”You won’t hurt anyone I love ever again!”
Rarely do perfect comic books come out and shine on the shelves of comic distributors around the country. As evolving and crazy the medium is, that perfect miniseries is hard to obtain in the current age, and with how the industry stands it becomes more and more of a challenge to get your vision across without flaws. However, Joanne Starer, Natacha Bustos, and Tamra Bonvillain struck gold with Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville, a book that started out as simply a fun aftermath of the fan-favorite JLI members and became a massive love letter to Keith Giffen and Kevin Maguire’s team as a whole. The newest and final installment manages to end on a perfect note.
Following the previous issue, the past fully creeps up on Bea and Tora and hell truly washes over Smallville as the two are tasked with stopping a monster from Tora’s past and the return of Kooey Kooey Kooey, better known as Booster Gold and Blue Beetle’s housing for Club JLI. Starer pulls no punches with the action and fun of this final script. Starer’s writing, as it has been since the beginning, is brilliant and truly plays with a love for the past by crafting a perfect evolution of these characters and their relationships with each other in a way that helps their shared character progression evolve beautifully – whether it’s the complicated love story of a hairdresser and a villain, a story of two struggling siblings, or the worry of a mother for her son, Starer handles it all perfectly.
DC Comics
Starer’s character-driven writing also helps the all-around love letter this story exists as, as being so character-driven is a bit of a throwback. That’s less to say a modern Superman comic doesn’t have character and more to say a modern Superman comic isn’t like how it was in the ’80s where you couldn’t go five seconds without a subtle dissection of character and motivation. Starer nails that with her mixture of comedy and drama within the story. The more emotional scenes flow as Starer allows for a more personal and heavier kind of comedy while still playing with comedy that exists to purely be silly.
Ultimately, Starer’s biggest strength lies within these character dissections and shows that her sense of style is perfect for this current age of superhero comics. She tackles a perfect mix of new and old within her scripts. Naturally, all of this is paired up beautifully with the joint work of Bustos and Bonvillain throughout the comic.
DC
Bustos nails the action and sense of suspense as she dives into an interesting side of her work as she plays with more serious and darker designs than we’ve seen from her thus far in the mini. The design of New Kooey/Rocky is simple but effective as it truly shows the initial control the two entities share with each other while playing with horror-inspired ideas within the script of the island and its ability to control others. The action in this issue is also stunning as we see the two creators play with high-stakes fighting and emotion paired with Bonvillain’s beautiful coloring in each panel and page.
This comic is truly perfect. Much like Leah Williams’ Power Girl, this was an unexpected but welcome release that shows how important smaller books like this are to the community and industry. Starer, Bustos, and Bonvillain show that even with more obscure characters and their stories they’re able to still take the industry by storm. It may be old comic book doctrine, but even the lesser-knowns still have a place in superhero comics. One could even say that these lesser-knowns are the backbone of these superhero universes.
Altogether, Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #6 is a perfect conclusion to an all-around perfect miniseries. I can’t wait to see what inspires them next and I hope they continue making waves with their upcoming projects.
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