Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #500: Firebrand

Hey, look at this.  I got to #500.  And for this one, I’m looking at a barely-there-and-then-forgotten DC hero named Firebrand, the most recent of many to go by that name.

Oh, and I may have some other thoughts on something below for this, a special milestone edition of the Misplaced Heroes/Characters series.

The first Firebrand was a bored rich guy created by Charlton Comics in 1941, but there have been a few since then.  The most recent one is Janet Fals, and she was an EMT who was nearly killed in the Dark Nights: Metal crossover event, only her CIA agent father had her damaged heart replaced by something called the Conflict Engine.  In order to stay alive, Janet must get involved in a fight every 24 hours or her heart will stop.  She also has some superhuman strength and resistance to injury with some weird pipes that come out of her back that maybe act as rocket engines.  Janet first appeared in The Unexpected, a comic series that was part of the same new line that gave the world Sideways.  Now, if you’re looking over that backstory there and thinking that sounds like something that must have been really cool to read, well, I have some bad news for ya:  those moments are recounted by Janet in the first few pages of The Unexpected #1 from writer Steve Orlando–currently doing decent work with some Scarlet Witch solo series over at Marvel–and artist Ryan Sook.  So, the great potential drama of Janet’s injury, recovery, and learning how her new heart worked all happens in the first few pages as backstory and then is largely forgotten.

Yeah, The Unexpected ran for all of 8 issues, and read all 8 of them on DC Universe Infinite for this column, and let me just say, in my honest opinion, this series probably ran a few issues too long.  It was strange and despite the fact the cover for the first issue showed the team that may or may not be called “The Unexpected” consisted of four members, two of those members known as Ascendant and the Viking Judge were killed in the first issue during a battle with a bad guy called the Bad Samaritan, who admittedly had a good look.  All that left was Firebrand and a wizard named Neon the Unknown, perhaps the most useless sorcerer I have ever seen in a comic book in that he didn’t seem capable of doing much of anything, and he and Janet spent most of the series running from bad guys.  Hawkman became something of a third member later, but that didn’t mean Viking Judge and Ascendant didn’t keep popping up on covers for one reason or another.  One of the “next issue” blurbs on DC Universe promised that the last page of one issue would feature the dramatic return of a villain who hadn’t been seen in ten years, only he’d been seen only a couple issues earlier.  And I’m not sure anyone was clamoring for Mandarkk, the vampiric Monitor from Final Crisis.   But as far as Firebrand goes, pretty much all there is to say about her is stated above, aside from the fact she was implied to be gay.

And that’s kinda disappointing in a way.  I mean, I didn’t like The Unexpected series.  It was shooting to be some kind of supernatural exploration of DC’s Dark Multiverse or something, but the thing is, I read it to find out more about Firebrand, an old name for Charlton/DC Comics.  There’s been something like five of them to date, and the Janet Fals version seems to be one of the skimpiest in terms of character and personality.  Some characters are forgotten for good reason, but the one that preceded Janet was one I did remember, the Andre Twist version that first appeared in 2006 in the Battle for Bludhaven mini-series that came out in the wake of Infinite Crisis.  That Firebrand lived up to his name a bit by being something of a rabblerouser, a guy who was standing up for the little guy against whoever was doing whatever in the wasted confines of Bludhaven after the Secret Society of Supervillains dropped Chemo onto the place in the middle of the Infinite Crisis.  That said, it’s one thing to have a hero who stands up for the little guy, but it’s another to do so with a character whose ideology makes him more of a pain in the ass to everyone who was doing anything, though he was eventually recruited by Uncle Sam for an incarnation of the Freedom Fighters that I mean to check out one of these days.

The thing is, that Firebrand was going to be disappointing for the simple reason that DC (and Marvel) are going to be very reluctant to say what the political ideologies of their heroes are for the most part.  Now, I have my own personal headcannon on some characters that are basically unconfirmed in many respects.  I figure Steve Rogers is a New Deal Democrat as a child of the Great Depression, and sure he could have done like Ronald Reagan and gone the other way as he went older, but if he had, I somehow don’t think that the government would have replaced him with the more blatantly conservative John “U.S.Agent” Walker.  And I remember, back in 2000 as the Presidential election was going on over between Al Gore and George W. Bush, I came across a few arguments on the DC Comics message boards about who the different members of the Justice League would vote for.  Many a Republican poster argued that the entire League, save the “tree-hugger Aquaman” were voting for Bush.  That didn’t sit right with me, so I put forward my own arguments that worked off my understanding of League demographics, and I seem to vaguely recall that people liked what I had to say.  Anyway, here was my argument:

• Aquaman couldn’t vote because he was at the time the King of Atlantis and not an American citizen.
• Wonder Woman likewise couldn’t vote as she was the ambassador of Themyscira and not an American citizen
• Martian Manhunter was born and grew to adulthood on Mars, and was not an American citizen.  While it would have been quite easy for J’onn to pose as a human and vote if he really wanted to, I likewise figured as a telepathic Martian, he would know better than anyone how sincere any politician was, and likewise, what sort of government philosophy a Martian might have would have been potentially too alien to guess what he thought was the best way to run a country.
• Plastic Man might be a convicted felon and may not be able to vote.  He’s also likely to vote for silly reasons, and one person even said he was the one most likely to just forget to vote.
• The Flash at the time was Wally West, and my understanding was Wally was the most anti-communist of the old Teen Titans, and Wally always struck me as the Young Republican type in those days, so I could see him voting for Bush.
• Green Lantern at the time was Kyle Rayner, a freelance artist who moved from Southern California to Greenwich Village in New York City.  He probably voted for Gore.
• Batman, as a billionaire, may support Republicans in general if for no other reason than their general plans to cut taxes for people in higher incomes meant he could devote more of his personal fortune to his war on crime, but his general hatred of guns makes me think he wouldn’t be too comfortable with a candidate supported by the NRA.  I still figured him for a Bush voter, but the gun thing was always a bit hard to square, and inevitably, someone would point out Batman allows Alfred to have a gun.  Basically, Batman is something of a conundrum.
• Superman was the one I felt least confident about as I figured Clark would vote for the most idealistic candidate, meaning he probably voted for Nader.  If anything, I think Superman, especially if his backstory says he came to Earth in a Kryptonian birthing pod and was actually born on Earth, would vote for the person he believed in his heart of hearts would do the most good for the most people.  Likewise, it may depend on whether Clark sees himself tied closer to Smallville or Metropolis.  A Smallville Clark probably leans conservative while the reporter Clark in Metropolis with, I am guessing, a college degree  may lean the other way.

However, it’s easy to see why DC and Marvel would prefer not to get too far into those particular weeds.  They want their comics to appeal to the maximum number of readers, and identifying a character as having a particular political ideology or even a religion that isn’t some obscure or made-up faith (i.e. Wonder Woman’s gods or Black Panther’s belief in Bast the Panther God) helps in that regard.  Yes, sometimes rules are broken there.  The Thing was revealed to be Jewish like his creator Jack Kirby in more recent years, and he’s not the only Jewish hero.  And there are political heroes, like the aforementioned U.S.Agent or, on the other side of the political spectrum, Green Arrow.  The thing is, when I read reprints of Green Lantern/Green Arrow or Justice League of America after Ollie Queen’s political liberalism became more known, it was mostly confined to social issues.  What did he think on taxes or the role of government?  I don’t know as he mostly worried about civil rights, an admittedly big issue, but his liberalism was mostly rather hollow in the grand scheme of things.  Plus, the fabled “conservatism” of his sparring partner Hawkman was rather one-sided in those first few issues at least as Ollie just sniped at Kator for no reason beyond the fact that Katar was a space cop.

By the by, my personal headcannon on Katar Hol is that, as a guy who came from a space empire ruled by a monarch, his affection for the American Constitution that came around in later incarnations actually made Katar a big time radical by Thanagarian standards.  Regardless, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, mistakes meant that Katar couldn’t have been the Hawkman on the Silver Age JLA, so JSA Hawkman Carter Hall became that Hawkman instead, and he was outted as a conservative opposite Ollie Queen’s liberal, but that conservatism seems to exist only to give the two something to argue over.

However, DC did once attempt to do something a bit more political than most in 2008 with a mini-series called DC Decisions.  Alternating between conservative comics writer Bill Willingham and liberal comics writer Judd Winick, the story had DC heroes publicly endorsing different political candidates who were sort of stand-ins for real world candidates like John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton.  Or at least, that was my understanding as I never actually read the mini in question and have no desire to do so, based solely on these panels here:

I believe that came from the first issue, particularly from writer Willingham as he wrote the odd-numbered issues while Winnick wrote the even-numbered ones.  My general understanding is also the mini-series never exactly came out and said who Superman was voting for, but that wasn’t the case for most other heroes.  But let’s look at the panels in question here.  There’s a lot wrong with those panels.  Consider Lois Lane here, coming out as a political conservative based on the fact she was raised that way by her military father.  OK, fair enough, I suppose.  But really, “I’m proudly for a strong military, small government, low taxes, and maximum individual freedom”?  Who talks like that?  I could likewise point out that Lois A) kept her own name when she got married and that’s hardly all that traditional a move, B) often clashed with her father over things including marrying a guy Sam Lane never approved of, and C) was a college-educated journalist.  Demographically speaking, she could just as easily be a Democrat as much as she is a Republican.  Likewise, Clark won’t tell his wife who he votes for?  Why?  That makes no sense except to make Lois a strawman conservative (as seen by a conservative writer) while allowing Superman to basically have whatever political ideology the reader wants him to have in a very artificial way.

So, maybe it’s better that we don’t know how these fictional characters vote.

Oh, and the newest Firebrand is a dull character.