ElijahSnowFan wrote:So. I've made it through 12 issues, and this is really good stuff. I remember rolling my eyes a while back when Ice was going through changes through the solicits and I was avoiding this series, but I'm OK with how Winick did this -- my bottom line on this stuff is this: I actually own, in very poor condition, the SuperFriends issue where Fire and Ice first appeared, the rest of the Global Guardians.
That stuff was absolutely not in continuity, and even when the JLI was formed, their backgrounds were barely touched upon. So when Greg Rucka made Fire an assassin in Checkmate, I wasn't thrilled, but I went with it, same as I am Winick's adjustment of Ice.
That's more for Herald, because I realize he doesn't agree with many of these things, perhaps all of them. But I do believe that at some point, you have to give a writer some leeway to tell a story that they feel good about. Many, many writers have done it, from Mike Carey filling in Professor Xavier's history in X-Men Legacy, to Frank Miller in Batman: Year One, and so forth. These cases aren't egregious, at least for me...I would prefer heroes always have been heroes, but at the end of the day, they are human beings and likely have some failings. How they overcome them is the biggest thing, and it has been interesting in watching Judd Winick pull these characters together.
At the end of the day, this is yet another example of the Marvelization of the DCU. Suddenly, EVERYbody has to suddenly gain some artificial, nasty flaw, ESPECIALLY if they were previously renowned for their niceness. It's the same "Make 'em MEAN!" garbage they've been dumping on Superman, Captain Marvel, and the current Justice League. The same garbage many of you say you can't tolerate in THOSE characters, you somehow find acceptable in Ice??!!
Notice how no one's talking about how the current League is going to "overcome" its oh-so-"human" portrayal; apparently, they've had 5 years to do so, but quite blatantly DIDN'T overcome anything. And let's face it, neither would Winick's Ice, because he was no more worried about her "overcoming" it than Johns is now about the League! Like Johns with the League, Ice's miserable portrayal is just the piss-poor, misbegotten way that Judd sees the character. End of story, LITERALLY.
Moreover, this isn't just "a failing". Ice's REAL history as the REAL princess of a REAL ice kingdom HAS been established and explored in Dan Vado's run of Justice League America. Tora's REAL father, mother, and brother all appeared in it, all of them rulers of said kingdom, and distinctly NON-Gypsies. And when Ice died during the League's Overmaster storyline, Tora's body was taken back there for her funeral. That means THREE different Justice League teams attended it! And, in his solo book, Guy Gardner also visited the kingdom, to pay his respects to Ice and her mother. So NO, I'm not going to let Judd Winick try to tell me that none of this backstory existed, especially when the alternative he offers is this insensitive stereotype nonsense. And neither should you.
The fact is that Winick changed Ice's history into this "Gypsy stereotype" bastardization purely because he can't believe in the existence of a princess of an ice kingdom. Well, frankly, if he can't believe in such a fantastical backstory, he doesn't belong in the fantasy-riddled superhero comics industry. You either believe A Man Can Fly Because He Comes from a Planet Conveniently Named After an Element on the Earth's Periodic Table, and A Woman Can Be the Future Ruler of a Hidden Frozen Kingdom, or you get outta here.