The Fury of Firestorm #15

I keep reading this cover as "Death of Captain Atom" and having involuntary movements of my most private of parts.

I'm reading Fury of Firestorm out of order because Artya (who has the best Avatar on Tumblr and only seems to have a presence on Tumblr so it can Disqus) sent a message to me about it that totally spoiled the whole thing for me! Well, not actually! Here's the message:

Just finished reading Firestorm 15. No, no Ronnie's mom in sight. But Jurgens kinda fulfills one of your wishes. No, no homoerotic stuff. Someone kind of dies. And becomes someone else, someone lost, in a sense. I know you don't like spoilers; i'll keep it vague: a certain bad guy could be this guy, from another timeline. Or worse, the bad guy is Stephen Hawkings. Jurgens just gave a big big gigantic lifesaver to Defalco. Doesn't make it any better. It will be great to read what you think about.

So maybe I wasn't so wrong about reading the cover as the death of Capatin Adym! I mean Atom! My guess is that Dr. Megala dies since that's really what's going on on the cover. Dr. Megala is in Firestorm at the time. But he can't become Harvest because that's so obviously Tim Drake after being bitten by a Vampire and living his undead delusion for 1000 years. Now I'm speculating on things somebody else has said and not even speculating on the comic book which I should just be reading anway! My thoughts just keep spiraling further and further outward, away from the actual thing I'm supposed to be contemplating. Shadows of shadows of shadows of the philosophical ideal of the thing casting shadows.

Or something. Maybe I should just read Firestorm.

We left off with Dr. Megala having inserted himself into the body of two high school boys after discovering their location via his newly created Gaydar. Oh, and Captain Atom decided he was already bored of living on the moon. I think "boredom" trumps "existential crisis." I was also left wondering what happened to Ronnie and Jason once Dr. Megala forced his way into Firestorm.

Turns out they're in the same place Sinestro and Hal Jordan are in! Except it's a little more dreary.

Dammit, Ronnie! Don't interrupt now! I want to hear all the sexy details!

Where does Jason's body go when he and Ronnie become Firestorm? This current Firestorm is like trying to stare at one of those three dimensional pictures that were hot shit back in the early nineties. Jason's body is gone because he and Ronnie merged to become Firestorm. So Jason's mind ends up in Ronnie's mind while Jason's body just disappears for a bit unless it's also absorbed into Ronnie's body. Let's just say they merge completely in a very satisfying and loving way. So now two minds are in Ronnie's body, Jason's and Ronnie's. Now Dr. Megala has transferred his mind into Ronnie's body as well. But Dr. Megala's body remains outside of this big Firestorm pastiche. His mind has now taken control leaving Ronnie in the back of Dr. Megala's mind which is in Ronnie's body which means Jason's mind is in the back of Ronnie's mind which is in the back of Ronnie's body currently being controlled by Dr. Megala's mind whose body is entirely separate.

I think I'm making this too complicated! But then love isn't always easy. Anyway, when Dr. Megala takes over Firestorm, he ends up giving it old man Popeye face.

Whenever Dan Jurgens uses foreshortening on a full body, it just winds up looking like a person with a gimpy, baby leg.

Dr. Megala informs his fellow scientists that they're stupid and he's the smartest man on Earth and now he'll never have to endure another incontinence joke at his expense! He's managed to repress the personalities of Jason and Ronnie. While they watch Dr. Megalastorm flit about and try out his new powers, they decide to have a short discussion about The Guardians of the Universe.

Why doesn't this have a "Rise of the Third Army" tag on the front cover?

Minus the masturbation jones, the connection between the Guardians of the Universe and Dr. Megala is pretty obvious. In the DC Universe, if you're super smart you're prone to corruptibility. The Guardians. Niles Caulder. Dr. Megala. Mr. 8, Dr. Sivana, T.O. Morrow, Lex Luthor, and probably a bunch more that'll come to me later while I'm walking down a staircase. It's like Ogilvy, the Penguin's right-hand man said, "You want to be smart but not too smart!" He may have said it differently. I'm one of those annoying people that never get quotes perfect because I don't actually give a fuck about quoting people or things. But I still retain the general idea behind what was said and that's good enough for me. Although it really grinds the gears of people obsessed with quotes. I'm always being corrected which just fucks up the conversation and derails any discussion. It's not that important! I can already feel the gray clouds brewing in the minds of readers who think exactly the opposite and store quotes for every occasion. Fucking nitpickers!

Dr. Megala's first major act as the new Firestorm is to transform the heads on Mt. Rushmore into scientists, alchemists, and great thinkers: Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and himself. He states that he's the fourth greatest mind. Does that mean he is the smartest man on Earth followed by Lex Luthor and then Mister Terrific? I know Mister Terrific isn't on the same Earth anymore but he kept going on and on about being the 3rd Smartest Person but his comic didn't last long enough to explore that statement. What about Stephen Hawking? What about me? I have a feeling Dr. Megala is actually about the 25th smartest person on Earth.

Speaking of the smartest people in the DCnU, who's the smartest woman in the DCnU? Dr. Veritas the Omniologist? She's probably a contender for one of the top two spots above Mister Terrific now that she exists!

While Jason and Ronnie try to figure out a way to kick the old man out of their body, General Eiling begins a conversation with Captain Atom that I'm tired of hearing.

Well, trust him now and deal with fighting him later or just fucking begin fighting him now. What's your choice? Fucking stop trying to piss him off!

As if there isn't enough going on in this comic book, Dr. Megalastorm notices (while in South Dakota) that Qurac (on the other side of the world) has just test fired a long range missile for their budding nuclear program. Dr. Megalastorm turns the missile into a Rubik's cube while even more chaos erupts on the U.S.S. Independence which is neither in South Dakota nor the Middle East but the Pacific Ocean. This comic book has a lot of shit going on!

Captain Atom realizes Dr. Megala transferred his consciousness into Firestorm and decides to go beat his ass.

That's right! At least not while you were being written by J.T. Krul.

Predictably (which is a good thing because it plays out true to the characters! I didn't mean that in the derogatory way it sounded), Captain Atom knocks Dr. Megalastorm loopy in one or two panels. This causes Dr. Megala to lose his complete grip on Firestorm and suddenly Jason and Ronnie are now disembodied heads that can taunt Dr. Megalastorm! How many more people can you fit inside of this body? Can everyone on the planet live inside of a Firestorm as disembodied, chatty, back seat driver heads? Now Ronnie and Jason simply have to find a way to eject Dr. Megala from the Firestorm body. If they figure out this trick, does that mean Jason will be able to eject Ronnie from the body? Or will they only be able to manage this because Dr. Megala is an invading mind with his own body back at the Continuum? I'm pretty sure it's that last one.

With Captain Atom zapping Dr. Megalastorm and Jason and Ronnie taunting him from inside his head, he eventually loses control and winds up in the Quantum Field with Jason and Ronnie. That means Dr. Megala is gay because the Quantum Field doesn't immediately reject him.!

Anybody up for a lemon party?

At this point, nobody is in control of Firestorm. At this point, Captain Atom is barreling toward Firestorm to destroy him. At this point, it's apparently too late for Captain Atom to stop his attack. But it's not too late for a nice, long, casual conversation before that happens.

Captain Atom should have stopped his attack as soon as Firestorm called him "chrome dome!" Dr. Megala, being bald himself, would never have called him that as an insult in the heat of battle. Fucking Batman would have figured that out.

At the last moment, Captain Atom realizes Firestorm is telling the truth. He absorbs most of the blast which fragments him, sending pieces of himself all across the timestream. One of those pieces lands in the 31st century as Nathaniel Adym who you might recognize from Legion Lost if you or anybody else was reading that comic book. I thought there must have been some kind of connection but since Tom DeFalco is writing Legion Lost, I thought the connection could have simply been Tom DeFalco thinking Nathaniel Adym was a cool name and having no clue that he was stealing it from Captain Atom.

With his impressive store of time travel and military knowledge, Captain Atom quickly rises from naked bum in an alley to the Captain of the Science Police's time traveling division, Echo Squad!

It's yet to be seen in Legion Lost if Nathaniel Adym has any of his Captain Atom powers although I would suspect he does. My big gripe in Legion Lost was how Nathaniel Adym time traveled past Flashpoint. Well, if he still has some Captain Atom powers, its possible he was able to manipulate his Time Bubble and force it back in time. I could live with that!

But what's even more interesting is that hundreds of pieces of Captain Atom seeded the timeline. How many more Captain Atoms are there and will there be a future gigantic crossover event dealing with the many faces of Captain Atom? Is there a Caveman Adm? A Puritan Nathaniel Addam? Perhaps the Dragon in the next Beowulf comic will be Dragon Adam? I wonder if one of his shards landed on Earth 2? Or maybe even Earth C? Is there an animal version of Captain Atom now? I bet he's a Tamarin Monkey!

The newest member of The Zoo Crew!

The least important part of the cosmic collision is that Ronnie was knocked unconscious and Firestorm plummeted into the ocean. I guess when Ronnie is knocked out, Jason doesn't get to take over command of the body. Or maybe he just doesn't realize at this moment that he can do that. That might be how he saves their asses from drowning next issue.

I should probably mention the fate of Dr. Megala as well: his body has fallen into a coma. But where his mind has gone is a mystery!

The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #15 Rating: +1 Ranking. Dan Jurgens has a way of writing comic books that hasn't changed since the 1980s. Sometimes that's a horrible, horrible thing. And sometimes it's simply the change of pace that a comic book has been needing. And I think Firestorm is finding its footing much better under Jurgens than it had been under whoever was writing it before. How can I be bothered to remember? Joe Harris, maybe? Ethan Van Sciver? Gail Simone? One or all of those people! I'm also interested to see if Tom DeFalco works in the Captain Atom revelation before Legion Lost ends or if it doesn't matter over in that toilet water comic book. Although with Captain Atom fragmenting across all time and space, he's actually ready for another go at his own title! I think that's a premise that a strong comic book can be built around!