I run a Firestorm blog (http://firestormfan.com ) and featured your Shortpacked strip today. Thanks for the laugh!

The Irredeemable Shag
http://firestormfan.com

The whole elemental thing worked into my pet theory applying neoplatonism to the DC universe, with each “element”, including the Green, the Speed Force (making The Flash a “Speed elemental”), the Godwave, the Morphogenic Field from Animal Man, etc., as aspects emanating ultimately from the Source, which I identified with the neoplatonic Monad. It worked out really well, but then they had to go and break it after 52 by making the Source Wall the barrier between parallel universes.

Pillar of salt. <.<;

The ‘subverted Spider Man’ concept was intentional, by the by. Gerry Conway had done an impressive run on Spider Man first, but felt that there was a lot of stuff they hadn’t been able to explore, since… well, Peter had to be the sympathetic character and at the time Flash Thompson had to be the stereotypical jock jerk. By making a not-too-bright but well meaning jock and an intellectual bully, in a college setting where no one really cared how many squat-thrusts Ronnie could do, Conway got to set a lot of stuff on its ear.

(Another notable Firestorm villain: Plastique. The… er… Quebecois separatist terrorist, most notable for being betrayed by Deadshot in the Task Force X episode of JLU and for marrying Captain Atom in the comics.)

Why do I care? Well, because I liked the Firestorm comics. It helped that I liked Pat Broderick’s art, and he was the major artist of the 80′s comics run), but somehow the supporting cast and character arcs of Firestorm worked a lot better than most, for me. Later, they decided to make Firestorm an elemental, kill Dr. Stein (several times), kill Ronnie Raymond, make the other half of Firestorm into a Russian just in time for the Cold War to end, and finally go a completely different direction in the 2000′s, just in time for Dan “I want comics to be exactly like they were when I was 14″ DiDio to bring Ronnie and the Professor back to life and make that whole thing a part of Brightest Day.

Firestorm’s most notable villains, were probably Multiplex (who gained fission powers the way Firestorm gained fusion ones), and most notably Killer Frost, who was popular and well utilized enough to make it to Justice League Unlimited among other things. However, the real core of the series was a coming-of-age story where a selfish and self-absorbed scientist and a vapid jock both suddenly had the responsibility of life and death put on their shoulders. In a real sense, the 80′s run of Firestorm was “what if Flash Thompson had become a superhero instead of Peter Parker,” and Ronnie Raymond’s greatest supporting cast contagonist was certainly Cliff Carmichael, who was effectively Peter Parker and who hated Ronnie passionately.

I will acknowledge, however, that Slipknot was a majorly lame supervillain. His one thing going for him was his rope was made out of hemp, so Firestorm couldn’t transmute it or phase through it (Firestorm’s powers, at the time, didn’t work on anything organic). As I recall, it never occurred to Firestorm to just set the damn rope on fire.

Since I was a country kid, I had no idea what he was. In fact, I didn’t know until I read this strip! So thanks.