Relationships.
Whether it’s your friends or loved ones, trying to feel important and loved by those you care about is oftentimes an uphill battle with several obstacles to overcome. In this case, you’re a has-been superhero who is trying to make it big after Superman kicked you and your partner out of the city over a scuffle with your partner’s ex-boyfriend who happens to be a prominent Justice League member. Regardless of whether or not you’re in that particular situation, Joanne Starer, Natacha Bustos, and Tamara Bonvillan continue to swing for success with Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville, which has evolved into being a love letter to Keith Giffen and his absurd sense of humor.
Following the first issue, we see how Fire is dealing with her newly discovered impulsivity as she hires Ambush Bug to figure out the best way to lure supervillains to Smallville to show the world that Fire and Ice are still as needed as they once were. As expected, it ends in chaos and oddly enough, as a social media-based reality TV show with D-List Supervillains like Gorilla Grodd’s angsty sister. If it wasn’t too obvious, the biggest strengths in Starer’s writing is that her scripts feel like both a continuation of where they left off under Giffen’s supervision and how she modernizes Giffen’s political sense of comedy in a new direction. With how each joke is presented, you would swear that you were reading a classic JLI or Ambush Bug comic mixed in with appearances of Ma Kent and the happy faces scattered across Smallville.
DC Comics
The comedy allows for a full deconstruction of these characters as Starer and Bustos introduce the Rhoades siblings, who aim to show Bea and Tora the ins and outs of Smallville and what you can truly do for fun in a small town. However, while Tora is inspired to go out and play within the grounds of normalcy, Bea is struggling with trying to remain relevant as popularity and heroism is something she’s known for most of her life. It allows the story to truly let the reader get inside of the heads of these two despite Bea’s shameless attempts at becoming social media famous for the sake of getting back in the spotlight. The art by Bustos and Bonvillan allows this to grow with since the duo’s colorful and unique creative styles lean into the complete absurdity of the comic as Bustos and Bonvillan show the beauty of Smallville and the horrors of Miss Congeniality about to shoot someone with an AR-15.
Historically, Keith Giffen’s off brand sense of humor through teams and characters like the JLI, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Ambush Bug changed a lot of how DC as a company looked at comedy; whether it was colorful and political humor of Paul Kupperberg’s The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl or simply allowing a joke that wouldn’t appear in most other Big-Two comics, Keith Giffen set the stage for that. His comedy was always quick, both grounded in both reality and complete uncontrollable fantasy, and it worked.
DC Comics
There is a genius to characters like Ambush Bug in the original miniseries protecting people by shouting “don’t worry! I’m a liberal” as he attempts to “save the day” and become a big name superhero. What Starer, Bustos, and Bonvillan do with the comedy Giffen left behind is applied to the modern day as characters say and do the strangest things just to make it to the top. All of this being reminiscent of the past with scenes of the robotic companion L-Ron contemplating murder and interviews with supervillains who think they were either scammed by Fire or think that her TV show will make them the most intimidating villains the world has ever known. Tragically, that will be impossible for Gentleman Ghost, who is quite literally a ghost but oddly has a weakness towards virgins.
All around, Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #2 is a love letter to ’80s comic books in the best way. Starer knocks it out of the park with her scripting abilities and sense of humor while Bustos and Bonvillan deliver a beautiful but strange comic each issue. This miniseries has been a pleasant surprise given the suddenness of it all, even down to its announcement. But really, randomly appearing in the publication sphere is true to heart to what the JLI.
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