In Review: Fire and Ice #1

Description: A FANTASY CLASSIC RETURNS TO LIFE WITH AN ALL-NEW PREQUEL SERIES! More than four decades ago, two iconic creators came together to bring to the silver screen an amazing new world of magic and adventure. In their classic animated film Fire and Ice, legendary artist FRANK FRAZETTA and famed director RALPH BAKSHI crafted a unique vision of beauty and danger, of good versus evil, all cast against a hypnotic backdrop of savage prehistoric splendor. Now, at long last, this timeless vision is expanding into comics with the first new story to revisit Frazetta and Bakshi’s remarkable realm since 1982!

The Story

In this new prequel series to the cult animated film Fire & Ice, we learn some of the backstory to how the Witch and her son began their plans of world domination through the use of magic. The story begins with Thon teaching the children of his tribe about the eternal struggle of life and death via a parable about a Mouse that is caught in the middle of an ongoing fight between a dragon and a tiger.  However, midway through Thon’s lesson the tribe which seems to be nomadic gets attacked by a group of sub-humans who are working for the witch who is working for the Queen of the Ice Lands.

The Artwork

Leonardo Manco does a fantastic job with the artwork and manages to capture the spirit of the visuals that the late Frank Frazetta brought to cinema in the early 1980s. It’s quite difficult to single out any particular panel from this book as there is so much beauty on the pages of the book. But one pivotal moment in this first issue is when Larn gets rescued by two female warriors.

Overall

Bill Willingham who is perhaps best known for his work on Fables does a great job of setting this first issue up and re-introducing readers to the world that was depicted in the movie. One of the best parts of this comic is you do not have to have seen the movie in order to understand the story because events from the movie have not happened yet in this comic.

Overall. This is a solid story with some spectacular artwork that very much syncs with what fans of the film would have seen on the big screens back when it was released in 1983. Hopefully, this issue will be the launch of a new line of comics for Dynamite.