Fire and Ice: Hell Freezes Over #2 // Review
Ice had become Fire. Fire has become Ice. And though this might well have been sort of poetic in some sort of sense, it’s actually quite literal as two good friends have to deal with being in each other’s bodies in Fire and Ice: Hell Freezes Over #2. Writer Joanne Starer continues a fun, casual super-power mix-up story with artist Stephen Byrne and colorist Tamra Bonvillain. The Freaky Friday-like premise feels like a fun continuation of work that had been established in the first issue of what promises to be a really fun walk through the margins of the DC Universe with a couple of old friends.
To make matters worse, they’re both only still learning how to use each other’s powers. And to make matters worse than THAT, they’re supposed to appear at a fair that’s a fundraiser for charity and...it’s not going to be easy trying to keep everything straight. And it’s going to be that much more difficult for everyone else to keep everything straight as well. So it’s all a bit of a mess and there’s bound to be pretty substantial problems for everyone involved. All they have to do is hold it together for the length of a carnival, though. What’s the worst that could happen?
There have been a range of different approaches to sitcom-style superhero dynamics. Starer’s large ensemble in a small town approach is actually a lot more fun than it has any right to be. There’s really no. reason at all why it should be working as well as it does. A lot of it has to do with her specific brand of humor and knowing how to deliver it in comic book format. She's actually really good at delivering it in a way that feels very earnest and very heartfelt. And that's very cool.
Stephen Byrne’s art style fits Starer’s art quite well. His clean lines feel perfectly cozy and clean with wide open surfaces for Bonvillain’s color to fit into. it all feels so very well executed on so many different levels. It feels very deeply enjoyable. There's a lot going on individuals that feels like it could have been shot before a live studio audience on a soundstage somewhere. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just feels very comfortable and comforting. It doesn't feel totally natural. But that's perfectly fine as it's not necessarily meant to.
It’s also interesting to note that a standard monthly comic book takes about as much time to read as it might to watch a standard major TV network sitcom in the United States. There's even room for commercial breaks and everything. It feels almost perfectly, set up to be a TV sitcom, except that it happens to be played out in pages and panels in the universe that we know as the DC universe. So it ends up being a lot of fun. But it's not exactly mainstream DC even though it clearly fits into the overall of mainstream DC.
