Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Man #17, out today. Check it out here and read it along with us.
The Teen Titans are in town as Dan Jurgens tackles the next chapter in The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Man. With Firestorm on Red Robin’s radar, the teen heroes show up and, as is wont to happen when superheroes meet for the first time, a melee ensues.Dan Jurgens joined us to talk about the future of Firestorm, and the challenges of writing a one-off side story like this with the series’ end coming on the horizon.You did promise us back when it happened that we’d see the resolution of the Mt. Rushmore thing. Do you think that, per the conversation they’re having, the New 52 gives you some more room for one bad move to make the character a pariah, since there’s so little history for the non-JLAers?My general theory regarding Firestorm is that, more and more, as the world begins to comprehend his power level, combined with what we’ve seen out of other versions of Firestorm, that he will be regarded as a potential threat. There comes a point where it’s one thing to say you’re a hero– another thing to prove it. Until you save the world, a city, a school full of children or something that is easily recognized, people will doubt your claims.Obviously this is the first issue to hit since the cancellation of the series was announced. Did you know that Firestorm would be on Justice League before you knew there was no more Firestorm?Yeah, as I had always hoped we might be able to nudge sales in enough of a northerly direction that we could keep going a bit longer.
You joke about putting the Simpsons on Mt. Rushmore–but did you know that The Simpsons already did a similar joke?
(As South Park learned early in its run, it’s difficult to do much of anything that The Simpsons didn’t already do a spin on.)
Good to see he got in and out with minimal trouble, but does it really help Firestorm’s cause to trespass on an aircraft mid-flight when that’s one of the charges against him to begin with?
Obviously it’s been a while since you worked with the Titans–and when you’ve done so in the recent past, it was in Booster Gold, where you didn’t have to worry about treading on someone else’s continuity. Is it a bit of a challenge to have to juggle a guest appearance like this with characters that Scott seems to have locked in a loop of big events?
Is being hungry a result of the Firestorm activity or just because they’ve been running non-stop for however long?
I hadn’t thought of it, but have we ever established whta happened to Ronnie’s dad? With Felicity Smoak (his onetime wife) taking on a bigger role in Arrow next season, it might have been a nice opportunity for some synergy if the book had been around that long.
Apparently Tonya doesn’t get the first rule of cheating: To avoid getting caught, you have to make sure you sound at least a little bit like the person you’re cheating for!
[Ed. Note: You can see one such story, written and drawn by Jurgens, here, in an issue of Booster Gold. It’s actually touching.]
Given how intelligent Tim is, it’s a big leap from “he might already be working for them” to “ATTACK! He’s a bad guy!”. Was that just a matter of being overly cautious or was it more like you didn’t have the page count you needed to fill in those blanks?
This is the first time you’ve had a chance to draw most of these characters in the New 52, right? Is there a different approach you take to Tim Drake now as opposed to before? He looks a bit more like Nightwing than he has in other issues you’ve drawn.
What was the idea behind this cross-over? Was DC entertaining putting him on Titans? Was it just in hopes of a sales bump for the tie-in?
Mrs. Schmidt seemed pretty unfazed by the whole thing…was the contest even real? Was that something she was using to smoke out the cheating?
Well, I can say this for the cliffhanger–at least it’s a reason that he can give the school for not getting that paper done. With the blood and bullets, it’s not as though he can really hide what happened.
