You thought Iceman died in the Fall of X? Not quite: He almost melted, but he got revived by … the power of love? Stay frosty with Astonishing Iceman #1, written by Steve Orlando, drawn by Vincenzo Carratù, colored by Java Tartaglia and lettered by Travis Lanham.
Stephanie: This first issue in a spate of first issues, restarts and picking-up-the-pieces comic books is really two comics in one. Let’s call them Icy and Bobby. Bobby’s the reason I want people to read the book: A lot of us — especially us troubled, romantic queer peeps — will see ourselves in his Antarctic dilemmas, whether or not we liked Frozen and Frozen 2 (though honestly if you actively disliked Frozen, why are you even reading a Bobby Drake book?). Steve Orlando gets to some difficult psychological truths, building on the pre-Krakoa Iceman issues written by Sina Grace, and the Carratú-led art team is, at the very least, slick, clear and professional, never in the way of the feels.
Tony: I liked what Orlando did here quite a bit! I think we’ve talked before in our team Slack how X-solos should really be modeled on Spider-Man, not Wolverine. What he does here with Bobby is exactly that — a bunch of pages of punching, but then a whole lot of soap opera! It’s the perfect balance of those, with a weirdly (but welcome) grand scope.
Stephanie: But the issue takes a while to get there. First we meet Icy, in a series of callbacks and episodes that look not to Grace but to the San Francisco status quo of X-books from 2008-12. Orchis, having convinced the developed world that mutants are up to no good, sends flocks of flying machines after what the machines themselves dub “tertiary targets.” The machines (which speak!) attack the city’s famous Castro neighborhood, historical hub of gay culture and gay men’s social life; they say they’re after “tertiary targets,” i.e. anyone who’s ever done the inhaled recreational drug called Xperience, which makes you like a mutant for a while. In Matt Fraction’s (still underrated!) X-stories, that drug could give you truly heroic, or dangerous, superpowers. Here it’s more like poppers: “gives you a quick hit of mutant powers. Like for fun. Or … sex. Been years … but they say it stays in your system.”
Thus speaks a muscular, conventionally hot white guy whom Iceman saves from the flying Orchis machines. Then Iceman gives the guy — whose name we never learn (unless we should recognize him from earlier stories?) — a big old smooch and a hug and zooms away. I’ve defended Bobby’s irresponsible behavior in the past as the sort of thing adults will do when they’re newly out, but my dude, please ask before you kiss someone you just met? Use your words. It’s not hard.
Tony: To paraphrase the new version of “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid, “Use your words, boy, and ask him.”
The early 2000s had a whole bunch of “drugs based on mutant genes.” Having that come back as a story point is a smart way for Orlando to lean into his love for old continuity. I mean, it’s very comic book science, but it would make sense that “drug that temporarily makes you superhuman” has lasting biological effects.
Stephanie: If your biological effects last more than four hours, consult your doctor. But don’t consult the mustachio’d commander in the Orchis satellite, who hates the fact that Iceman’s alive, and saving people, and resisting the trap Orchis set, using San Francisco’s ex-Xperience users as bait. Will Orchis have to call in the mysterious assassin known as … the Cleaner?
Tony: Knowing Orlando’s love for obscure characters, could this be the return of Joe Casey/Ian Churchill villain Mr. Clean? The Cleaner is a much better name, if so.
I did love that Orlando tried to not be totally on the nose when naming the Orchis commander Pequod. However, there is literally an X-Men villain named Ahab. They couldn’t have recruited him? Or at least not his present day counterpart Rory Campbell?
I’m kind of enjoying the mustache twirling villains. Orchis is very bad, and they just keep ensuring they’re the worst (insert Jean-Ralphio gif here).
Stephanie: For now, Iceman’s dramatic but predictable heroics and his questionable kiss-and-hug tactics come to an end, because he’s wanted, or needed, back in his fortress of not-in-fact-solitude. After peacing out of SFCA, he rides the atmospheric water currents (or something) to coalesce again in a human-shaped body in the snow at the “Antarctic Pole of Inaccessibility,” where he walks into his genuine ice palace (I did mention Frozen, right?) and meets up again, first with “Clyde,” an ice golem who dresses in boots like the 1960s Bobby, and then — big reveal! — with his Inhuman once-and-future boyfriend Romeo.
Remember that guy? His love saved Bobby Drake’s life. Literally, as seen in a series of flashback panels whose swirly, twirly, pink and blue and white (Hey! where have I seen those colors?) pleased me greatly. Romeo has become “my lighthouse. My empath. The more Romeo connects to someone, the more he feels for someone, the more his power can affect them.”
Those of us who fell into “Fall of X” last week will remember that the forces of Orchis melted our Omega Icemutant into a steaming puddle. And those of us who remember the Sina Grace series will remember that Bobby can turn himself voluntarily into mist or steam, a power he’d decided not to use, because it’s a symbol of self-hatred and self-harm, of the wish to avoid having bodies entirely (a wish, I might add, that feels very trans, though NO I do not headcanon Bobby as trans: You’re welcome to headcanon Romeo if you like).
Tony: Hah!
Okay, is it just me, or did Romeo’s appearance kind of fall flat? I’m excited to see his return last week had a story reason now, but I have been BANGING on the drum of foreshadowing for months now. How hard would it have been to have Bobby mention reconnecting with Romeo in a panel of X-Men?
[Ed. note: Bobby and Romeo apparently were reunited last year in an Iceman Infinity Comic. Which you’d only know if you were paying $70 a year for Marvel Unlimited.]
I LOVE how this works, though. Another superhuman’s powers saving his life? That’s really cool. Making it a unique powerset that’s not either related to Bobby’s powers or healing makes it even better. And thank goodness it’s not Havok peeing on him.
Stephanie: Anyway Iceman didn’t die for good; he just got steamed. “There were still just enough out there” — enough Bobby-bits, that is — for Romeo to reconstruct them and put his lover back together. But not for all time: Not even for a day. Iceman can venture out into the world and use his omega powers to do hero things, but he has to check back in at his “stronghold made of your ice,” as Romeo explains to him. But the real strong hold he has on life isn’t the palace; it’s the boyfriend he made along the way.
“Here? Close to me? It’s easy to hold yourself together,” Romeo explains, in another beautiful fairy-tale ice-cavern page. “But out there you’ve got no anchor. … You can’t stay solid for long.” They’re the ultimate (though not the Ultimate) co-dependent romantic couple. Iceman literally needs his boyfriend so he can hold himself together: Otherwise, he literally falls apart. And Romeo, who follows Iceman on what appears to be his Inhuman Ice-phone, embraces the role, for now. Then they make sex jokes.
Tony: Again: Spider-Man model of storytelling.
It’s the good soap opera. To paraphrase a pop song, that’s the power of love. I do have to mention again though, fore-shad-ow-ing. I liked this. I would have liked it a lot more if Bobby and Romeo’s reconnection had gotten ANY page time. Bobby is one of the franchise’s A-listers in my opinion (Really, you can count the number of X-Men who starred in a major Saturday morning cartoon on your hands. … Maybe you need to take your socks off, but you get the point), and his glaring lack of page time in the past year of X-Men as this story goes on is just a problem.
But as far as what’s on page here? It really works for me. I like it. It’s a storytelling model that I don’t think we get enough of: a solo superhero story that arrives more or less fully formed, including a great romantic interest.
Stephanie: If you’ve never thought you needed somebody that badly, good for you. The rest of us — especially those of us who struggled hard, for years, to know whether anyone could ever love us for who we are, not just for our talents — might well see ourselves in this house of ice. Romeo’s handwritten data page explains that his Iceman Icon “reacts to Bobby’s emotional state no matter where he is in the world. … When Bobby breaks down out there it should break down in here.” How often do you call your partner, if you take work trips? How often do they call you? How often do you worry about their state when they haven’t called you for a minute, or an hour, or a day? Anyway, it feels real. I don’t know Orlando’s DC work well enough to know whether he’s repeating a Midnighter beat, but I do know that he’s worked with Sina Grace before. They’re on the same Bobby Drake page.
Or pages, because the issue ends — after a different data page — when Orchis decides to do what Grace did, and what Iceman (1984) by J.M. DeMatteis and Alan Kupperberg did, and what everyone does who writes Iceman and wants to melt hearts once the jokes have become a snow-go. That’s right, Orchis visits Long Island to meet menace the parents. It’s a real Romeo and Jayne’s Hill story. Also there’s a guy made of helium. A real He-man. Alpha particle meets Omega mutant. I Beta they have a big fight.
Tony: That’s right, folks, because Bobby is an omega that controls a chemical compound, he’s gonna fight the periodic table, aka the Elements of Doom!
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
