Well, we’re in the last week of October and Halloween is this weekend. If you’ve been following my blog this month, you’ll know that, as a means to generate some fitting content for the season, I’ve been taking a look back at Resident Evil: Fire and Ice, a four-issue comic book series published by WildStorm between 2000 and 2001. This series was a follow-up to their previous five-issue mini series, Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, and focused on an entirely new group of characters, the hitherto-unknown Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) Charlie team, rather than telling interludes, side stories, or truncated versions of the first two videogames. Charlie team was made up of a bunch of one-dimensional, impractically attired characters who looked like they had just stepped out of the worst comics of the nineties: led by the muscle-bound Falcon, who looks and acts like an extra from Predator (McTiernan, 1987), the team consists of newcomer and munitions expert Raquel Fields (who is hiding a mysterious infection following a zombie attack), the shady hacker Jesse Alcorn, Patrick Brady (a former zoo keeper able to sense G-Virus monsters), the anti-authority Australian Quan Williamson, and the Mexican quasi-Native American Rosa Cardenas (whom it is implied Quan has a crush on but who actually has feelings for Brady…).

This final issue rejoins Quan in the Alaskan mountains (Charlie team split into two sub-teams to investigate two Umbrella laboratories and run into a few troubles, to say the least, almost immediately upon arrival); he discovers the remains of an Umbrella surveillance minicopter, which he uses to spy on Dexter Whitlam, Klaus, and Mr. Venk, the Umbrella scientists and operatives who have captured Rosa and Brady and are preparing to subject them to Whitlam’s experimental new X-Virus.

Whitlam, who we first met as a misguided youth who stole a sample of Umbrella’s G-Virus, transformed himself into a violent “G”-type monster, and was summarily recruited to Umbrella by Klaus after (somehow) being cured, is now all grown up and has transformed into a semi-cybernetic mad scientist. He was one of WildStorm’s more interesting and layered original characters, an insight into the type of person Umbrella likes to have on staff and put to work on their experiments. So, of course, he is incinerated on page three by the exploding minicopter, bringing him to a sudden (if impressive) end.

Free from their captivity, Rosa and Brady are reunited with Quan and immediately get their asses handed to them by Mr. Venk. Venk actually puts up more of a fight and gets a better showing than popular Resident Evil creatures like the Lickers and the Tyrant but, in the end, he is dispatched with a judo throw that ends with him impaled on the bloody stump of Klaus’ hand. However, as they make their mistake, Brady reveals that Whitlam succeeded in infecting them with some of his X-Virus, leaving a gloomy shadow over their otherwise joyous reunion. Back in Mexico, Falcon, Jesse, and Raquel take a jeep to a helicopter, where they spot the cactus plants arranged in a biohazard symbol. In a further nod to the series’ original Japanese name, they mention that the facility’s computer labelled their new virus as “Biohazard” and, dropping in for a closer look, discover that Umbrella placed a vial of the antidote into one of the cacti plant…because of course that was where you would leave the antidote to a deadly virus!

As he is lifting her back into the chopper, Jesse again acts a little shady, insisting that Raquel hands her the antidote and, in the brief scuffle, spills half of it. Just as Raquel expresses her concerns over Jesse’ competency, they are set upon by an Umbrella attack ‘copter; however, Raquel makes short work of it with her handy-dandy rocket launcher and the team prepare to fly to Alaska.

From Mexico.

They’re going to fly from Mexico to Alaska in a helicopter! That’s over 3,500 miles! Most choppers are only good for about 400 miles before needing to refuel and, if you’re thinking they flew to an airport to refuel or switch vehicles, you’re wrong because they show up a few panels later to rescue their team mates and, judging by the background, it’s still the same day!

Speaking of the other team, Quan is forced to stop when, part-way through their trek back to the helipad, Brady begins to undergo a dramatic and painful metamorphosis into a really lame looking Mr. X/Tyrant-like creature. Falcon’s team arrives just in time to stun Brady with a crossbow (yeah…a crossbow, perhaps the weakest and most useful weapon in the Resident Evil series) but Rosa suddenly transforms into a similar, hulking creature and the team tries to subdue them non-fatally so that they can be administered with the antidote.

Raquel manages to tie up Brady with some bolas and Falcon puts down Rosa using the snowmobile but, right as they’re about to get the antidote, Jesse reveals his true colours and, holding the two at gunpoint, reveals that he’s actually a deep cover mole placed in S.T.A.R.S. by Umbrella. This might have been surprising if the last two issues hadn’t made it abundantly clear that there was something very fishy about Jesse and it’s rendered completely redundant as Jesse is immediately skewered and killed by the monstrous Brady.

Raquel injects the antidote into Rosa but Brady wakes up before he can receive it and Falcon is forced to put him down with a single shot to the head; on the plus side, the antidote takes hold in Rosa and returns her to normal (though we don’t actually see this on panel). Just as it seems like our heroes have survived, however, it is revealed that yet another shady Umbrella operative (or…maybe it’s Klaus? It’s not really made clear) who monologues that, actually, everything went almost exactly according to Umbrella’s plan as Charlie team eliminated “the rogue agent Dexter Whitlam”, killed one of their own, and Raquel’s infection will ensure that the whole team is dead before they ever get a chance to land and the issue just…ends.

So…what was the point of that sub-plot about Brady being able to sense the G-Virus as a result of being cured of the virus? That literally doesn’t crop up once throughout the entirety of Fire and Ice when it really could have been a useful feature that made him a relevant part of the team, or perhaps helped him to resist the X-Virus. Instead, he has this ability but does nothing with it, wields a massive, bad-ass electric cannon and is stated to be a formidable fighter (despite being nothing more than a zoo security guard), falls and hits his head, and then gets turned into a sasquatch-like thing, and summarily shot in the head. Nothing even comes of the poorly executed hint that Rosa is attracted to Brady.

It all just comes crashing to the ground in this final issue; since when was Whitlam a “rogue agent”? He was directly recruited by Umbrella and was using their existing viruses and resources to fashion a new, more powerful and deadly virus; that definitely sounds like something they would do, and want, but then it doesn’t even pay off as I’m not seeing anything in the mutations Brady and Rosa undergo that makes the X-Virus better than the G-Virus or even the Tyrant-Virus (T-Virus). Neither seem anywhere near as vicious or resilient as the Tyrants or the “G” monstrosities of the videogames; I know that WildStorm liked to really neuter Umbrella’s monstrosities, with even Mr. X and William Birkin’s “G” being put down with disappointing ease, but these X-Virus creatures are even more of a joke. Not only that, issue one made it sound as though the Alaskan and Mexico laboratories were working on two separate projects and viruses. Instead, apparently, their “rogue agent” was working on the X-Virus in Alaska, which was also known as “Biohazard” in Mexico (…for some reason) and also produced an antidote…that was also in Mexico. Unless “Biohazard” is supposed to be the antidote? The issue isn’t written to support this, though, and instead it seems like Whitlam developed one virus with two names and stashed the antidote thousands of miles away for no real reason. If the X-Virus was really supposed to be the successor t the T- and G-Viruses, why even make an antidote in the first place?

And then there’s Raquel. All throughout Fire and Ice, a big deal is made of her mysterious infection (which, I assume, she got from her brief appearance at the start of issue one and is a result of her being infected with the G-Virus) but, again, nothing comes from it. Her skin changes colour, taking on a strange green hue, she grows a bony protrusion that she immediately cuts off, she suffers from headaches (but only when it’s dramatically appropriate), and then the series winds up with the threat that she’s going to transform into…something…and kill her team mates. I was expecting her to mutate into something and battle with the X-Virus monsters but…she doesn’t and, as a result, this whole plot point is a giant waste of time that adds nothing to the story, is never resolved, and leaves more questions than answers. Say what you will about Alice (Milla Jovovich) in Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil movies (2002 to 2016), at least her mutation actually factors into the plot and the movie’s action sequences.

Jesse’s heel turn is as obvious as the nose on your face and immediately amounts to nothing as he is killed right away; it’s not like he destroys the antidote and forces Charlie team to kill both Brady and Rosa, he just stands in the way for a moment and then gets stabbed from behind. Neither Falcon or Quan end up becoming fully-developing characters, but then this is par for the course of Fire and Ice. When I reviewed Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, I talked about how I wanted to see WildStorm focus more on telling a continuous story issue by issue rather than a whole bunch of vignettes and half-assed adaptations but, man, was I wrong. Their writers were no better at telling a month by month story with their own original characters than they were with Resident Evil’s more recognisable characters and, as I mentioned before, this time there’s no impressive, gory artwork to save the series. As a companion piece to Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, I guess Fire and Ice works well enough at fleshing out (or, at least, putting more of a spotlight on) some of WildStorm’s minor characters and maybe the team were planning on publishing a third mini series to wrap up all their loose ends but it definitely doesn’t read or seem that way. Instead, WildStorm again squandered their pages and efforts on one-dimensional, action, horror, and move clichés and archetypes, and somehow manages to tell a four-issue story without ever really getting into who these characters are, what their motivations are (besides being angry and quick to violence), or actually crafting a story that made logical sense.

Like Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, Fire and Ice was eventually collected into a trade paperback which, like Resident Evil: Collection One (Various, 1999), is currently out of print but, unlike that collection, generally sells for about £40 to £60 rather than £60 to £200. They also returned to the franchise and published a prequel to Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009) between 2009 and 2011 but, after reading Fire and Ice, I can’t say I’m too excited about covering more of their Resident Evil comics later down the line. If WildStorm ever re-released their original Resident Evil comics, including Fire and Ice, into one affordable collection then maybe, maybe, as one complete package these comics might hold up slightly better but, as is, I wouldn’t worry about trying to add these to your Resident Evil collection, no matter how big a fan you are, as there’s really nothing on offer here.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you ever read Fire and Ice? What did you think of Charlie team and WildStorm’s original characters? Do you agree that the artwork in these issues is a massive step down from WildStorm’s earlier efforts, and that WildStorm bungled their time with the franchise, or do you have fonder memories of their efforts than I do? Which piece of ancillary Resident Evil media is your favourite? Thanks for coming back each week for my review of Fire and Ice; are there any other Resident Evil games or adaptations you’d like to see me cover? Whatever you think, leave a comment below and have a great Halloween.

It’s October and Halloween is right around the corner and what better way to mark the occasion and bring some extra views of any self-respecting content creator’s blog than by taking a look back at Resident Evil: Fire and Ice, a four-part comic book series published by WildStorm between 2000 and 2001. WildStorm had previously published a five-issue mini series that told interludes, heavily truncated recaps of the first two Resident Evil videogames, and introduced a whole slew of minor characters and original creators to what was, at the time, a far less complex lore. The Fire and Ice comics continue with this premise, ditching the anthology format to follow the hitherto-unknown Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) Charlie team, consisting of the heavily muscled team leader Falcon, newcomer and munitions expert Raquel Fields, and a whole bunch of one-dimensional nineties throwbacks with more diversity than you can shake a stick at: we’ve got the anti-authority Australian Quan Williamson, Patrick Brady (a former zoo keeper now endowed with minor superpowers), Mexican quasi-Native American Rosa Cardenas (whom it is implied Quan has a crush on but who actually has feelings for Brady…), and the somewhat unhinged tech-savvy Jesse Alcorn.

After splitting into two sub-teams, issue three rejoins Falcon’s team in Mexico where, you may remember, Falcon, Raquel, and Jesse managed to track down an Umbrella laboratory in Mexico. As they approach the pyramid-like structure, however, they fall victim to some of the oldest, most clichéd desert-based traps in the business: quicksand and darts! All that was missing was a pit of spikes with skewered skeletons and a rolling boulder and the writers would have nailed every cliché in the book.

Narrowly escaping, Jesse states that he’s unable to crack the code on the entrance because of the sheer number of possibilities; he reckons it would take his computer “days” to break into the facility, which Raquel gives him some grief about. And rightfully so; I mean, what good is a damn computer hacker when they can’t even do the one job you bring them along for? Luckily, Raquel actually remembers that she’s good with explosives in this issue and simply blows the door open; if only that was an option in the videogames!

Upon entering the pyramid, Jesse is immediately attacked by a Licker, further cementing himself as perhaps the most useless member of Charlie team so far. In true WildStorm fashion, the Licker is barely shown and easily dispatched by Jesse’s far more competent team mates and the three make their way deeper into the facility, where they not only discover Umbrella’s scientists cooking up new horrors in giant, gunk-filled tubes but also, inexplicably, spot Rosa and Brady held in captivity (this is presumably on some kind of monitor but, like last issue, the art isn’t very clear and makes it seem as though Falcon spots the two in the next room).

Back in Alaska, Rosa and Brady are being held captive in a dungeon-like cell after the events of the previous issue saw them attacked and captured by Umbrella agents Klaus and Mr. Venk in Alaska and Quan alone out in the frozen wastes of the Alaskan mountains. Quan rushes back to their last known location and finds only a radio transceiver that fell from Brady’s pocket in the last issue and allows him to listen in as the now grown-up (and, apparently, somewhat cybernetic) Dexter Whitlam monologues to Rosa and Brady about his evil plan. Building upon the work of William Birkin and refining the best aspects of both the Tyrant-Virus (T-Virus) and G-Virus, Whitlam reveals (much to Klaus’ chagrin) that he has crafted a new virus, the X-Virus, which he claims represents “a quantum leap in killing power” and boosts the victims strength, ferocity, augments their “natural fighting ability”, and renders them virtually unstoppable. He also reveals that, up until this point, the characters haven’t yet encountered anything actually infected with the X-Virus; the G-creatures were merely created to find suitable subjects for the X-Virus and, as Rosa and Brady were, somehow, the only two test subjects to not only survive but also kill two of the G-creatures, Whitlam believes that they will make ideal candidates for a dose of X-Virus.

Back in Mexico, and spurned on by the impending threat to the lives of their team-mates, Falcon’s team renders all of the Umbrella scientists unconscious with a gas bomb and moves to retrieve the data from their computers (assuming Jesse can hack in, of course) but, somehow, a Tyrant breaks free from its captivity and goes on a rampage. Partially stunned by the pain from her mysterious infection, Raquel is easily tossed aside and, with Jesse cowering under a table, this leaves Falcon to face the beast alone with only his shotgun. This is WildStorm, though, and they have never quite been able to portray Umbrella’s fearsome bio-organic weapons as the formidable threats they are in the videogames, particularly the Tyrant, and this is no different. It simply walks towards Falcon, who unloads shot after shot until he blasts a hole through its head and then fires a few more shots just to be on the safe side, proving once again that, in these comics, a Tyrant is a mere inconvenience more than a life-threatening menace.

While attempting to locate an antidote to the X-Virus on the lab’s computer, Jesse accidentally activates the obligatory self-destruct sequence and the three barely make it out alive. The Tyrant emerges from the flames but, again, it’s just an inconvenience as Raquel has all the time in the world to load up a rocket launcher and blast it to pieces while barely breaking a sweat.

The issue ends with the sub-team stranded in the desert, surrounded by cactus plants shaped in a biohazard symbol, with no way to reach their comrades. It also ends with a dangling plot thread as, when Falcon admonishes Jesse for risking their lives, Jesse acts very shifty and claims that the self-destruct was merely an unavoidable accident. Like the last issue, the artwork really lets this issue down. The whole series, so far, has lacked the polish and visceral gore of Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, which suffered from similar writing issues and problems with the portrayal of recognisable Resident Evil characters, creatures, and tropes but at least had some decent gore to look at. Here, though, everything is so bland and simple and dull; even the Tyrant looks like a cheaply-drawn knock-off and there’s even less sense of threat or danger even with the inclusion of a Tyrant and the compulsory ticking clock that has become a staple of the Resident Evil series.

Again, it doesn’t help that there’s very little to really keep us invested in WildStorm’s original characters; I can’t say that Fire and Ice would be better if the likes of Jill valentine, Barry Burton, and Chris Redfield replaced Charlie team but at least we’d be able to fill in the gaps about their personality and backstory. Here, we don’t really know anything about these characters beyond a quick introduction in issue one and some one-dimensional characterisation in these subsequent issues. It’s nice that WildStorm were able to give some of their minor characters more of a spotlight but Whitlam is just the clichéd mad scientist archetype, Falcon looks and acts like he stepped right off the set of Predator (McTiernan, 1987), and the rest of them are just a bunch of holdovers from the “Dark Ages” of nineties comic books. The next issue is the last in this series and it feels like I’ve learned very little to nothing about these characters and nothing of any real note has actually happened, and that’s a shame considering how WildStorm fumbled their last Resident Evil comic series.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Do you agree or do you feel I’m being too harsh on WildStorm and the Fire and Ice series? Do any of the characters stand out to you? Which Resident Evil character is your favourite, either from the games, comics, books, or movies? Which piece of ancillary Resident Evil media is your favourite or would you like to see produced? Drop a comment down below and come back next Tuesday for my review of the fourth and final issue of WildStorm’s Fire and Ice miniseries.

It’s October, which means it’s Halloween and it’s the duty of every content creator to do some kind of horror-themed content. As a result, I’m taking a look back at WildStorm’s second series of Resident Evil comic books, the four-issue Fire and Ice series published between 2000 and 2001. This time around, WildStorm have ditched the anthology format in favour of a continuous, original story revolving around a bunch of original characters, the hitherto-unknown Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) Charlie team. Last issue, Falcon’s Charlie team made short work of a circus full of infected zombies and were introduced to a new team member, munitions expert Raquel Fields, who is hiding a hideous mutation on her arm. Having recovered a disk naming two Umbrella facilities (one in Alaska and one in Mexico), the team has split into two and the last issue ended with Falcon’s sub-team face-to-face with a literal Day of the Dead south of the border…

Issue two opens in Alaska with the second sub-team (the knife-wielding Australian Quan Williamson, former zoo security guard turned semi-superhuman bad-ass Patrick Brady, and team leader Rosa Cardenas) riding snowmobiles down the frigid mountains of Alaska. There’s a little bit of dissension in the early going as Quan, whom we were informed through a few dialogue boxes and brief snippets of his backstory has a bit of a problem with authority, takes umbrage with Rosa’s orders. However, a stern word from her is enough to quell that and he heads out while a monstrous bear watches on.

The story then jumps back to Mexico where Falcon’s team (including newcomer Raquel and tech-savvy Jesse Alcorn) open fire on the legions of zombies in an ironic perversion of the Day of the Dead festival. Oddly, despite Raquel being the munitions expert, it is Jesse who prepares a bomb while Raquel covers him; however, while doing so, she discovers a strange, bony growth coming out of her arm and decides the best way to deal with it is to chop it off with a meat cleaver! Meanwhile, back in Alaska, Brady tries to allay Rosa’s concerns over Quan’s absence by theorising that he has a crush on her; she dismisses this, however, and suggests, in a near-inaudible whisper, that she would be more interested if Brady had a crush on her. We’re only on the second issue, guys, are we really doing this sort of thing? I guess it’s an easy, cliché, artificial way of creating some kind of investment in these characters so we care more when their lives are in jeopardy or they get infected or die but it just kind of comes out of nowhere as I’m not really seeing anything that suggests any kind of sexual tension or attraction between any of these characters.

Anyway, they are interrupted by some kind of flying creature; it’s not really revealed what it is but it’s apparently threatening enough for the two to rush back to their snowmobiles to get their weapons. However, they are stopped in their tracks when they find they are surrounded by large, monstrous bears and bipedal walruses whales, and even a particularly fearsome looking penguin! Back in Mexico, Raquel blows the explosives but gets into it with Jesse when he inexplicable runs towards the explosion rather than staying clear (honestly, the artwork doesn’t make it massively clear what’s going on in these panels). Falcon quells the dissension and gets the team back on track towards their primary goal (…pretty sure we just saw that with the other sub-team…). Raquel draws Falcon’s attention to a particular piece of artwork in one of the ruined houses that bares a set of runes that Falcon says match up with those identified by Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield from the Spenser Mansion. This despite the impossibility of even spotting such a small, insignificant set of etchings and Jesse scoffing at the importance of the painting.

The clue leads the team to Umbrella’s laboratory, a temple-like structure somewhere in Mexico, and while I like the attempt to call back to the puzzle solving elements of the videogames…the team had a disk of data that led them to Alaska and Mexico. They acquired it from Umbrella so why were they just knobbing around in town rather than going directly to the lab? Why did they need to find an obscure clue to lead them to the obviously ominous structure? It just feels like they could have driven through the Day of the Dead festival and fought those zombies on the way to the lab and weaved the puzzle elements in some other way, like opening the entrance or something.

The story jumps back to Alaska, where Quan has just finished setting up the “evac helipad” (which just looks like some lights stuffed into the snow) when he gets called back to assist Rosa and Brady with their situation. It turns out that whatever has infected these animals hasn’t just allowed whales and walruses to walk on land but also allows penguins to fly (so I guess the thing that flew at them earlier was a penguin, then…). Thankfully, my earlier criticisms regarding Brady’s suitability as a S.T.A.R.S team member comes to the forefront here as, though he’s able to blow the leg off a mutated wolf…thing and knock out a whale with the butt of his gun, he stupidly trips and falls in an effort to save Rosa from being beaten and skewered to death by a bear and walrus. As he falls, he smashes his face on an ice-hard rock but it only stuns him; in other comics and media (and in real life) this would probably kill him but I guess Raccoon City puts a lot of funding and effort into training and toughening up their zoo security guards.

Luckily, a mysterious individual and his sharp-shooting comrade, Mr. Venk, tranquilise the creatures and load them, and the S.T.A.R.S. team members, into their van to transport them back to preserve Whitlam’s research. If you’ve read WildStorm’s original Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, or my weekly reviews of each issue of that series, you’ll recognise the names and faces being tossed around in these last few panels: the unnamed, monocle-wearing man is Klaus; he and Mr. Venk appeared in WildStorm’s original comic series where they recruited the troubled youth Dexter Whitlam (who had transformed to and from a “G”-like creature using a stolen sample of Umbrella’s G-Virus) to Umbrella in issue five.

I quite enjoy how this series allows WildStorm to expand upon the roles of the original characters they created to fit into the Resident Evil lore; as I mentioned last week, none of these characters are particularly engaging or visually interesting thanks to them holding on to a lot of the worst one-dimensional clichés of comic books of the nineties (bulging muscles, a disdain for authority, and a penchant for leather and violence) but I’d much rather see these minor characters getting a bit more of the spotlight than WildStorm creating even more uninspired original characters. What lets this issue down, though, is the artwork; the art wasn’t particularly striking in the first issue but it’s even worse here. While Lee Bermejo (who would go on to much bigger and better things at DC Comics) and Shawn Crystal make decent use of shadows and lighting, the creatures are bland, boring, and rendered very gloomy; it’s not always clear what’s attacking the characters or what is going on, and everything looks painfully simple and dull. It also doesn’t help that the issue doesn’t really have any of the blood, guts, and gore that the original mini series showcased; the macabre spectacle tends to salvage the lacklustre writing of WildStorm’s Resident Evil comics and, without it, we’re left with these clichéd, one-dimensional characters who are trying way too hard to look, sound, and act tough rather than exuding the effortless cool and charisma of Resident Evil’s most popular characters.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Are you familiar with WildStorm’s Fire and Ice Resident Evil comic books? What are your thoughts on the plot and characters so far? Which obscure or forgotten Resident Evil videogame or character would you like to see expanded upon in other media? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment down below and come back next Tuesday for my review of issue three.

Earlier this year, in a shameless attempt to grab more views around the release of the slightly disappointing Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020), I did a weekly review of a five-issue comic series based on Capcom’s popular survival horror franchise which was published between 1998 and 1999. Given that, at the time, there were only two Resident Evil titles to work from, with the third still in production, Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine didn’t have a lot of material to work with and, whether through a direct mandate from Capcom or a conscious decision on the part of its creative team, largely decided against including direct adaptations of the source material and, instead, preferred to tell spin-offs, side stories, and interludes. Most of these, honestly, didn’t really add much, if anything, to the series lore; we saw what happened in the diner moments before Claire Redfield arrived in Raccoon City, for example, and follow Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, and Barry Burton on a zombie slaughtering tour across Europe and Leon S. Kennedy fight giant, mutated bat creatures but a lot of it fell far from the mark.

Honestly, Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine was at its best when it was telling recapped, truncated, or heavily modified adaptations of the first two games and was saved from mediocrity by some truly stunning and gory artwork. Although the series was short-lived, WildStorm revisited the Resident Evil franchise with a four-issue follow-up series published between 2000 and 2001 that, as it’s Halloween this month, I’ll be looking into. The Fire and Ice series focused entirely on original characters, some of whom even return from Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, and featured many of the same writers and artists as that first five-issue series, so it’ll be interesting to see if WildStorm have better success this time around with their original characters and stories than they did last time or if they’ll spew out more drivel like Jill inexplicably battling with a werewolf.

Issue one opens up with the hitherto-unknown Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) Charlie team battling against circus freaks infected with the Umbrella Corporation’s infamous G-Virus. The team, led by Falcon, consists of the knife-wielding Australian Quan Williamson, the high-kicking Rosa Cardenas, the tech-geek Jesse Alcorn, and Patrick Brady, who lugs around a comically large energy blasting bazooka.

If Brady sounds familiar, it’s because he appeared in Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine where he was a simple security guard at the Raccoon City Zoo; although he managed to survive against a hoard of infected zoo animals, he was bitten by an infected prairie dog and exposed to the G-Virus. Luckily, he was saved by Leon (…because of course he was) and a S.T.A.R.S medical team were able to reverse the G-Virus effects (…despite the fact that they had failed in every other attempt). Somehow, as a side effect, Brady could also “sense the presence of the G-Virus” which, alongside his “natural fighting skills” (I mean, he was a security guard so I guess he had some training but I doubt it’s anything like Leon or Chris’s. Plus, I remember him panicking and running a lot in his first appearance…) got him a spot on Charlie team.

After filling us in on Brady’s story, the comic then spends the next few pages introducing us to the rest of the team: Falcon, a muscle-bound archetypal action hero who seems like Terry Crews before Terry Crews was a thing and also briefly appeared in Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, is a former Army Ranger who was betrayed by his superiors and framed for an unexplained “international incident” before being inexplicably recruited by S.T.A.R.S. Rosa Cardenas is a bad-ass goth chick; a Mexican raised on a Hopi Indian reserve who is proficient in “tracking skills” who has a personal grudge against Umbrella and their experiments after her mother was killed in the aforementioned diner during the Raccoon City outbreak. Quan Williamson is not only Australian but also of “Thai descent” who left behind his promising academic career and his love of vehicles and machinery because of his natural aversion to authority and his desire to form a band, though his life was forever changed after he witnessed Leon’s fight against the aforementioned bat-men. The violent and slightly unhinged Jesse Alcorn also has a disdain for authority bordering on the psychotic as he used his “amazing computer skills” to hack in NORAD and nearly caused a nuclear war, after which he was given a choice: life in prison or join the S.T.A.R.S. Charlie team.

By this point, you might have noticed a common thread being weaved throughout the members of Charlie team: not only are they somewhat reminiscent of Task Force X (known by their more colourful title as the Suicide Squad) from DC Comics, each of them has either briefly featured on WildStorm’s previous Resident Evil comic series or has some link, however tenuous, with an existing and popular Resident Evil character. This reminds me very much of the way Paul W. S. Anderson would rope in popular Resident Evil characters like Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), Claire and Chris Redfield (Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller), and Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb) into his later Resident Evil movies (2002 to 2016) simply to give their approval to Alice (Milla Jovovich), the all-action star of his film series. As in those films, this association does very little to endear me to these original characters as all it does is make me wish I was watching (or reading about) the actual Resident Evil characters rather than these knock-offs. Frustrated by the onslaught of circus freaks and animals looking to tear their throats out, Falcon gives the order for the team to deploy a series of bombs and blow the whole circus to cinders. In the aftermath, they discover a mortally wounded Umbrella employee who, with his dying breath, not only hints that Umbrella were aware and prepared specifically for Charlie team’s arrival but also drops Falcon’s name, sending him into a rage.

Back at their headquarters, Falcon introduces the team to their newest member, munitions export Raquel Fields, who essentially acts as the audience surrogate for the remainder of the issue as Falcon gives a brief introduction to his team members and then delves into a full-two page spread recapping the events of the first two Resident Evil games and detailing Charlie team’s overall mission goal: to track down, and put down, Umbrella once and for all. Although she claims to have missed the opening mission due to being knocked out in a training session, it turns out that Raquel is undergoing a severe mutation from a wound she sustained that she is going to great lengths to keep hidden from her team-mates. Having acquired a disk from the Umbrella agents at the circus, the team is then split into two sub-teams to investigate Umbrella’s laboratories in Alaska and Mexico, where they are apparently working on developing new viral strains. Rosa is placed in charge of Quan and Patrick in Alaska while Jesse, Raquel, and Falcon head south of the border; it’s this scene that really hammers home just how militaristic S.T.A.R.S. actually is; this was briefly shown in Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine but, generally, especially in the original Resident Evil videogames, the team always seemed to be more like a black ops arm of the Raccoon City police department rather than an extension of the U.S. military (even though they clearly had ties to the military).

The issue ends on a cliffhanger as, when Falcon and the others arrive in Mexico, they discover that the annual Day of the Dead festival has become a literal Day of the Dead as the townsfolk are actually flesh hungry zombies! The final page of the issue is a teaser for issue two (which hints at a Tyrant but…well, we’ll see) and a quick blurb from editor Jeff Mariotte introducing readers to this new mini series.

Disappointingly, the first issue of Resident Evil: Fire and Ice contains more exposition than action; it reminds me of the first issue of Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, which was more interested in retelling events than actually showing us them directly and creating tenuous links to characters we know and love from the videogames. However, when the action does kick in, it’s just as bloody and explosive as ever and the artwork is decent enough, for the most part, but the character designs are extremely derivative and very nineties for a comic released in 2000. Each character is decked out in bulging muscles or impractical leather and buckle-clad outfits, wielding massive weapons and sporting such impractical accessories as eye goggles and a Mohawk. Visually, it allows you to easily tell each character apart, which is especially helpful when you’re dealing with original characters, but none of them exude the simple aesthetic of the earlier Resident Evil characters who didn’t need anything more lavish than practical, military-grade hardware and gear.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you read Fire and Ice when it first released? If so, what did you think of Charlie team? Did you ever read the earlier Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Which Resident Evil videogame or character would you like to see a comic book series about? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment down below and be sure to check out my review of issue two.