DC Just Killed Off One of Its Weirdest Heroes

We're officially halfway through Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville, a DC miniseries that has provided no shortage of hilarious hijinks. The six-issue series has continued the ongoing adventures of Beatriz da Costa / Fire and Tora Olafsdotter / Ice, while bringing a number of zany heroes and villains into their orbit. In the series' third issue, which arrived wherever comic books are sold this week, one member of that ensemble cast met their untimely end in a frank, and kind of grotesque, way. Spoilers for Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #3 from Joanne Starer, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain, and Ariana Maher below! Only look if you want to know! 

The issue follows an array of complications for Fire & Ice, as Jimmy Olsen arrives to write a human interest story about their supervillain rehabilitation program in Smallville. As they try to keep up a good appearance,  and handle the wildly-different personalities of the supervillains, things only get zanier from there. By the issue's end, Fire & Ice find Gina Lombardi / Lot's Wife upstairs, where she has seemingly eaten Michael Morice / Beefeater.

Who Is DC's Beefeater?

Created by Keith Giffen, Gerard Jones, and Marshall Rogers, Beefeater was originally created as a parody of Basil Fawlty, the protagonist of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Armed with a power-rod that can inflict an unknown amount of damage, Beefeater originally set out to be Britain's savior, but caused chaos in his wake.

He then became a staff member at the Justice League's London embassy, and fought alongside a number of other heroes, even becoming close enough to Booster Gold to be a pallbearer at his funeral in the events of 52.

What Is Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville About?

In Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville, Superman sent the former Justice Leaguers packing for Smallville to lie low following their extremely public and utterly disastrous mission in Baltimore, and in doing so doomed them to a fate worse than death: irrelevance. Ice finds herself drawn to the quiet life and dreams of planting roots. But Fire…well, Fire will do just about anything to get the hell outta dodge and back on the Super Hero circuit—including challenging the DC Universe's biggest villains to a knock-down, drag-out, live-streamed brawl in the streets of Smallville! 

"Ultimately this is a book about Fire and Ice's friendship," Starer told ComicBook.com in a recent exclusive interview. "There's action, and comedy, and romance, but any story about Fire and Ice is going to be about their ride-or-die relationship. Working with an all-female team, I know we've all experienced that, that very special and unique bond. Your romantic partner fulfills a need in your life, but your best girlfriend, that's a different—and sometimes an even more important—relationship. It can outlast any other relationship in your life and be the repository for all your deepest feelings and insecurities. So having a team that understands that and will treat it with care is so important." 

What do you think of DC killing off Beefeater in Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #3? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!