>>11522624>guy wearing a mask inside a buried freighter after being trapped there for monthsLOL
Ever heard of a red herring? This is a classic red herring, because they tell you EVERYONE but Zartan and Billy are dead. Not even 8 issues later (reveal is 10 issues), they brought Firefly back. You know how long it takes to make a toy? 14-12 months. So i think it's pretty obvious that issue you're posting is where Hama was told that Firefly was bring brought back into the toys. The storyline that Firefly comes back in starts in another 4 issues from the one you posted, so that was the plan for the storyline.
You can point toward Hama saying he doesn't know what's going to happen from one issue to the next, but there's obviously still planning going on. There's going to be a rough outline, based on a list of characters and themes that Hasbro gives to them that needs conform to their toyline for the upcoming year.
There's a reason why Hama didn't kill anyone in that freighter in the first place. He couldn't kill anyone, because he knew Hasbro might reuse the characters from one year to the next, so he just buried a bunch of unused characters so he wouldn't have bunch of seemingly important characters doing nothing for dozens of issues. For a writer, this makes them super happy. So when Hasbro finally confirms that they're not going to use those characters anymore, Hama can finally say they're all dead... except for Firefly and Zartan (+billy), because they're going to be part of the upcoming ninja focused storylines, because ninjas are important for the toyline from 1992 to 1994 (1995 wave created but not produced, because it takes a year to produce a toy).
So again, i don't really see Firefly's return as some big stretch. If he wasn't such a background character, it's not surprising he came back, because of how common red herrings are. And since he was such a blank character, you can easily make him into an important character relevant to an important backstory.
