his father, who had turned abusive after he lost his hand in an industrial accident. His mother left his father sometime after the accident, leaving the young Jason with his father. Jason later recalled that his father had hit him on four occasions. With the loss of a job he needed to fund college, Jason turned to a local tough for money, accepting a job as a courier. It was on that job that he encountered the Firestorm matrix, searching for a new host after Raymond’s death. In the aftermath, Jason struggled to cope with his new identity and powers – a struggle that led to the death of the man who’d hired him.

Eventually, Jason managed to develop a degree of control over his powers. Unfortunately, being Firestorm drew a lot of attention, some of it unpleasant, and Jason found himself up against a number of supervillains – some interested in Firestorm’s power, others seeking revenge for the actions of his predecessor. Death tends not to be permanent within comic book universes, however, and Ronald Raymond eventually returned within the Firestorm matrix in Firestorm #9, remaining with Jason as part of Firestorm until he appeared to dissipate in Firestorm #13. Eventually, the original creative team was replaced. Jamal Igle took over the pencils for the series at Firestorm #8, and Stuart Moore took over as writer at Firestorm #14.

Shortly after Jason’s eighteenth birthday, a few weeks after Raymond’s dissipation, Jason was kidnapped by the new Secret Society of Super Villains for use as a power source in a hidden complex. Freed when the new Secret Six launched a raid on the complex, Jason discovered two important things: he had a fellow prisoner (a mysterious girl named Gehenna), and his imprisonment by the Society had significantly depowered him (Firestorm #17).

Together, Jason and Gehenna escaped the complex, destroying it in the process. Gehenna disappeared in the aftermath but telepathically promised Firestorm that she’d see him again. In Firestorm #19, Donna Troy recruited Firestorm – this time comprised of Jason and his best friend Mick Wong – for her outer space team to fight the oncoming instability from Infinite Crisis. During his time on the team, he formed a friendship with Animal Man and perhaps a romantic interest in both Starfire and Supergirl.

Infinite Crisis

As Donna’s team headed further into the instability of Infinite Crisis, it was revealed that Martin Stein, alive in space as the “Elemental Firestorm”, had sensed the presence of Jason within the Firestorm Matrix, but was unaware of the final demise of Ronald Raymond. When Jason, as Firestorm, was fatally wounded in the line of duty, Stein linked with him in a variation of the merge, promising Jason a new Firestorm body to let him return into battle (although Martin had been unable to save Mick) and asking him about the fate of Ronald Raymond.

Accepting Martin’s proposal, Jason asked Stein to become the permanent second member of the Firestorm matrix. Sensing his “errors”, including Mick’s death, were the result of his youth and lack of experience, he sought the experience and maturity of the elder Professor Stein. Martin refused at first, but Jason managed to find a spark of humanity in the distanced and apparently cold Stein – his sorrow for both Raymond’s death, and the deaths of a planet of aliens he had watched over. Martin finally accepted Jason’s request, thus ensuring both a new Firestorm body and the reconstruction of human bodies for both Rusch and Martin.

It was revealed in Infinite Crisis that if the Multiverse had survived up to the present, Jason would have been a native of Earth-Eight.^[1]

52

Artwork used for promotion only of Firestorm vol. 2, #20, featuring Firestorm and Animal Man. Art by Matt Haley

In 52, it is revealed that Firestorm was fused with Cyborg due to malfunctioning Zeta Beam technology. Unmerged after several weeks, Jason, as Firestorm, tried to reform and lead a new Justice League, along with Firehawk, Ambush Bug, Super-Chief, and the Bulleteer. After a failure in handling a time-displacement crisis staged by Skeets, the new League was disbanded in disgrace, adding strain to the already shaky friendship with Lorraine, as Jason still holds her and the rest of Donna’s Space Team as responsible for Mick’s demise. Finally, during the World War III event versus Black Adam, Jason settled all differences with Lorraine, rekindling their friendship and asking for her powers, necessary to activate Firestorm after the mysterious disappearance of Martin Stein.

One Year Later

As the storyline jumped ahead a year (and the series itself was now retitled as Firestorm: The Nuclear Man issue #23 on), Professor Stein has mysteriously vanished, and Jason has been merging with Firehawk to become Firestorm, allowing him to use her powers as well. The two decided to look for Stein together. Stein had been kidnapped and tortured by the Pupil, a former teaching assistant of Martin’s. Flanked by the D.O.L.L.I.’s, a group of cyborg soldiers of limited cognitive ability, the Pupil (formerly known as Adrian Burroughs) questioned the nearly dead Stein about the secrets of the universe. Jason and Lorraine, along with the mysterious teleporter Gehenna, freed the captured Stein and restored him to full health. Jason is a college freshman at New York City’s Columbus University and seems to have ties with Dani Sharpe, a member of the senior staff at LexCorp. Dani was the person who previously hired him at S.T.A.R. Labs Detroit to handle their final research filings.

The Firestorm team of Jason and Firehawk made several appearances across the DCU before the search for Martin Stein ended. This included dealing with the latest OMAC and teaming up with Superman in the “Back in Action” arc in Action Comics. Firehawk later introduced Jason to Pozhar, a Russian superhero who was once a part of the Firestorm matrix; together, the trio take on a newly reborn Tokamak. This series ended with Firestorm: The Nuclear Man issue #35 in April 2007.

Anti-Life Equation

(sources needed for appearances outside firestorm series)

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Jason Rusch and Martin Stein meet Mister Miracle (Shilo Norman), and are attacked in succession by Orion of the New Gods, and the Female Furies of Apokolips. Shilo Norman informs Stein and Rusch that one quarter of the Life Equation is hidden within the Firestorm Matrix, the other quarters are apparently held by Earth’s other three Elementals, (possibly the Red Tornado, Naiad, and Swamp Thing). Darkseid fears that the assembled Life Equation might challenge him and his Anti-Life Equation. Orion wished to keep Professor Stein safe, and the Furies wished to secure the Matrix for Darkseid.^[2] With Gehenna as the “hidden partner” in the Firestorm Matrix, Jason, still frantically searching for Stein, was severely wounded by Lex Luthor, the Joker, and Cheetah. After his recovery, he goes to aid the Justice League. After freeing the members of the League, he joins the battle against the Injustice League. After the Justice League’s victory, Firestorm is drafted into the League by Batman.

Powers and abilities

Jason’s powers have fluctuated during the course of his series. At the outset, he possessed similar abilities to the original Firestorm. Jason also possesses an enhanced version of the original “merge”; he could become Firestorm by merging with anyone he made eye contact with. However, there were two problems with the merge. The first problem was that the other person’s body chemistry affected Jason for the duration of the merge; if the other person had been taking drugs, Jason would find himself affected by the drugs to a lesser extent. The second problem was even more dangerous; if either Jason or the other person in the merge overstretched themselves, the other person in the merge could burn out and die.

The return and subsequent dissipation of Ronald Raymond left Jason with sufficient power to turn into Firestorm without having to merge with others, though he was still capable of the merge if the need arose. Unfortunately, his imprisonment by the Society depowered him to the point that he once again required the merge to become Firestorm. More recently, Martin Stein, using his knowledge of the Firestorm Matrix, managed to reconfigure Firestorm’s present characteristics. Theoretically speaking, the new Firestorm can now absorb sufficient amounts of solar energy to keep him fully functional without using someone as an “emergency battery”. Although the ‘preferred’ form of Firestorm would now be composed of Jason and Martin, both of them retain the ability to merge temporarily with another person; while the need for a battery has gone, a person could substitute for the other main member, sharing all his or her knowledge with an improved mindlink through the Firestorm Matrix. The focus of Firestorm’s costume was also made more practical, including control devices able to contain and direct the hero’s nuclear energies. Firestorm’s newer powers, such as his ability to control organic matter, were left out of the new design out of a fear that they might be too difficult to control without making the Firestorm hosts less human over time.

• The ability to transmute both energy and matter (inorganic and organic).
• “Quark Vision”, the ability to see molecular structures and detect discrete atomic interactions.
• The ability to project bolts of concussive force, heat, or charged particles.
• High speed flight.
• Limited superhuman strength
• Limited superhuman durability.
• A more stable version of the original Firestorm’s intangibility. However, his intangibility power was temporarily lost in a run-in with a metahuman capable of stealing other metas’ powers but has recently returned.
• The ability to play back the memories of the Firestorm Matrix – or the memories of its hosts – in the Firestorm mindscape.
• A limited form of timesight, which let him catch glimpses of the matrix’s past and/or future in dreams. The ability to see the future is presently beyond either Jason or Martin’s conscious control.
• Jason also retained Ronnie’s psychic connection to Martin Stein’s “Elemental Firestorm”; Martin, however, appeared unaware the Firestorm matrix had been transferred to Jason up until the two actually met.
• Jason has a telepathic link to Gehenna, a link which apparently enables Gehenna to communicate with Jason, communicate with the other person in the Firestorm merge (apparently visualizing the other person as a floating head), and see Firestorm’s immediate surroundings.

Trade paperback

• Firestorm The Nuclear Man: Reborn (2007). This trade paperback reprints Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #23-27. One year later after the events of Infinite Crisis, Firestorm must stop a deadly nuclear accident and a threat to his very existence. It all leads to an epic battle with Killer Frost and Mister Freeze that rages from the mean streets of New York City to the very heart of the sun. (ISBN 1-4012-1219-0)

Notes

• No elemental can attack another elemental directly. As seen in Firestorm, the Nuclear Man vol. 2 #91.
• Older Fire Elementals belong to a group called the Parliament of Flames.
• Firestorm is the only character to twice move with his author from a canceled solo title to the Justice League. Gerry Conway placed Firestorm in the JLA when he took over as writer, and Dwayne McDuffie added the second Firestorm to the current JLA roster when he became the book’s writer.

See also

• Naiad
• Red Tornado
• Swamp Thing

References

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• Last updated on August 27th, 2009
• DC Comics
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