Being the child of a divorced family is tough. Especially when your dad happens to be a giant fire-breathing dragon.

Issue #2 picks up soon after the last issue with Duncan's mom embarrassing him by forcing him to bring cupcakes, on his sixteenth birthday, to high school. As if that wasn't bad enough, his mom finds the gold that he "hoarded" from his dad's stash of treasure.

Duncan decided to fly to school rather than take the bus, but something knocks him right out of the sky. Strange. Duncan shrugs it off and arrives at school just in time for his friend Kenny to catch him murdering his mom's cupcakes. Things get a little awkward when Jenna, the girl Duncan has a crush on, says she can't help him with his school work because she is going to a college tour at Arizona State.

Meanwhile, Duncan's dad Belloc is in a tough fight with some kind of techno-knights that are determined to kill him and then follow-up that act with a dragon slaying of Duncan.

From there we get Duncan popping the CPR dummy, getting caught without a hall pass and getting blamed by the Principal for a super weird prank involving a school bus being used as a pencil to write "Holmgang" in the football field. So, if Duncan didn't do that, then who did?

I'm really glad to see Firebreather back with new stories. The book is one of my favorites from Image. It combines the classic internal teen angst superhero story of Spider-Man with the external outcast story common to characters in X-Men.

I could compare a number of similarities to another excellent Image book, Invincible. They both have daddy issues and similar powers. But the big difference is that Duncan can't have a secret identity. As an obvious half-dragon, he always has to face a certain level of discrimination that goes a step beyond the typical awkward teenage years.

This issue is well paced and cleverly written. It successfully picks up where issue #1 left off and builds tension to whatever is coming next. The art layout is well paced. One good example being the 'finger' scene in the book.

Does Belloc look a lot like Fin Fang Foom? He should, Duncan is based off a villain that would have been in Hester's proposed Young Avengers book (which pre-dated what would eventually be Young Avengers). That character was actually the son of Fin Fang Foom and Hester adapted the character for Firebreather.

I really enjoyed the first miniseries, which ended just as I was getting into it. So, I'm glad to see it back. If you have never read Firebreather before, then you should check it out. You may want to start with the issue before this one, though, to help ease you into the story.

Final Word: With Cartoon Network planning to make an animated movie based on Firebreather, this book is hot. Now is a good time to try it out if you haven't yet.

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