Jim Lemoine
May 10, 2004, 05:10 pm
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/logos/dittol_logo.gif" align=left border=0 alt="Did I Think That Out Loud?!? logo">By Jim Lemoine, jimlemoine@comixfan.cjb.net
Of Ice And Men
If you would have asked me when I was a kid, I would have said I liked Firestar better. To be honest, I guess I still do. I'd say, "She's hot," but that would be a terrible pun, so I won't.
Of all of the original X-Men, there's something about Bobby Drake that I've always found very interesting. He wasn't my favorite, nor was he the most well-developed, nor did he have the most backstory. In fact, of all of Xavier's first class, Marvel readers have seen less of Iceman than we have of any of the others. He may have been the sole X-Man to land a regular slot on an 80's cartoon, and one of the few to make it into a really crappy Nintendo Entertainment System X-Men game, but in the comics? Of all the founders, Bobby Drake was left out in the cold.
Ouch. Just realized what I wrote - I assure you, dear reader, this isn't Batman & Robin. Promise not to do that again.
A lot is made of Cyclops' status as "The First X-Man," a cool title to be sure. But who was the second? Well, if you believe the original chronology as presented in those early back-up stories in X-Men (no slight intended to Casey's awesome Children of the Atom mini-series, by the way), Iceman was the second to join Professor X's squad... and sure, you could argue for Jean because of her childhood tutelage with the Professor, but the second to don the uniform of the X-Men? It was Iceman, all the way.
Bobby Drake was patterned by X-Men creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby after one of their most successful creations: Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. In fact, one could easily argue that the entire team was based on Johnny, but for obvious reasons, Johnny and Bobby were the true counterparts. They were both the youngest members of their teams, they both had basically the same power (control of thermal energy), they were both the class clowns, and they were both even skinnier than Reed Richards. The youngest X-Man even teamed up with the youngest of the Fantastic way back in Strange Tales #120, wherein Bobby pulled a Peter Parker and started hitting on the Torch's girlfriend! Iceman was the kid brother of the X-Men, and boy did it show... earning time for "free play" from Professor X, and wearing those cute little boots over his snowy form.
Bobby matured a lot during his first tenure with the X-Men, both personally and professionally. He ditched the boots, he refined his powers, and he did a bit of growing up... but it was never quite enough to keep up with the other X-Men. In a way, Iceman became the "Wolverine" of the original X-Men: hot-headed, spoiling for a fight, without the tact of some of his teammates. The insecure Iceman was bad tempered and sometimes petty, and it's not hard to see why: his team consisted of a gorgeous woman (who had long spurned any advances he'd made), a daring team leader, a rich heartthrob, an erudite genius, and Bobby himself... a walking snowman. Things only got worse when the X-Men met Polaris and Havok; Bobby immediately fell in love with Lorna, who immediately fell in love with Alex. Spurned again, it was a rejection that Bobby never quite got over, and the rumblings of it remain to this day.
Bobby was constantly outdone by his older, more glamorous, more successful teammates. He had long since left his first girlfriend Zelda, Jean had never returned his advances, and Lorna Dane, the woman whose life he had personally saved, had turned him down in favor of the brother of the guy who got Jean. Bobby was doomed to always be the kid of the group, and in his own mind at least, to never be taken seriously. Is it any wonder he left the X-Men? It'd be like staying in an office where promotion was impossible, or in a singles bar where only the guys were single. Who would want to stay?
Of course, his original departure from the X-Men has never been fully explained, as to my knowledge it's never been revealed what originally made him return to the team (just in time to be kidnapped by Krakoa in the classic Giant Sized X-Men #1). I'd imagine that it was simply a lack of anything better to do. After all, Bobby's education at Xavier's had never prepared him for any kind of career outside of superheroing! And deep down, Bobby did care about his friends. Despite his personality flaws (or perhaps, even more impressive, due to them) Bobby was a real hero who cared about other people. So Iceman was again an X-Man... for a little while, at least.
Iceman solidly left the X-Men after Professor X recruited Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Sunfire, Thunderbird, and Wolverine to form the team's second generation. Why did he go? It was mostly peer pressure, probably; after all, all of his friends were leaving - at the time he made his decision, the original X-Men were assuming that Cyclops was leaving with them. But there were probably other aspects to Bobby's choice: his remaining anger at Havok and Polaris, his feeling of junior membership, a sense of betrayal that Professor X didn't tell him when the Changeling replaced him, no familiarity with all the new heroes, and the sinking realization that even if he stayed, he'd still be the youngest X-Man, except for maybe Colossus.
Of all of Xavier's original X-Men, Bobby Drake had the most reasons to dislike the team when he left. Thus, it's not surprising that he was the one who stayed away the longest. Cyclops, of course, stayed on as team leader. Jean returned just a few issues after her supposed departure, became Phoenix, and served as a core member of the X-Men. The Beast took a leave of absence or two from the Avengers to help out his old teammates, joining them against Magneto, among others. The Angel would return to help his friends in their darkest hour, battling the Hellfire Club and Dark Phoenix. But through all these formative years of the new X-Men, Bobby Drake stayed away. He joined Warren Worthington's short-lived Champions on a lark, but he mostly just stayed in college.
This at first seemed out of character: why would the X-Men's resident hothead, the glory-seeker, subject himself to the mundanity of a college education... studying accounting, of all things? As comic book titles go, Bobby the Super-Accountant doesn't exactly instill fear in the hearts of villains. And why would he stay so long from the X-Men, only returning once to join an extremely short-term squad liberating the X-Men's loved ones from Murderworld?
The answer to the second question is easier: Iceman had a lot of built-up resentment toward Xavier and most of his teammates. He didn't feel like a real part of the X-Men anymore, and probably privately wondered if he'd been wasting his time with them. This leads to the answer to the first question: Bobby went to college and studied accounting because he wanted to differentiate himself from his former teammates. While they gallivanted around the globe playing superhero, Bobby was trying to make something of himself in a traditional, responsible manner. Sure, he joined the Champions for a while, but don't forget that when the Black Widow, Hercules, and Ghost Rider walked out on Warren, Bobby joined them, thus insuring the team's demise.
And you could argue that it was at this point in his life that Bobby was, ironically, at his most mature and confident. Iceman made for a great student, and genuinely seemed to take to his business education (inspired, perhaps, by his buddy Warren). When he briefly returned to the X-Men, he was mature and capable, even to the point of finally dropping his grudge against Alex and Lorna. However, he remembered his pledge to stick by his education and left the X-Men as soon as he was no longer needed.
Time passed... a lot of time. It was time enough for Bobby to move past his youngest-and-least-glamorous hangups, and time enough for him to forget just how unlucky at love he'd always been. He was finally over his insecurities, over Jean, over Lorna, and over Darkstar, the Russian mutant he'd met through the Champions, fallen in love with, and been completely rejected by. Time heals all wounds, and when he had the opportunity to rejoin Warren and the Beast to form a new team of Defenders, Bobby jumped at it, despite the protestation of his parents. He'd done the responsible thing for a while and satisfied his parents, and he probably hadn't found it too satisfying; it was time to take another crack at the madcap life of the hero.
Rumors have abounded for years about the question of Bobby's sexuality - I'm not personally sure if those rumors started when people noticed that Bobby always seemed to be teaming himself with Warren Worthington (often described as one of the most handsome men in the Marvel Universe), or when Bobby's next romance played itself out during his time with the New Defenders. Iceman met a Russian orphan named Cloud (who was very similar to his lost Darkstar), and found himself, yet again, immediately falling head over heels in love with her.
Then she turned into a man.
Then she turned into a cloud nebula. No joke: check out the final issues of New Defenders if you don't believe me.
And I freely admit, if I were Bobby, after all that had happened, it would have been at this point that I would have gone cheerfully and irrevocably insane.
Bobby, however, was made of stronger stuff, and even when the Defenders collapsed, he still wasn't ready to pack it in and give it up. Perhaps his educational experience really had paid off: even if he wasn't a world-class accountant, at least he was more willing to deal with failure, and better skilled at coping with the aftermath. When the original X-Men reformed to create X-Factor, Bobby happily joined his friends, no longer worried about lost loves or age differences.
It was at this point in the comics that our tales of the Iceman stopped being about Bobby as a person, and more about Bobby as a superhero. His college career and past experiences were mostly forgotten as Bobby moved into the background, serving as a supporting character for more popular mutants like Cyclops and the Beast, and later, the new Angel of Death. Stories about Iceman now revolved around his powers rather than his personality, a trend that would last over a decade. Loki tinkered with Iceman's powers - they went out of control. Iceman started wearing a belt to control them - then he generated enough ice to freeze the Empire State Building. Mikhail Rasputin and Emma Frost both told him that he was ignoring his true potential - Bobby started experimenting with his iceform. These were all decent stories, but they were stories about superpowers... not stories about a person.
And along the way, Iceman had a few more doomed relationships, surprise, surprise - from the mutant Infectia (who, as it turned out, was just trying to kill him) to Opal Tanaka (whose family was tied in to the Yakuza Clan) to a girl named Marge (who left Bobby to join her father... ummm... Oblivion. Don't ask.). It was almost as painful to read as it must have been to experience, because although Bobby was a little full of himself and kind of arrogant, deep down this guy was a hero in the most noble sense of the word. And he never, never, never had the slightest bit of luck with the girls, a trend that continues to this day and probably gives Northstar hope.
Although he really was a great guy deep down and a true hero when you needed him, Iceman was never as passionate about it as some of the others like Scott or Hank. Unlike those mutants, Bobby Drake was perfectly capable of looking human, of completely hiding his mutant power... small wonder he didn't stand up as much for mutant rights as mutants like Archangel or Nightcrawler. Some of the best Iceman stories, though, came from one of the creatively worst eras of the X-Men... the nineties stories about Bobby's father, the racist bigot. Much like his behavior when faced with an evil supervillain, Bobby came into his own when faced with the sheer stupidity of his father's views, standing up for himself in a way rarely exhibited. Rare stories like this one showed us the heroism Iceman was truly capable of.
Of course, later writers would completely ruin this dynamic by making his father abruptly transform into a champion of mutant rights, a move too unrealistic and unexplained to be believable.
These days, Iceman is again a core member of the X-Men... although you honestly have to wonder why. Bobby always seemed most content when he was on the move, doing things away from the main team. Sure, he's always been proud of his "founding member" status, and never shy to show it off, but that hasn't really brought him the respect or authority that he's been seeking. Perhaps due to his father's injuries, perhaps due to discomfort with a changing mutant arena, or perhaps due to simple writing inconsistency, Bobby has regressed quite a bit from where he was during his days with the Defenders and X-Factor. He's gone back to being a bit obnoxious, a bit arrogant, and more than a bit immature (as revealed by his continuing territoriality regarding Lorna Dane).
It's fun to read Bobby serving on Havok's team, though, because his return to immaturity has also meant a return to really, really not liking Alex Summers. From Iceman's viewpoint, Alex is riding in on his brother's coattails, supplanting his bud Warren as team leader. To make things worse, (still from Bobby's perspective) that ungrateful wretch Alex has ditched and abandoned poor Lorna, and as if that wasn't enough, he's making time with Nurse Annie (who Bobby was nuzzling just before Alex's aborted wedding). Bobby has every reason (real or imagined) to detest Alex Summers, and I for one look forward to finding out how it all plays out.
Iceman is a great character and fun to read because he's your trademark imperfect hero. Powerful, yes, but insecure. Experienced, yes, but arrogant. Handsome, yes, but possessing some of the worst luck in the romantic arena that I've ever seen. In a lot of ways, Iceman is a total hard-luck hero who can't bring himself to admit just how poor his fortunes have been... unless it serves to make Alex look bad or feel guilty.
Iceman's not my favorite founding X-Man, but when handled right, he's definitely the most fun to read.
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A few months ago, Jim Lemoine (ComiX-Fan's Columns Editor) completed the manuscript for his first book, an examination of business leadership. Oddly enough, his second book is being published this summer, while his first book is still delayed by guys in expensive suits. He's still looking for that giant Ninja Iceman action figure.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.
Of Ice And Men
If you would have asked me when I was a kid, I would have said I liked Firestar better. To be honest, I guess I still do. I'd say, "She's hot," but that would be a terrible pun, so I won't.
Of all of the original X-Men, there's something about Bobby Drake that I've always found very interesting. He wasn't my favorite, nor was he the most well-developed, nor did he have the most backstory. In fact, of all of Xavier's first class, Marvel readers have seen less of Iceman than we have of any of the others. He may have been the sole X-Man to land a regular slot on an 80's cartoon, and one of the few to make it into a really crappy Nintendo Entertainment System X-Men game, but in the comics? Of all the founders, Bobby Drake was left out in the cold.
Ouch. Just realized what I wrote - I assure you, dear reader, this isn't Batman & Robin. Promise not to do that again.
A lot is made of Cyclops' status as "The First X-Man," a cool title to be sure. But who was the second? Well, if you believe the original chronology as presented in those early back-up stories in X-Men (no slight intended to Casey's awesome Children of the Atom mini-series, by the way), Iceman was the second to join Professor X's squad... and sure, you could argue for Jean because of her childhood tutelage with the Professor, but the second to don the uniform of the X-Men? It was Iceman, all the way.
Bobby Drake was patterned by X-Men creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby after one of their most successful creations: Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. In fact, one could easily argue that the entire team was based on Johnny, but for obvious reasons, Johnny and Bobby were the true counterparts. They were both the youngest members of their teams, they both had basically the same power (control of thermal energy), they were both the class clowns, and they were both even skinnier than Reed Richards. The youngest X-Man even teamed up with the youngest of the Fantastic way back in Strange Tales #120, wherein Bobby pulled a Peter Parker and started hitting on the Torch's girlfriend! Iceman was the kid brother of the X-Men, and boy did it show... earning time for "free play" from Professor X, and wearing those cute little boots over his snowy form.
Bobby matured a lot during his first tenure with the X-Men, both personally and professionally. He ditched the boots, he refined his powers, and he did a bit of growing up... but it was never quite enough to keep up with the other X-Men. In a way, Iceman became the "Wolverine" of the original X-Men: hot-headed, spoiling for a fight, without the tact of some of his teammates. The insecure Iceman was bad tempered and sometimes petty, and it's not hard to see why: his team consisted of a gorgeous woman (who had long spurned any advances he'd made), a daring team leader, a rich heartthrob, an erudite genius, and Bobby himself... a walking snowman. Things only got worse when the X-Men met Polaris and Havok; Bobby immediately fell in love with Lorna, who immediately fell in love with Alex. Spurned again, it was a rejection that Bobby never quite got over, and the rumblings of it remain to this day.
Bobby was constantly outdone by his older, more glamorous, more successful teammates. He had long since left his first girlfriend Zelda, Jean had never returned his advances, and Lorna Dane, the woman whose life he had personally saved, had turned him down in favor of the brother of the guy who got Jean. Bobby was doomed to always be the kid of the group, and in his own mind at least, to never be taken seriously. Is it any wonder he left the X-Men? It'd be like staying in an office where promotion was impossible, or in a singles bar where only the guys were single. Who would want to stay?
Of course, his original departure from the X-Men has never been fully explained, as to my knowledge it's never been revealed what originally made him return to the team (just in time to be kidnapped by Krakoa in the classic Giant Sized X-Men #1). I'd imagine that it was simply a lack of anything better to do. After all, Bobby's education at Xavier's had never prepared him for any kind of career outside of superheroing! And deep down, Bobby did care about his friends. Despite his personality flaws (or perhaps, even more impressive, due to them) Bobby was a real hero who cared about other people. So Iceman was again an X-Man... for a little while, at least.
Iceman solidly left the X-Men after Professor X recruited Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Sunfire, Thunderbird, and Wolverine to form the team's second generation. Why did he go? It was mostly peer pressure, probably; after all, all of his friends were leaving - at the time he made his decision, the original X-Men were assuming that Cyclops was leaving with them. But there were probably other aspects to Bobby's choice: his remaining anger at Havok and Polaris, his feeling of junior membership, a sense of betrayal that Professor X didn't tell him when the Changeling replaced him, no familiarity with all the new heroes, and the sinking realization that even if he stayed, he'd still be the youngest X-Man, except for maybe Colossus.
Of all of Xavier's original X-Men, Bobby Drake had the most reasons to dislike the team when he left. Thus, it's not surprising that he was the one who stayed away the longest. Cyclops, of course, stayed on as team leader. Jean returned just a few issues after her supposed departure, became Phoenix, and served as a core member of the X-Men. The Beast took a leave of absence or two from the Avengers to help out his old teammates, joining them against Magneto, among others. The Angel would return to help his friends in their darkest hour, battling the Hellfire Club and Dark Phoenix. But through all these formative years of the new X-Men, Bobby Drake stayed away. He joined Warren Worthington's short-lived Champions on a lark, but he mostly just stayed in college.
This at first seemed out of character: why would the X-Men's resident hothead, the glory-seeker, subject himself to the mundanity of a college education... studying accounting, of all things? As comic book titles go, Bobby the Super-Accountant doesn't exactly instill fear in the hearts of villains. And why would he stay so long from the X-Men, only returning once to join an extremely short-term squad liberating the X-Men's loved ones from Murderworld?
The answer to the second question is easier: Iceman had a lot of built-up resentment toward Xavier and most of his teammates. He didn't feel like a real part of the X-Men anymore, and probably privately wondered if he'd been wasting his time with them. This leads to the answer to the first question: Bobby went to college and studied accounting because he wanted to differentiate himself from his former teammates. While they gallivanted around the globe playing superhero, Bobby was trying to make something of himself in a traditional, responsible manner. Sure, he joined the Champions for a while, but don't forget that when the Black Widow, Hercules, and Ghost Rider walked out on Warren, Bobby joined them, thus insuring the team's demise.
And you could argue that it was at this point in his life that Bobby was, ironically, at his most mature and confident. Iceman made for a great student, and genuinely seemed to take to his business education (inspired, perhaps, by his buddy Warren). When he briefly returned to the X-Men, he was mature and capable, even to the point of finally dropping his grudge against Alex and Lorna. However, he remembered his pledge to stick by his education and left the X-Men as soon as he was no longer needed.
Time passed... a lot of time. It was time enough for Bobby to move past his youngest-and-least-glamorous hangups, and time enough for him to forget just how unlucky at love he'd always been. He was finally over his insecurities, over Jean, over Lorna, and over Darkstar, the Russian mutant he'd met through the Champions, fallen in love with, and been completely rejected by. Time heals all wounds, and when he had the opportunity to rejoin Warren and the Beast to form a new team of Defenders, Bobby jumped at it, despite the protestation of his parents. He'd done the responsible thing for a while and satisfied his parents, and he probably hadn't found it too satisfying; it was time to take another crack at the madcap life of the hero.
Rumors have abounded for years about the question of Bobby's sexuality - I'm not personally sure if those rumors started when people noticed that Bobby always seemed to be teaming himself with Warren Worthington (often described as one of the most handsome men in the Marvel Universe), or when Bobby's next romance played itself out during his time with the New Defenders. Iceman met a Russian orphan named Cloud (who was very similar to his lost Darkstar), and found himself, yet again, immediately falling head over heels in love with her.
Then she turned into a man.
Then she turned into a cloud nebula. No joke: check out the final issues of New Defenders if you don't believe me.
And I freely admit, if I were Bobby, after all that had happened, it would have been at this point that I would have gone cheerfully and irrevocably insane.
Bobby, however, was made of stronger stuff, and even when the Defenders collapsed, he still wasn't ready to pack it in and give it up. Perhaps his educational experience really had paid off: even if he wasn't a world-class accountant, at least he was more willing to deal with failure, and better skilled at coping with the aftermath. When the original X-Men reformed to create X-Factor, Bobby happily joined his friends, no longer worried about lost loves or age differences.
It was at this point in the comics that our tales of the Iceman stopped being about Bobby as a person, and more about Bobby as a superhero. His college career and past experiences were mostly forgotten as Bobby moved into the background, serving as a supporting character for more popular mutants like Cyclops and the Beast, and later, the new Angel of Death. Stories about Iceman now revolved around his powers rather than his personality, a trend that would last over a decade. Loki tinkered with Iceman's powers - they went out of control. Iceman started wearing a belt to control them - then he generated enough ice to freeze the Empire State Building. Mikhail Rasputin and Emma Frost both told him that he was ignoring his true potential - Bobby started experimenting with his iceform. These were all decent stories, but they were stories about superpowers... not stories about a person.
And along the way, Iceman had a few more doomed relationships, surprise, surprise - from the mutant Infectia (who, as it turned out, was just trying to kill him) to Opal Tanaka (whose family was tied in to the Yakuza Clan) to a girl named Marge (who left Bobby to join her father... ummm... Oblivion. Don't ask.). It was almost as painful to read as it must have been to experience, because although Bobby was a little full of himself and kind of arrogant, deep down this guy was a hero in the most noble sense of the word. And he never, never, never had the slightest bit of luck with the girls, a trend that continues to this day and probably gives Northstar hope.
Although he really was a great guy deep down and a true hero when you needed him, Iceman was never as passionate about it as some of the others like Scott or Hank. Unlike those mutants, Bobby Drake was perfectly capable of looking human, of completely hiding his mutant power... small wonder he didn't stand up as much for mutant rights as mutants like Archangel or Nightcrawler. Some of the best Iceman stories, though, came from one of the creatively worst eras of the X-Men... the nineties stories about Bobby's father, the racist bigot. Much like his behavior when faced with an evil supervillain, Bobby came into his own when faced with the sheer stupidity of his father's views, standing up for himself in a way rarely exhibited. Rare stories like this one showed us the heroism Iceman was truly capable of.
Of course, later writers would completely ruin this dynamic by making his father abruptly transform into a champion of mutant rights, a move too unrealistic and unexplained to be believable.
These days, Iceman is again a core member of the X-Men... although you honestly have to wonder why. Bobby always seemed most content when he was on the move, doing things away from the main team. Sure, he's always been proud of his "founding member" status, and never shy to show it off, but that hasn't really brought him the respect or authority that he's been seeking. Perhaps due to his father's injuries, perhaps due to discomfort with a changing mutant arena, or perhaps due to simple writing inconsistency, Bobby has regressed quite a bit from where he was during his days with the Defenders and X-Factor. He's gone back to being a bit obnoxious, a bit arrogant, and more than a bit immature (as revealed by his continuing territoriality regarding Lorna Dane).
It's fun to read Bobby serving on Havok's team, though, because his return to immaturity has also meant a return to really, really not liking Alex Summers. From Iceman's viewpoint, Alex is riding in on his brother's coattails, supplanting his bud Warren as team leader. To make things worse, (still from Bobby's perspective) that ungrateful wretch Alex has ditched and abandoned poor Lorna, and as if that wasn't enough, he's making time with Nurse Annie (who Bobby was nuzzling just before Alex's aborted wedding). Bobby has every reason (real or imagined) to detest Alex Summers, and I for one look forward to finding out how it all plays out.
Iceman is a great character and fun to read because he's your trademark imperfect hero. Powerful, yes, but insecure. Experienced, yes, but arrogant. Handsome, yes, but possessing some of the worst luck in the romantic arena that I've ever seen. In a lot of ways, Iceman is a total hard-luck hero who can't bring himself to admit just how poor his fortunes have been... unless it serves to make Alex look bad or feel guilty.
Iceman's not my favorite founding X-Man, but when handled right, he's definitely the most fun to read.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
A few months ago, Jim Lemoine (ComiX-Fan's Columns Editor) completed the manuscript for his first book, an examination of business leadership. Oddly enough, his second book is being published this summer, while his first book is still delayed by guys in expensive suits. He's still looking for that giant Ninja Iceman action figure.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.