It's Princess Week and today's princess is ...

dcwomenkickingass:

Disney has declared this Princess Week and I’m highlighting the princesses of DC Comics. Earlier this week I highlighted Starfire and Amethyst. You decided that you like the animated version of Starfire best and that you would like to see a new version of Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld although you’d like to have some insight into the creative team. Some of you liked my team but others had some great ideas. Dan Mishkin, the original writer stopped by to say he liked some of the ideas and Ben Caldwell told me on Twitter he has pitch in his sketchbook. Come on DC. let’s get going.

Today our Princess is Tora Olofsdotter also known as Ice.

Ice is also the girlfriend of Fire Guy Gardner. Tora/Bea/Guy best threesome ever or best threesome ever? Moving on.

Tora is a princess of a tribe of Norsemen. Let me repeat that. She is a princess of a tribe of Norsemen. In Justice League: Generation Lost a certain writer who has a habit of pissing me off more than he pleases me attempted to eradicate that background and claim it was a lie.

I know Ice would never say it but I will - “bullshit”. Read this blogger’s take on that retcon.

Ice’s status as a princess was used for one of Gail Simone’s very best Birds of Prey arc ever, where the Birds and the Secret Six team up and discover that Ice, who had been thought dead for years, was alive.

Seriously this is a great arc. Unfortunately it is out of print right now and thus being sold for big bucks on Amazon and eBay. Hopefully you can pick up the issues, #104-108 in digital. 

And since I’ve done a poll with each of these, I’ll ask you this question.

http://micropoll.com/t/KEcOAZLwYw

Thank you, I love Tora.

It’s a funny little story. Mark Waid, who killed Tora in one of his stories, instantly regretted it, and for a long time, he would publicly hate on himself for having killed a great, sweet character for cheap shock value. He felt he’d really messed up.

I agreed, I don’t blame Mark, but I did hate that she was killed in one of his lesser efforts, for what seemed like no good reason. Charm seemed to be kryptonite in comics at that time, and Tora was unbelievably charming. So she had to go.

Over the years, I gather that several people had asked Ice’s creator, Keith Giffen, if they could bring her back, and he had turned them down. I guess he had a story that he wanted to tell to bring her back some day that he was saving.

So it was with a fair warning that it might not fly that my editor gave me Keith’s phone number to call  and ask myself. Keith’s a hero of mine, one of comics’ best idea men, so it was a bit intimidating. He could not have been nicer. He listened to my idea, and he said go for it.  He said he ‘trusted me to do it right.’

That sort of thing sticks with you, believe me.

So we brought her back, which I will defend to the death. We got some crap about how death is so cheap in comics right now, and I get that, but holy crap, if you can’t bring back a NORSE ICE GODDESS, there is something very wrong. I felt that the very nature of her origin made her ‘death’ the unlikely event, not her resurrection.

Anyway, I love the character, and I didn’t get to have her in the book for long, so I wanted the PERFECT scene to sum up what kind of character she was, for new readers. Only a couple pages, how do I convey why she is special, and unique?

What happens is, after all that, after dying, and being resurrected, and becoming a raging angry goddess and nearly accidentally killing her saviors, Misfit asks if there’s anything she can do for Tora.

And Tora says, “Could I have a cup of hot cocoa, if it’s not too much trouble?”

THAT’s why I love her so much. :)