Fire & Ice's Joanne Starer talks JLI/Welcome to Smallville - Creator Owned Art

Joanne Starer is a talented writer behind books like Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville, Sirens of the City, Total Suplex of the Heart, The Gimmick, and Harley Quinn Fartacular: Silent Butt Deadly. In a new entry in our Creator Owned Art series, Starer talks about the art pages that mean quite a lot to her and the story behind them!

My dad has collected original comic art my whole life, so it’s always been a very special thing to me, a way to recognize this medium we love as a fine art form. Now, I share my life with a comic artist, Khary Randolph, and have the pleasure of watching him draw every day. It’s given me an even greater appreciation for the work that goes into every page.

Probably my most prized piece now is this Terry and Rachel Dodson cover for Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #4. There’s something really special about getting your first piece of art from something you’ve actually written. And this one is absolutely gorgeous and has some of my favorite characters on it. (I’ve loved Lobo since I was a kid. One of my teachers took away my Paramilitary Christmas Special when I brought it to school in 6 th grade.) An interesting thing about this piece is that Terry drew an overlay for it. The final cover shows a photo of Fire & Ice that Lobo has scribbled on, but he wanted to preserve the “photo” of the ladies in the original art, so he put Lobo’s graffiti on a separate layer.

Obviously I’m a huge fan of the Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire Justice League, so this next page is a big deal for me. It’s from Formerly Known as the Justice League #3. My dad bought me this one. I think he got it from inker Joe Rubenstein (the page is by Kevin Maguire and Rubenstein). Most people might overlook it because it doesn’t have any action, but I never cared about action in comics. I love the character moments, and this page is full of them. It’s got those great Kevin Maguire facial expressions, my favorite robot L-Ron, and a nice little punchline at the end.

This last one is the first piece of art I ever commissioned. It’s by Gabriel Bautista, also known as GABO. He was doing these adorable watercolor cards, with funny little jokes, so I asked him to do one of Ice and Guy Gardner. This is what he came up with. What makes this one extra special is that GABO and I are now doing a book together, a decade after he painted this for me. And, of course, I’ve been writing Fire & Ice for the last couple years—characters I’ve clearly loved for a very long time.

Check out more from the series below: