I hate the Superbuddies...

I have a confession to make.

I hate HATE anything Superbuddies.

No, that's not really true. I rather liked Formerly Known As The Justice League for what it was. A pretty funny if substance free collection of jokes.

But "I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League"?! I'm sorry. It's utter crap. Moreover, it's incredibly overrated crap.

I've never been a really huge fan of humor that requires the characters to be grossly distorted to make the jokes work. Yeah, it's funny that Booster would wish them in Hell. But is he that stupid? No. And really, if you're going to stretch him so far to make that joke, why even use that character at all?

And as a Guy Gardner fan I'm especially annoyed at the caricaturation of my favorite. What? I've got fan-entitlement moments as much as anyone else. It doesn't bother me so much that the timeline doesn't work (Guy got Vuldarian powers during the same time Ice was killed. That adventure was WHY he wasn't there), it's not even that they massacred his personality enough to make him actually fondle a teenaged girl.

(Guy, even at his assiest, wasn't the sort to feel up a woman. Lewd comments sure, but that was pretty much the end of the line. He did it to get them pissed off, not because of any sexual reason. And he certainly wouldn't do it after Ice's death.)

...okay, maybe I am a little bothered that they exacerbated the token jerk to someone who'd sexually ASSAULT a teenaged girl for a joke because paedophilia/ephebophilia is FUNNY.

I'm not bothered by the lawyer thing. Though it seemed pretty pointless. Yes, we law-types are borderline evil, but gym teachers are evil too. Why not work in the joke with something that actually fits his background?*

No. My big problem was that they brought back Ice. Stupidly.

And that intelligent people try to tell me how heartbreaking it was when Guy and Fire played Orpheus to her Eurydice...

and. Um. NO. It was really really awful. It wasn't even original. It didn't even keep in tune with the rest of the story. (First you make Guy a molester, then you introduce Ice as a fast food worker in Hell? And NOW you want to tug at my heart strings?!)

Maybe I would have liked it were I coming right off of JLI to read it. But I didn't. I came off of Warrior. And I know that there's probably only about ten people who could stomach the horribly stylized nineties art enough to actually read the issues, but the whole grief/acceptance of Ice's death PLUS a reconciliation of sorts with Fire? All done. Much better and truer to the characters there.

You know, Ice is mentioned maybe three times in the entire series. Once when Guy storms her kingdom, violently shoving would-be guards aside cursing and shouting until he's met by Queen Olaf next to a memorial. She doesn't try to stop him and he gets quiet. Then they speak partially in Ice's language, which he speaks clumsily but understandably and English. It's a man grieving for his love, a woman for her daughter, and that woman reaching out to the man as mother and son in their time of mutual loss.

Another time, Guy's alien abilities are going quite mad, out of control, he's raging and they can't do anything to contain him. Until Matrix-Supergirl becomes Ice. Then he stops. They reach him. He doesn't say anything about her. They don't really talk about it at all. But that's part of why it's such a powerful moment. When nothing else would reach him, her image did.

The third and last time she's addressed is the Christmas issue, which Guy begins moping about his losses and ends with a new maturity about what he has. After a reconciliation with his father (dead, via Spectre), he argues with a slowly-getting-more-inebriated Fire, then meets Olaf. He shows her what he made (had made?) for Ice, in Warrior, an incredibly beautiful statue. It dominates Warriors, dwarfing even the Green Lantern monuments. She is moved and she gives him a small magically created figurine of him and Ice together. She tells him that he can't bury himself in grief. In the past. Then he and Fire collide, are about to fight, lock eyes over it (naturally they're under the mistletoe) and they decide to mutually share their love and grief for Tora in other ways.

It's really a lot better than it sounds. It was really emotional in execution.

Aside from those moments though, Ice is never really mentioned. But somehow throughout the entire run, his grief and love for her is this incredibly powerful underlying thread. Especially as Guy is finally able to mature in a way he wasn't medically capable of in JLI. It's poignant particularly that the Christmas issue really marks the pinnacle of his emotional growth into the man Tora always wanted and believed he could be.

And every bit of it is in character. The emotional growth felt organic and stuck (a rarety in comics), while the way in which Fire and Guy reconciled might be tawdry with other characters with the two of them, with the way they feel and act, two passionate and emotional people quick to express temper and hate, capable of such loyalty and love...it worked. They weren't a romantic couple and it wasn't about sex, it was about both of them letting go of grief and past hurts and anger and finding something else. They're friends after that point and it works.

Sure an Orpheus-Eurydice story can usually cause a little tingling in the back of the eye, but it's cheap and dreadfully overdone. Practically everywhere, as though it's a badge of "hey look, I'm cultured, I know greek myths!"

Which isn't fair of course. Orpheus is a powerful story, full of emotion, a man loves so much that he can't resist that one look back. Doubt robbing him of all he'd dreamed of. But...honestly? It's a tragedy because of the trope. It's a tragedy because of the concept. There's nothing inherent to the characters.

If Superman and Lois Lane acted out the Orpheus myth, it'd be just as sad and heart-wrenching. If Nightwing and Kory/Barbara/whichever he's in love with right now did it, it'd be able to wrench a tear from many a cold eye. But it's not really THEM. It's about loss in general. NOT about Superman, Nightwing, or anyone else's grief or love. It's just about the loss.

I did like that Guy had enough will not to look back. But really, I don't think Bea would have either. But of course, someone has to. Or the story isn't a tragedy. And in retrospect, it's awfully meaningless now that Ice is back, isn't it?

Warrior wasn't a tragedy. And even if they hadn't...resolved things so admirably in that one issue, it still wouldn't have been a tragedy. It was a story arc about growth. About a boy, if not chronologically, becoming a man.

And you know what? Now that Ice is back? It's STILL powerful. Because the point wasn't the loss, it was about moving past and beyond. When they finally reunite, I hope they're together again, but if their time has passed, that doesn't change any of the emotional strength of those stories.

And don't get me started on the stupidity of the mirror universe and kinky S&M Mary Marvel or lisping Captain Marvel. That was just really really dumb.

(*Heh, it occurs to me though that Guy as a lawyer = Geoffrey Fieger. Okay. Now I DO want Guy to get that law degree. Hehehe.)