Jason Rusch was a seventeen year old teenager living in Detroit, who wanted nothing more than to escape his home city. He lived with his father, who had turned abusive after he lost his hand in an industrial accident. His mother left his father sometime after the accident, leaving the young Jason with his father. Jason later recalled that his father had hit him on four occasions. With the loss of a job he needed to fund college, so Jason turned to a local tough for money, accepting a job as a courier. It was on that job that he encountered the Firestorm Matrix, searching for a new host after Ronnie Raymond’s death.
Ronnie had been fighting a supervillain called the Shadow Thief. Taking the Shining Knight’s sword, the Shadow Thief drove it through Ronnie’s chest. The magical sword ruptured the Nuclear Man’s containment field, resulting in Firestorm’s body exploding, and his residual essence funneling into Jason’s body. In the aftermath, Jason struggled to cope with his new identity and powers – a struggle that led to the death of the man who had hired him.
