There's been quite a bit of negative reaction to Ronnie Raymond's death as portrayed in Identity Crisis #5. The two main complaints are that 1) the manner of death was not consistent with what we know of Firestorm and 2) it was a cheap way to die.
I've been thinking about this for a while, but a couple of recent events made me return to the issue and encouraged me to share some thoughts. First, I've picked up quite a few Firestorm issues from the previous series. I've probably read fewer than a dozen of these issues so far and yet, remarkably, several of them have offered quite a bit of support for the way Ronnie died, leaving me genuinely puzzled by the "that can't happen" objections. Second, Brad Meltzer gave an interview last week in which he talked about the manner of Ronnie's death that echoed my own thoughts.
Despite the cries of "foul" from many long-time fans, I believe the answer is "yes".
Before we talk about why, let's review the details of what happened. In Identity Crisis #5, Shadow Thief stabs Firestorm through the chest with Shining Night's enchanted sword. The open wound glows and bubbles. After a moment, Ronnie realizes that he is going to explode. At this point Green Arrow, who narrates the event, says the following: "No one there is a physicist, but they still know what happens when you puncture a nuclear reactor". To spare those around him, Ronnie launches far into the air where he explodes.
Many have wondered if Meltzer confused Firestorm for Captain Atom here. I have several things to say on this point, but let's start with the obvious: the narrator is not a disembodied, omniscient entity. The narrator is Green Arrow, who is a character in this universe. He is not required to use precise, clinical language. He's not even required to be right. He's one who might use an analogy such as a nuclear reactor to represent something that contains great power. Perhaps more importantly, he in no way says that Firestorm is a nuclear reactor. In saying that a nuclear reactor was punctured, he is more likely saying that Firestorm contains something analogous to a nuclear reactor.
I had been assured that Firestorm had nothing nuclear churning inside of him and that he was called the "Nuclear Man" simply because it was a nuclear accident that gave him the powers. Yet, one of the very first Firestorm books I read says something very different, at least as I read it. In issue 3 of volume 1, Firestorm has become encased in ice by Killer Frost. The narrator, who this time really is a disembodied, omniscient voice, says the following:
Dimly, as though through a curtain, Firestorm hears distant shouts, the tinkling of ice, a high-pitched laugh. The sounds are a spur and with an effort, he stirs his cold-numbed thoughts and activates the atomic furnace of his body.
That's a difficult one to talk around. It directly refers to an "atomic furnace" and further says that it is either in his body or is the body itself. Either reading matches perfectly with the narration found in Identity Crisis.
In the Firestorm issue that immediately followed Identity Crisis #5, Dan Jolley chose to describe the event in a slightly differently way. Martian Manhunter uses the following words to explain it to Jason Rusch:
An assassin called the Shadow Thief used a sword with unique properties to stab the first Firestorm. This ruptured the field which kept Firestorm's power contained.
Is there any reason to believe that this "containment field" is part of Firestorm? I think one of his powers in particular makes it clear that something like that must be at play: Firestorm's ability to absorb massive amounts of energy.
Another early Gerry Conway issue, The Fury of Firestorm #7, highlights this power. A terrorist has rigged an enormous fuel depot with explosives. Ronnie judges that the explosion it would produce could "blow up most of South Jersey". Ronnie tries to grab the terrorist but is too late. When the bomb explodes, Firestorm absorbs the majority of the resulting blast. Professor Stein has this to say as they are absorbing the energy:
But the strain -- we don't know how much energy our fused form can hold!
If a being can absorb vast amounts of energy but recognize there is a limit to how much he can "hold", it seems self-evident that there is a finite containment mechanism in place for all of that absorbed energy, hence some sort of "containment field".
In the very last issue (#100) of the lengthy Firestorm run, the elemental Firestorm is fighting Brimstone in the sun. True, this is not Ronnie Raymond Firestorm but we have to imagine that there are more similarities than differences, especially when the powers of the two are so similar. Brimstone is using a giant sword and manages to slice Firestorm's arm off. Firestorm regrows his arm with a thought and the fight continues. Considering this, Brimstone decides that there is only one way to defeat Firestorm:
Now I see the energy matrix that forms the core of your being! This time, when my fiery sword strikes, it shall pierce that matrix and you will be gone forever!
So there is an energy matrix at the core of Firestorm. "Core", of course, implies something central to the being which is not the entirety of the being. This also seems to answer the critics which say that Firestorm has been cut before with no such result. It seems those other cuts did not "pierce" his "core". For the sake of comparison, it's just a bonus that this scene deals specifically with swords.
So, I think the scene in Identity Crisis builds quite well on what we know about Firestorm. The one legitimate gripe is probably that the sword itself shouldn't have melted. Interaction with nuclear forces aren't an obvious exception to the sword's protective spell cast by Merlin.
Three months after the release of Identity Crisis #5, many fans still complain about this scene. Fewer and fewer of the complaints center around the means but rather focus on the perceived indignity of the death. Many of these criticisms were reignited with a recent Brad Meltzer interview where he talks about the death:
I didn’t know they’d let me kill Firestorm until halfway through, which to me, fit in so well as a moment to show a type of death we don’t usually see much of: the quiet, accidental death on the job. For me, Firestorm’s death was my tip of the hat to Dollar Bill in Watchmen, who gets his cape caught in a revolving door. That’s just real life. People die on this job -- and those deaths aren’t always glorious.
So Brad actually concedes the point that this was not a glorious death but says that that was the whole point. In what ways wasn't this death very glorious?
Some feel that Ronnie committed an amateur mistake that he wouldn't have made in rushing Carl Sands AKA Shadow Thief. This is difficult to address without knowing Shadow Thief's powers in detail, but Ronnie probably had good reason to assume that his ability to become intangible would protect him from a sword. Perhaps he didn't take the sword's properties into account when making this assumption. It could be that he didn't expect Shadow Thief to be able to use the sword against him. As he approached, Sands was facing the other direction and seemed to be lurching forward and in a poor position to spin around. Perhaps Sands was able to turn around more quickly than Ronnie expected because of his own intangibility.
In any case, the more important argument to make here is that we need to reject the idea that heroes always make perfect decisions. Even when heroes make potentially bad decisions, we as readers are used to being insulated from serious consequences. In reality, very strong, admirable individuals fall because of tiny errors of judgement. I don't think our comic book heroes should be immune to that concept when it's been a part of other forms of entertainment at least since the Greek tragedies.
Was this death substantial enough, though?
I think the most obvious way to respond to this question is that it was such a temporary thing that the usual earth-shattering event followed by the double-issue, gold-stamped funeral issue would have been nothing but an embarrassment in retrospect. In the very week that we saw the death, we heard Ronnie Raymond's post-"death" consciousness narrate the first few pages of Firestorm. There could be no doubt that his story was far from over. This "death" was designed from the beginning to be merely a change of condition, not unlike the presumed "death" of Martin Stein during the transition to the elemental Firestorm in the previous series.
Even if we were to ignore the fact that a big, overwrought scene would be to much under these circumstances, Meltzer's point is right on. This is the way real heroes die. This was really driven home to be by critic-turned-reader mpdfuzz on the Studio Phoenix forums:
Death in the superhero world has always been hard on me. As a law enforcement officer, I enjoy these books specifically because of parallels to my life. Working in a large urban environment, the variety I see, the action, and sacrifices I see my fellows make translates well to the superhero book.
But in the superhero book, I get to see these ideals profoundly elevated. It is the ideals that remain constant between real and fiction that I enjoy most.
Having said that, the death of a superhero equates completely to my life as well. I have lost friends and fellow officers on the job in my 12 years so far. They gave their lives in service to their community, much the same was as our beloved superhero's have too.
In my 12 years on this job, we have lost 4 officers, 3 I knew personnaly. They all died heros, but alas, they did not all die in what we describe of our superheros as a heroic manner. 2 died in traffic accidents. My good friend and partner was killed by a 17 year old sniper from 250 yards away with a ricochette bullet. The last officer died while pursuing a suspect on foot and was shot.
I don't write about the above to elicit sympathy or to gain false praise. They deserve to be remembered, and to expemplify that dying in a dangerous profession happens. The manner of death doesn't truly matter as much as the ideals one lived up to while living.
Firestorm died, quite simply, like the last officer I mentioned died. He was surprised, and the actor got lucky. Too often, this is precisely what happens. 99 out of 100 times the good guy gets lucky. Man, can I tell you stories about how in the world I'm still here. But every now and then, the good guys get unlucky.
So still, I urge people to remember, Firestorm, Hawkeye, and others who die these seemingly meaningless deaths, is a misnomer. They died hero's by living up to the ideals they subscribed to, and by serving their worlds at the cost of their own lives. No death is meaningless if it is given up in service to their fellow man.
And you know what, if the superhero's world was static, and no one died, no one sacrificed, then truly, where would the drama be? If you always knew it would all work out in the end every time, villains would become laughable. (Wasn't this the Golden Age? lol).
There's nothing I could possible add to that.
Finally, let me add what matters most to me: I think it was a fantastic scene from a dramatic point of view -- much better than, say, Superman's death. There, you saw a ridiculous amount of build-up and in the end, you suddenly move from a panel where he's up to one where he's down. And that's it.
In Ronnie's scene, the world stops as you see an understanding of his fate slowing taking form in his mind. It's a powerful moment. His fellow heroes are torn between wanting to help him and wanting him to leave as fast as he can. His fear becomes resolve as he determines to save his teammates. Finally, his thoughts turn to those who would miss him the most and then he is gone. There is immediacy, surprise, drama and realism that is all too rare in comics these days.
To me, that is a noble death. As a reader, I'm pleased to see an approach other than "well, I think I'll give my life to save the universe". As a person, I consider the thoughts running through his mind in those final moments and find them to be very moving. As a mortal, I hope my own death is accompanied by such resolve and concern for others.
So thank you, Brad, for showing how real heroes "die".