Review by Frank Plowright

Absolute Power has occurred since Fire and Ice’s previous solo outing Welcome to Smallville, and it’s left Fire and Ice with the problem of having their powers switched. Other than that, it’s pretty well as you were with the cast now transported to New Kooey, Kansas instead of Smallville.

Joanne Starer’s writing last time generated jokes via constantly increasing the cast with people only needed for a scene or two and then being stuck with them. It’s a reduced cast this time, but more than enough to see through an effective plot that’s less episodic and makes better use of the guest stars who appear. However, the lead taken is that everyone ends up in the body of another character, which means paying careful attention to the dialogue, name stickers notwithstanding.

Stephen Byrne is the artist, producing attractive looking pages, but with the focus always on the characters. In terms of speaking parts the cast is large, but because Byrne doesn’t draw anyone who’s not going to have a dialogue balloon during a scene it seems as if the total population of New Kooey doesn’t exceed a dozen or so, with the sparseness very apparent at the town fair.

As well as Starer increasing Fire and Ice’s problems she gives the same effective treatment to the remainder of the cast. It’s written well enough that there’s a genuine emotional pull amid the comedy, although some might not like the supporting cast taking away so many pages from Fire and Ice themselves. The solutions are well conceived, and after a disappointing start there may be legs in Starer on Fire & Ice.