Was has broken-out in a very, very big way. Prince Kaledan of the Ice Kingdom is dead. The people have been led to believe that the murder was a product of agents from the kingdom of fire. Things are going to get violent as the world plunges further into chaos in Fire and Ice #3. Writer Bill Willingham continues his adaptation of a classic, largely-forgotten Ralph Bakshi animated film from decades ago. The Frank Frazetta-inspired art clashes across the age with poise and power courtesy of Leonardo Manco.  

The battlefield is chaos. Barbarians attack without the benefit of armor. They’ve got huge battle axes. Some of them are on dragon back. Pterodactyl-looking air mounts are also employed. People are shouting things in some other language.It’s a more civilized sort of madness in the Temple of Fire. Deep words are shared between those far from the battlefield. Elsewhere a mage is upset. She swears that those who have upset her will forfeit their lives to suffer undying torments in the next life. And it won’t be enough.

Willingham is doing a great deal of work trying to balance the emotions of individuals against the large tapestry of the bigger concerns of what is going on in the rest of the world as war rushes through to kill a great many people in and amidst all of the naked aggression between barbarians, savages and others. The express otherworldliness of another language being spoken on the page lends a sense of immersiveness to the world that Willingham is working with. It’s sharp stuff that feels relatively well-balanced as the story works its way through its third chapter.

Manco does a solid job of delivering the intensity of a Frazetta-inspired fantasy world of dinosaurs, dragons and ridiculously muscular barbarians. As sharp as it all is, the wash over everything lies pretty flat on the page without too many instances of truly dynamic perspectives. That being said, some of the page composition is GORGEOUS, The occasional symmetrical panel really anchors-in the power of the fantasy as elsewhere chaos grinds across the page in blood and brutality. It manages quite a few moments of pure power here and there that feel suitably powerful time and again. 

Yes: there IS the feeling of an early 1980s feature in Heavy Metal Magazine, but there’s more here than just that. The sheer brutality of some of the visuals and the raw nature of emotion on the page allow the series to once again transcend the un-engaging density so common found in high fantasy. It’s fascinating stuff to see echoed on the contemporary comics page having been committed to film decades ago. There’s a kind of timelessness about it that carries a feeling every bit as fresh now as it did back in the early 1980s when it debuted on the movie screen. There’s a deep pulse to the action that continues to maintain quite a bit of momentum as the series progresses. 

Grade: A