Firestar #1

History

Firestar (Angelica Jones) was created by John Romita Sr., Rick Hoberg, and writer Dennis Marks for the 1981 NBC animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, where she was devised as a fire-powered substitute for the Human Torch after rights to that character were unavailable. The X-Men sales boom of the mid-1980s gave Marvel the commercial rationale to fold her into mainstream continuity, first via a brief appearance in Uncanny X-Men #193 (May 1985, written by Chris Claremont), and then with this miniseries. Writer Tom DeFalco — who would later become Marvel's Editor-in-Chief — conceived each of the four issues as representing one year of Angelica's high school career, an unusual structural choice that created a deliberate continuity wrinkle with Kitty Pryde and the New Mutants, who appear in issue #1 yet age at the normal Marvel glacial pace while Firestar advances through four school years across four issues. The series was edited by Ann Nocenti under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, with pencils by Mary Wilshire and inks by Steve Leialoha; DeFalco later told Marvel Age magazine that the goal was to give the character the psychological depth that Saturday-morning broadcast standards had prevented the animated show from exploring.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Firestar #1 (cover date March 1986, on-sale December 3, 1985) is the first issue of a four-issue limited series that presented Angelica Jones's definitive in-continuity origin story for the first time in print.
• The character was originally created solely for the NBC animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981), devised as a fire-based replacement for the Human Torch when that character's rights were unavailable; her pre-production names included Heatwave, Starblaze, and Firefly.
• Issue #1 establishes the comic-book version of Firestar's power set as microwave-based radiation manipulation — not simple fire control as in the animated series — a change made partly because Marvel already had multiple fire-powered characters.
• The story of issue #1, titled 'Mark of the Mutant,' depicts Firestar's first-ever manifestation of her mutant powers (triggered by the death of her grandmother) and her immediate recruitment by Emma Frost/the White Queen, who arrives at the Jones home minutes before Professor Xavier.
• Written by Tom DeFalco and penciled by Mary Wilshire (inked by Steve Leialoha), with Ann Nocenti as editor and Jim Shooter as Editor-in-Chief.
• Issue #1 features the New Mutants (Cannonball/Sam Guthrie, Sunspot/Roberto Da Costa, Mirage/Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane/Rahne Sinclair) and the X-Men (Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner) in supporting appearances, as well as Professor X/Charles Xavier and Bartholomew Jones (Angelica's father).
• DeFalco structured the four-issue series so each issue is set one year later than the previous one, with issue #1 chronologically preceding Firestar's published debut in Uncanny X-Men #193 — effectively functioning as a retroactive prequel.
• The entire four-issue limited series was later collected and reprinted as a Marvel Digest (titled X-Men: Firestar) in May 2006 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends animated series.

Cast · 10 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Firestar

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#2 1st appearance — Randall Chase

Variants (2)