Sometimes, fans can be hard on companies. Sometimes, companies do it to themselves. Take, for example, this blog entry at DC’s The Source, discussing “Justice League: Generation Lost” #12, and the story involving Ice.
If you’ve been reading JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST, you know the character’s been going through her share of soul-searching. But how does one character go from pensive, shy flower to elemental badass? Let’s ask JL: GL editor Brian Cunningham.
“For those of us that read the Super Friends series in the 1970s where Ice was originally introduced as Ice Maiden, we all know how absurd her origin was. With Gen Lost #12, writer Judd Winick provides Ice with a credible and tragic origin that does not negate what we already know. And the consequences of this new origin are pretty explosive, as Aaron Lopresti’s amazing art shows.”
All well and good. EXCEPT . . . Icemaiden isn’t Ice. Ice is a totally different character. The Icemaiden that first appeared in non-continuity “Super Friends” #9 in 1977 was Sigrid Nansen. Tora, our Ice, didn’t appear until “JLI” #12 in 1988.
Granted, there was even confusion at DC then, born out of the fact that some thought that Icemaiden had never been named, but she had. This backstory was handled and reconciled when IceMAIDEN joined the League after Tora (Ice) died. (For the record, Icemaiden’s first canonical appearance was in “Infinty Inc.” #32 from 1986).
Icemaiden has appeared in other stories over time, including being duped by The Mist II during the run of “Starman”; The Mist II then disguised herself as Icemaiden to kill several members of Justice League Europe. Also, Icemaiden appeared in a 2007 “JSA Classified” story. During her run in “Justice League American”, it was revealed that Icemaiden is Jewish (as opposed to the Norwegian-gods descended Tora) and bisexual (one of the few heroines to be identified as such).
So, my question is this: if fans can remember this, why can’t editorial?
September 14th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Buuuuurrrrrrnnnnnn.
Nice work, DC!
September 14th, 2010 at 9:12 am
Oh geez DC, please don’t let this be some stupid editorial amnesia. I’m onboard w/ the folks posted at DCs sourceblog. She doesn’t need to be revamp all dark ‘n gritty. You can do serious w/ out that.
But to just plain have the wrong freakin’ character in mind? Oh brother. Winick has been doing the impossible–winning over skeptic fans–with this series so far, but you just know there’ll be epic blowback if you’re guess is right about this.
*sigh*
September 14th, 2010 at 9:19 am
Hopefully, this was just the editor being an idiot. Then again, he would have had to have read the story, right? Right? Man, there’s no hope.
September 14th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Quite right, Troy. And there’s an extent to which — granted, from the Source post and cover alone, and not from having read the un-published story — that this looks like a “darkening” of Ice a la the Judgment Day story in Justice League that lead to Ice’s first death, generally considered today as ill-conceived and unnecessary. My hope and expectation is that Judd Winick has more sense than that.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:06 am
But, when Tora first appeared in JLI #12, she was introduced as “Ice Maiden”…she changed her name to “Ice” in JLI #19; her “Secret Origins” story revealed her background as an “ice goddess” and showed how she was inducted into the Global Guardians…when Gerard Jones introduced the “first” Icemaiden, Sigrid Nansen, in his Justice League America run, she was retconned into having joined the Global Guardians first…the implication was that once Tora joined, Sigrid left the team soon after…considering that she hasn’t appeared since JSA Classified #19, I’m not too concerned about her…
September 14th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Andrew, it’s still a different character. Icemaiden WAS in Infinity Inc. before Ice was in the League; I remember that story. This is bad editing.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Question: Is this really important? Seems just like a minor editorial gaffe. Ice’s character plots have been pretty logical if you ask me. She really hasnt had time for herself since returning from the dead, shes treated Guy like crap in GLC and she getting towed around by a bunch of jerks she cant stand. Her blow out is coming at the halfway point of JL:GL, shes earned the right to take a rough character turn and there is plenty of time left for it to come full circle.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:29 am
Sucks that there is confusion from the company itself, but what sucks even more is that they want to “rage up” (for lack of a better word) the sweet Ice we already had. WHY does every character have to be a freaking rage-a-holic bad-ass? Why is Ice being shy and unassuming a bad thing? She was popular this way for a reason. And paired with the firecracker Fire? Don’t see the point.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:34 am
@Sean
It’s kind of important to me as a reader that the company can’t keep their characters straight. Ice’s plots have been logical, but Cunningham himself doesn’t seem to know who Ice is. That’s kinda stupid really.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
@Steve
I can dig dude, I guess it’s a little bit of a drag but I still believe it’s the nature of the beast. I bet editorial is an inhumanly thankless job, and yeah I do feel like sometimes I know the character beats better than editorial or the writers but I’d sure as shit not want to be in their shoes
September 14th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Sean: Ignoring the confusion over the characters, I agree with you. It seems logical to me that Tora would get upset. It’s actually a little weird that more characters don’t get PTS over their deaths. Tora has been unsure how she wants to proceed with Guy in GLC and telling him that she needs time. During Blackest Night as a Black Lantern she told Guy that being resurrected and killed again and again is too much for her. She keeps losing everything she struggles to regain. So I do see Max forcing her onto a team, and the dangers constantly thrown their way as freaking her out. I’ve enjoyed everything else in JLGL so I’m willing to give this a try.
BTW “jerks she can’t stand”? Ice has always gotten along fine with Booster, and Cap. Bea is her best friend, she was okay with Jaime during the Reach invasion and she really doesn’t know RR.
September 14th, 2010 at 10:59 am
It’s okay to have a character get upset.
Does Ice really have to be that character?
It was the same thing with Osiris. They had this super powerful character and first they had him eaten by a crocodile, and now that he’s back they’re having him become angsted up on the villain team.
It’s like they see positive characters as nothing but the opportunity to really deconstruct. “Hey! We haven’t utterly blackened this character yet.”
September 14th, 2010 at 11:06 am
@Erin
Just meant that in the most colloquial way as possible. Of course its her best friends in the costume biz but considering her current state of mind and hopefully now classic sequence of her Nate and Booster yelling at Jaime I’m sure none of them really want to be around each other anyway. Hopefully Tora will hop on the train after this fight with Bea and realize its for the good of the group/world and not for individual like Nate is getting at.
God, I love this book.
September 14th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Given how much I like this series, I am happy to wait and see what Judd does. And here is the funny thing: he totally messed up Captain Atom’s time travel power/curse. And I didn’t care in the least. Sometimes, I will accept a change or even an outright screw-up if the content is great.
September 14th, 2010 at 11:39 am
“Andrew, it’s still a different character. Icemaiden WAS in Infinity Inc. before Ice was in the League; I remember that story. This is bad editing.”
Yes, I understand that. My point was that in 1988, they were the same character. She was retroactively split into two different characters in 1994 (or 1995, can’t recall which). The point that I am trying to make is that the character of Ice originally was this Ice Maiden, so saying that she was introduced in Super Friends isn’t necessarily an editorial mistake, that’s all.
September 14th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Andrew, they were immediately different characters when Ice appeared because DC screwed up then, too. She immediately had a different name and skin color, and by 1988, Ice had been given a separate origin in “Secret Origins” (I believe Icemaiden’s was discussed in “Infinity Inc.”). So by 1988, there were two different origins.
Cunningham’s talking about the origin being absurd. Who’s? If it’s Tora, her origin wasn’t in Super Friends; that’s a different origin. This guy just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
September 14th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I don’t mind taking a serious turn w/ the character, that’s fine.
I don’t think she has to go all rage, permanently tho either.
I just hope they’re taling about the right Ice.
September 14th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Who really cares? I know the difference between Ice and Ice Maiden and if I found out that they screwed up the origins, I’d just realize they screwed up and move on. Bringing in Ice Maiden after Ice was an established character was a stupid move in the first place and, frankly, with DC having had at least one “universe-reboot/Superboy punch” thing between now and then, who’s to say what we knew still holds?
Are you enjoying the book? That’s really all that matters.
September 14th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Enjoying the book and thinking that editorial is loaded with a$$clowns shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. I like the book, but I think that they look really stupid when they do stuff like this.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“So, my question is this: if fans can remember this, why can’t editorial?”
————–
DC has editors? Oh, you mean those “team leaders” who let one writer over everyone else do whatever he wants.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
@Matt D.:
This may be beside the point, but I disagree about Ice vs. Osiris. Ice was a character created to be upbeat, who was darkened unnecessarily in the 1990s, and may or may not be subject to the same again now; Osiris was a character created for a miniseries solely for the purpose of starting upbeat and then getting eaten by a crocodile. The former is, as you said, an example of the trend away from hopeful characters (then, if not now); the latter is a character arc. Just my two cents.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
More disturbing than confusing the two characters is the idea they think they need to make Ice more EXTREEEEEEEEEEEMEE. I’ve been enjoying Lost Generation, but maybe it’s time to jump off now, before the 1990s-style character assassination.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Whoops, Wings said pretty much the exact same thing. Oh well.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I get what you’re saying about Osiris, but he was such a breath of fresh air. He highlighted the need for some actual optimism in the DCU.
As did Miss Martian (who did get brutally maimed in the last couple of months, though she did get better).
September 14th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Brian Cunningham is also the same DC editor that thought it was a good idea to reboot the Atom and toss out 20 years of Ray Palmer’s continuity.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
It’s magic, so DC doesn’t care.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
For those who say who cares, or it’s just a minor gaffe, remember this is what put Hawkman on the raod to continuity hell.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I don’t either. This is nerd nitpicking.
September 14th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
That should read: “road”. Apparently some fingers type faster than others.
September 14th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Editorial mixups aside, since when did it become wrong to have a heroine who is not a badass ass-kicker? What’s wrong with having a NICE, sweet character for a change? That’s how Tora was in the JLI. And why does every character need a tragic origin?
Judd Winick and the DC editors are the ones who need to do some soul-searching, not Tora.
September 14th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
I feel so ashamed of myself, that I am able to comprehend this snafu in all its pointless detail. Is there some sort of AA group for comic book fans?
September 14th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
I will not care of the error
IF the new origin its a good story
September 14th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Radmoski, ladies and gentlemen! The coolest guy in the room, the coolest guy ever! He can call it nerd nitpicking, but why is he reading and why is he almost the 30th poster?
September 15th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Why bring Ice back to life if you’re going to write her as the total opposite of everything that made her a popular character the fans wanted resurrected in the first place?
Has Sigrid been erased from continuity? If continuity doesn’t matter to DC anymore, that means that these are all self contained stories and there’s no need to buy all the DC books I can afford to flesh out one giant, decades-long tale like I have since I was a kid.
September 15th, 2010 at 3:49 am
Haven’t been reading the book, but that is a pretty embarassing editorial mistake. Especially since its part of the editors job to make sure that stuff like that isn’t being mixed up. Hopefully the writer has his info straight and this was just a case of needing a quote for the blog and talking to the wrong person.
It may be a small and even slightly understandable mistake, but it is still embarassing for DC.
September 15th, 2010 at 4:39 am
I won’t care if it makes a good story. I’ll make my mind after reading the issue, not before.
September 15th, 2010 at 11:20 am
I would argue that when Tora-Ice first appeared, she was not a separate character, she was a retcon. She did not become a separate character (and therefore not a retcon) until the old Icemaiden showed up later. So Cunningham’s comment, while not really being as clear as it should be, isn’t technically incorrect.
September 15th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Nerd nitpicking? Ha! Calling people nerds on a comic book messageboard is like bragging about your sobriety at your AA meeting knowing damn good and well that there’s a 12-pack of Natty Lite waiting for you in the back seat of your car when it’s over.
For the record, seeing Ice written out of character sucked in the 90s and it sucks now. Yeah, characters can grow and change, but they don’t do 180s. She might have been shy, she might have been reserved, but she was never a coward.
September 16th, 2010 at 7:49 am
It’s unlike Winick not to remember a bisexual in comics. Curious…
September 19th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
But it IS like Winick to have an utter lack of understanding about a character, and foolishly darken said character up.
Typical slipshod Winick Writing…
November 3rd, 2010 at 6:29 pm
So who were all the people the league met, when Ice’s imaginary brother fought them after he killed their imaginary father?