Fire & Ice: When Hell Freezes Over #5 // Review
Tora has just been reunited with her mother. In Hell. Literally. There’s an insect demon that’s offered her a choice: she could choose to return with her mother or she could leave her behind. If she takes her mother, she has to leave Bea. Bea is fire. Tora’s Ice. She’s got a decision to make in Fire & Ice: When Hell Freezes Over #5. Writer Joanne Starer continues an enjoyable contemporary magical fantasy drama with artist Stephen Byrne. Though Starer and company are trying to juggle a bit more than they should, the overall impact of the story feels strong and well-modulated in its fifth issue.
The demon Etrigan is hanging out with Fire. He’s able to show her where Ice is. He’s explaining to her that Ice has a choice between her mother and her. He’s trying to get her accustomed to the idea that she might be in the fires of Hell for the rest of eternity. Ice DOES have a strong connection with her late mother and who wouldn’t want to have THAT back? The thing is...Fire and Ice have a connection too. They’ve been through a lot together and it’s not going to be an easy choice for her.
The whole...choosing between loved ones part has been done to death in fantasy literature...and in super hero stories it’s happened A LOT. Starer’s big success here is Fire’s decision to go after Ice...delving deeper and deeper into her own personal Hell in order to get to Ice is a very clever approach that dives quite a bit into Bea’s past and current psyche. There are some very, very powerful moments of drama that find themselves in Bea’s journey that are sharply contrasted by some rather clever bits of dialogue and smartly-executed narrative wit.
There’s a lot of ery nuanced emotional drama going on over the course of the issue. That emotional drama is happening in Hell between parents and adult children. Theoretically, the fantasy of it all could be something that would overpower the emotional immediate of the visuals. However, Byrne keeps the center of the panel, focused on some very intricate and subtle renderings of emotion in process. The fantastic nature of it all is quite clearly there and quite vivid. But it exists and rests around the edges of the central drama. The color is remarkably vivid, and it all feels delightfully, simplified without feeling so cartoon that it would mask the central emotion.
It's nice to see an issue of this series. Focus so closely on the title characters. It's not like there isn't charm in the extended ensemble. It's just very difficult to reconcile them against the drama at the heart of the series. Starer and company have manages a remarkably fun overall dynamic between the two title characters and everyone else in their orbit, but it’s really difficult to keep everything fitting together whileadvancing the plot without some of the momentum getting lost here and there.
