Every week, we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer while still acknowledging that the abandoned story DID still happen. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This time around we'll take a look at the abrupt change in direction DC went in with Fury of Firestorm last year.

You know what's weird? Despite the cover of the book always being "The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men," the indica for the comic actually reads "The Fury of Firestorms: The Nuclear Men." That's very strange.

Anyhow, when Gail Simone, Ethan Van Sciver and Yildiray Cinar launched the book, the concept was as follows: two high school kids (one a brain and the other a jock) are transformed into superpowered beings (Ronnie the jock could shoot nuclear fire blasts while Jason the brain could transmute stuff)...

The two Firestorms then merged into a composite being known as Fury...

They rarely merged into Fury, though, and mostly the went on various adventures as two separate Firestorms and met a bunch of other Firestorms from different countries. Then Gail Simone left the book with issue #6 and Ethan Van Sciver left after issue #10, as well, and it fell to Joe Harris (who co-wrote the book from #6-10) to abandon everything and get it ready for incoming writer/artist Dan Jurgens. He began with a story in #11-12 (still penciled by Cinar, with inks by Marion Alquiza), where Harris wrapped up the multiple Firestorm idea by more or less having them die in a major battle where just Jason and Ronnie survived, but back in their regular bodies.

Then Harris wrote his last issue, #0 (art by Cinar and Alquiza). He had Jason and Ronnie seem to slowly get their powers back until a bad guy who they thought had died showed up again. They were then forced to take action...

They destroyed the bad guy in a battle that ended on the verge of outer space and then they crashed back to Earth...

So basically, Harris dropped the change on the classic Firestorm format and returned the book to the standard pre-New 52"two people combine to form Firestorm" format. Incoming writer/artist Dan Jurgens now had the classic set-up to work with. The change was too late to save the comic, though, as it was recently canceled.