Heat Wave
it is strange to look back at this issue as it is based in the late 1950s. It would seem to be hopelessly dated by this point but in fact it is not. As far as I know it is the only issue ever made which focused on the regular exploits of a regular firefighter. There are some standards of the genre here (which to be fair I didn't even realize were standards until I thought about it) such as the son following in the father's footsteps after he has died in a fire. For the period it is actually a fairly decent collection of stories. The main reason behind this is that it doesn't try to wow with abstract and poorly conceived scientific ideals, but instead just focusing on the stories. They are definitely silver age in context (they involve a circus for instance) but they are till fun enough. For a series which turned out to be anything but being about firefighters (and which really had a very profound affect on comic history) this inauspicious start is still a pretty good one.