Java was the first language I studied also. Do you have any particular objective/project in mind for which you want to implement using Java (e.g. games, network programming, web-applets, databases etc.) or are you wishing to approach this from a more theoretical computer science perspective?
If you're after the former then I'd go for a book specifically tailored to that genre of the language as it removes some of the 'but what is the best way to do that?' questions from a design perspective, and lets you focus on actually implementing and learning the language features.
If the latter is more what you're aiming at then I suggest working through information from a more academic source e.g. a pure java book/tutorial with no specific genre affiliation. I find the best way to audit your choices on this point is to use google books or amazon preview to find the section most commonly titled 'Who should read this book?' at the beginning of most, if not all, technical books like this.
Unfortunately I don't have any experience of any Java online tutorials so I can't recommend any - a quick search doesn't instill me with confidence based on the quality of the first few results..
Good luck!