Firestorm #1 Review - Jason Rusch has a tough life. He lives with an abusive, disabled father. He's having a hard time coming up with money for school. And in an attempt to get the money quickly, Jason decides to do "a little job" for a local criminal to get his school tuition. Now the "hot" stuff really begins.

So begins Firestorm, a monthly on-going series from DC Comics, written by Dan Jolley and drawn by ChrisCross. I have never read anything by Dan Jolley, so I have no previous work to gauge him by. The first issue seems well written. Once the characters were introduced I found them interesting and actually did care about them, and from an interview I read over at DC that was what Jolley was going for. There are a couple of funky things in the issue that take place without any explanation. Once again, this is a first book, so hopefully more information will be forthcoming. When Jason is on his way to deliver a "package" for Steve Golek, the resident thug, he passes through a tremendous flash of light, resulting in him passing out for several hours. When he wakes up the time for the drop is way over and he is panicking to get to the drop site. Once there he walks into a deadly firefight. As hooligans are dying all around him suddenly Jason turns into Firestorm, with this really funky costume on. Why did the explosion happen and where did the crazy suit come from? Of course, once he changes he kicks some so you kind of forget that all of a sudden these previous, unexplained events happened.

As for the art, it is really good. Very detailed. All I have ever seen ChrisCross do is fill in a couple of times for Tim Raney on the Outsiders, which you would never now wasn't Raney because it was almost a carbon copy of his regular work. Hopefully ChrisCross will use this book to define his own style, because it still kinda looks like Raney's stuff, which really isn't a problem. Definitely worth picking up the first issue.