Astonishing Iceman #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ASTONISHING ICEMAN #1
“Out Cold, part 1”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colourist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Just a straightforward shot of Iceman in action. This is a five-issue miniseries – since it’s part of Fall of X and it’s written by Steve Orlando, I’m going to assume it’s a core title.
PAGE 2. Montage of Iceman sightings.
As in X-Men #25, several weeks have passed since Orchis attacked the Hellfire Gala in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Iceman was apparently killed by Nimrod. However, along with a pro-Orchis voice over, this is a montage of generally positive images of Iceman being sighted doing good old fashioned superhero stuff. Considering this is Fall of X, the tone is really very upbeat, which is doubtless the point.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits, in the new Fall of X layout. Iceman is the only character in the dramatis personae, and he’s listed as “Iceman (?)”, but Orlando isn’t going to try and keep up the tension on that score for very long.
PAGES 4-10. Iceman rescues a San Francisco “mutant” from Orchis.
The Castro Theatre (yes, with the British spelling) is the building on page 4; it’s a cinema considered significant in LGBTQ culture. Its website describes it as an “LGBTQ community landmark”.
The Orchis machines are described in the next scene as hunter drones created by nanotech Sentinels when they detected a mutant gene. They’re apparently trying to find an excuse to lure out Iceman – one of the robots even says “Lure in progress” – so even though this guy might have an X-gene in his body somewhere, it’s entirely possible that Orchis know the truth and don’t care. Similarly, the collateral damage is designed to lure Iceman out. This might seem at odds with Orchis’s general PR campaign. Perhaps this is a neighbourhood where they don’t expect to get much support – though Iceman does get a somewhat mixed response from the crowd.
Xperience was a drug that gave normal humans mutant powers for a short period. It was being marketed by the villain Lobe in San Francisco in Uncanny X-Men #530-535, back in the Matt Fraction run. Assuming this guy is talking about the same stuff, he won’t have had any access to the stuff since Lobe was brought down back in 2011.
I’m not sure the kiss on page 10 works – I think the art plays it too much as romantic rather than celebratory, which feels weird, and cuts against Romeo’s role.
PAGE 11. Orchis take stock.
Agent Pequod is new. He’s named after the boat from Moby Dick, so apparently he’s an Ahab-type “obsessive hunter” figure.
We don’t know at this point who “the Cleaner” is.
PAGES 12-15. Iceman returns home.
The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility is a real place – it’s the location in Antarctica that’s furthest from the sea in every direction. The Soviet Union actually build a weather station there back in the 1950s but it’s been abandoned for decades and apparently is now submerged in ice, so we can turn a blind eye to that.
Clyde, Iceman’s ice golem creature, appears as a snowman in X-Men boots, as Iceman himself did in the early Silver Age.
Three pictures are shown in the hallway. Two are reprinted art – the first is the cover of X-Men vol 1 #1 (1963), with the original X-Men in action against Magneto. The other is the opening panel of Iceman’s “Origins of the X-Men” back-up strip from X-Men vol 1 #46 (1968) – complete with the original lettering, though you’d have to zoom in notice. It shows Iceman and Cyclops being surrounded by a lynch mob shortly after they meet. The third is apparently just a picture of Arakko from space.
PAGES 16-18. Flashback: Romeo helps Iceman to reconstitute himself after his death at the Hellfire Gala.
We saw Nimrod using “cellular napalm” to melt Iceman away in Hellfire Gala 2023, and Romeo reacting. Presumably, Iceman didn’t actually die, but just lost the ability to keep his body together.
Romeo is an Inhuman from that brief period when random humans were getting Inhuman powers from the Terrigen Mists. He was a supporting character from All-New X-Men vol 2 (the Dennis Hallum run). Technically he debuted in Spider-Woman vol 6 #10 a month before appearing in ANXM, but that was a Hallum story too. Romeo dated the time-travelling Silver Age Iceman for a while in ANXM, in an Inhuman/mutant romance during the period when the two camps were fighting over the Terrigen Mists. All this basically qualifies him as Iceman’s first love, assuming that we’re going to discount any girls from consideration. He resurfaced in last year’s Iceman arc in Marvel’s Voices Infinity Comic, having been conveniently aged up to Iceman’s current age thanks to some interdimensional time travel shenanigans.
In terms of his powers, Romeo’s meant to be an empath, so actually reconstituting Iceman seems a bit beyond him – but acting as an anchor to help Iceman do it himself seems fair enough. I mean, it’s Power Of Love, obviously, but why not?
PAGES 19-20. Iceman and Romeo.
Romeo is basically using his powers to identify places where Iceman is needed (which is a big upgrade from what we’ve seen from him in the past), and also helping Iceman to periodically reconstitute his body. The data page at the end of the issue indicates that Romeo’s ability to serve this role is tied partly to the design of the Ice Palace magnifying Romeo’s powers, and partly by the fact that his powers are inherently magnified when he’s working closely with someone he feels strongly about.
How is Romeo not freezing to death in here?
PAGE 21. Data page: a memo from Woodrow Pequod to Judas Traveller, the Orchis head of propaganda (who’s featured before in Orlando’s stories).
PAGES 22-23. Orchis decide to attach Iceman’s mother.
Madeline Drake, Iceman’s mother, is a minor character who’s been around since the 60s. I think we last saw her in the Marvel’s Voices Iceman arc, where her husband William died (of unspecified natural causes).
The Elements of Doom were originally Avengers villains from 1979; they were humans who had been transformed into element-themed creatures. Another group, created by the same mad scientist, showed up in Thunderbolts in 1997; that version was just elements brought to life. It’s not clear whether this is the same group or a new Elements of Doom. So far as I can see, the last appearance of any of the Elements was in a back-up strip in Heroes for Hire vol 2 #13 (2007), when the remnants of the Elements were just lying around inert in the NYPD long-term evidence storage facility.
Orchis claim that there are 118 of the Elements of Doom, which is indeed as high as the named elements currently go (number 118 being oganesson), though it counts a bunch of elements that are too unstable to stick around for more than a moment.
PAGE 24. Data page – Romeo’s notes on his War Room.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan just reads OUT COLD, PART TWO.
Overall, I liked this issue. Paul already addressed my two main quibbles- the random kiss and Romeo not freezing. I can hand wave the former by saying there was a panel missing right before the kiss in which it was made clear that the subject of the rescue also wanted/ consented, but that should have been on the page. The latter is trickier, as nearly everything in the ice palace seems to be made of ice. Hopefully, we’ll get an explanation.
The hopeful tone was appreciated, especially in light of the Gala issue and X-Men 25.
I don’t get the plot mechanics behind Iceman’s status quo here at all. So, Romeo pulled him back together with, as Paul aptly puts it, the Power Of Love.
Okay, I get that. But why does he now need boosts to STAY together? Maybe if it accompanied a depowerment back to 70s levels for him, and it was made clear that the cellular napalm was still affecting him, and he had to hold together THAT body rather than being able to form from random water… maybe that would work. Or go even further with the whole co-dependency thing and make him an ice symbiote who merges outright with Romeo for a bit (like Atlas and Dallas in late Thunderbolts v1, although Lightning Round is still a bit away from that plotline). Base him out of the X-Men’s short-lived pre-Utopia San Francisco HQ or something.
But in every view, he’s his “normal” Krakoa-era power levels, doing stuff like teleporting through a vast expanse of sea and making a huge Frozen-ripoff palace. Except that one thing. Which smacks hard of Just Because.
That kiss was just…no bueno.
Yeah that status quo regarding his powers is a bit wonky but I guess its needed from a narrative standpoint?
Also hopefuly nobody taking that drug for sex gets Magma or Chamber or Havok powers while they are doing the sex because that would not be a happy ending at all.
I’m not buying that Orchis would OPENLY attack so many human civilians in order to draw Bobby into a trap. We’ve seen that Orchis is talking with the President. An incident like this would cause politicians to demand answers from Orchis.
Some people have suggested that the nano-sentinels are designed to resemble Inferno-animated objects and thus shift blame to Maddie. That would work if they didn’t talk about pursuing mutants every five seconds. The whole sequence made no sense.
Now that Bobby’s in Antarctica, I wonder if he’ll run into Umar, who’s been based there in Dr. Strange.
Judas Traveler doesn’t even appear in this issue- we just see a memo from Pequod to him. That’s the problem with Orchis- there’s just too many of them for all of them to get page space. The core membership consists of Killina Devo, Karima, Moira. Nimrod., Alia Gregor, Feilong, MODOK, Traveler and Stasis. Plus they’ve got alliances with Coven Akkaba, Mother Righteous, Selene and Shaw. There’s not enough room to develop them. I don’t think Alia Gregor’s been seen since Inferno. I don’t know- maybe if each book developed one member it would work.
I think we can explain the change in Orchis by assuming that Alia Gregor was killed and the leadership of Orchis was replaced by Snidely Whiplash.
I wonder if the issues with Bobby’s bodily integrity are fundamentally psychological. It’s been a long time since Bobby’s body was operating anything like that of a biological person. He’s a disembodied intelligence, that creates bodies for itself, because he grew up living in a biological body, and it’s therefore comfortable and familiar to have a body. But having recently experienced a clearly traumatic “body-death”, his comfort with embodiment has been significantly damaged. On some level, Bobby now associates having a body with the possibility of painful death. Thus, the longer he stays embodied, the more powerful the urge to shed the body. Romeo, as an empath, is able to help Bobby get past that, but it’s a patch, not a cure.
@wwk5d Xperience gave the powers of a specific mutant.https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Xperience It should have changed mutant baseline relations forever, but it was never brought up again. Lobe shouldn’t have any fear of being sued now.
On hindsight, that threat of killing exponentially more humans was not very smart. It is essentially a call for the X-Men to lay low and then go all-out.
Orchis can’t fully commit to it; it may get away with cold blood killing up to 100, perhaps 1000 humans just to spite and scare mutants. But after that there is really no upside to them. The risks of destroying their reputation and creating violent backlash increases exponentially along the number of victims. Worse still from their perspective, each new death also increases the chances of significant inner conflict and even full betrayals.
Nor would it be smart for the surviving mutants to just try and avoid springing that stupid threat. Even if they wanted to, that would mean being under perpetual risk of some misunderstanding or snap judgement having tragic consequences. They now have an ethical duty to attempt to destroy Orchis outright, which they lacked before.
Orchis pretty much decided that it has to be destroyed soon by either humans, mutants or their alliance by issuing that silly promise.
I have just realized that Bobby may not be even aware of the threat. And if they are taking their own threat seriously, Orchis may be assuming that he does not and giving him a bit more tolerance accordingly, even if with reluctance.
After all, Bobby had been very graphically reduced to a puddle very early on. The threat only came minutes later. Romeo is probably aware of it, but he may not have told Bobby. Even if he did, they may well have decided not to openly admit as much to Orchis.
I would be surprised if no one told Iceman about the Orchis threat. If he went into action and Orchis started killing humans, Bobby probably wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
I’m sure Orchis blamed the issue’s opening scene on mutants, and some people called Iceman’s words to the contrary “fake news.”
Luis Dantas said: I have just realized that Bobby may not be even aware of the threat. And if they are taking their own threat seriously, Orchis may be assuming that he does not and giving him a bit more tolerance accordingly, even if with reluctance.
This is probably the idea, but it’s kind of a weird plot point. Orchis will mass murder non-mutant humans, work with mass murderers and psychopaths like MODOK and Dr. Stasis, and use threats aimed at ordinary civilians to force most mutants off-planet.
But they won’t go through with evil actions if a specific mutant hasn’t heard their threat for sure. I mean, that would just be unfair!
hey now have an ethical duty to attempt to destroy Orchis outright, which they lacked before.
Orchis pretty much decided that it has to be destroyed soon by either humans, mutants or their alliance by issuing that silly promise.
Yeah. Again, it seems like the idea here is that the Fall of X is the rebirth of the “classic” X-Men concept.
A villainous scheme that essentially forces the X-Men to work with decent non-mutants like the Avengers is about the most direct way to get the core X-Men team back to interspecies cooperation and away from mutant separatism and mutant nationalism.
According to Bleeding Cool, this week’s ASM Annual showed Orchis *did* trigger a bunch of humans (including Anna Watson) who took the poisoned drugs. It turned them into psychopaths, rather than killing them directly.
I know that Orchis has plausible deniability with the drugs. They can blame the deaths on mutants and make humanity hate mutants all the more. It’s not the plan Orchis orchestrated in order to kill humans which is my problem. It’s just an utterly incomprehensible plan. It could have been done so much better.
If the idea is to make mutants a feared and hated minority working with other superheroes and keeping to the shadows, it could be done without putting a glaring neon sign over Orchis members telling us they are “EXTREMELY EVIL!”.
Given that Romeo escaped with Emma and the others, and possibly may have spent a bit of time with them as well before he saved Iceman and they relocate to the South Pole, it would be a bit irresponsible for Romeo not to update Iceman on anything that happened to him after Iceman “died”.
Then again Iceman may be in contact with the remaining X-men and we haven’t seen it yet. Who knows.
@SanityorMadness- The Amazing Spider-Man Annual was weird.The authorities seem to be covering up the problems with the meds. Paul Rabin asks if the mutants could be responsible for what happened. Peter says not a chance but he’ll contact Wolverine to find out what’s going on. The main books make it sound like the general public found out about the massacre at the Gala immediately after the Gala and an arrest warrant was issued for Emma for poisoning the meds a couple hours later. On the other hand, if this takes place before the Treehouse is destroyed, then why does Peter need to contact Wolverine? Can’t he just go to the Treehouse?
I’m not sure if the idea is that Orchis released the drugs in some humans to punish the mutants for their resistance (in which case, wouldn’t they WANT to publicize the effects and claim the mutants are behind them?) or the poisons in the drugs were triggered prematurely in some individuals for some reason.
“I wonder if the issues with Bobby’s bodily integrity are fundamentally psychological. It’s been a long time since Bobby’s body was operating anything like that of a biological person. He’s a disembodied intelligence, that creates bodies for itself, because he grew up living in a biological body, and it’s therefore comfortable and familiar to have a body. But having recently experienced a clearly traumatic “body-death”, his comfort with embodiment has been significantly damaged. On some level, Bobby now associates having a body with the possibility of painful death. Thus, the longer he stays embodied, the more powerful the urge to shed the body. Romeo, as an empath, is able to help Bobby get past that, but it’s a patch, not a cure.”
I really like this reading – and given Orlando’s turn to “the power of love” mechanics in his Marauders run, I think it might hold some weight.
I feel like I ought to reread Liu’s storyline on where Iceman omegas (TM) all over the place, in full elemental splendour.
And there’s the strong Emma Frost precedent, playing with the question of just how self-realized Bobbie is, both emotionally and physically speaking.
I get that the franchise needs him to remain an eternal teenager with a heart of gold and a complete inability to crack a proper joke – but it’s difficult to reconcile that with the fact he is essentially a disembodied psychic entity willingly crafting, disassembling, expanding and dissipating his own body. His being a person at all is really tenuous ar this point
It feels like there’s a lot of potential there for something a bit stranger and more exciting than “oh look a rainbow flag, this must be a story about Bobby”.
If I didn’t know that Steve Orlando was a queer writer, this issue would confirm that for me. Mostly because of the kiss. I’ll let all the straights that semi-random kisses is not uncommon. (Which is not to say unproblematic. After all, capital-d Drama is also not uncommon.) I’m not sure it’s meant to be read as romantic but instead celebratory.
The art/colors could have been a bit more clera that Iceman was dissipating during the kiss, which is another tropey reason for having a kiss, for cinematic reasons.
This is similar to what happened with Sandman just before superior started. Peter stopped him by isolating his god particle and in his next few appearances he could not maintain his integrity if I remember correctly. I can quiet remember how he returned to normal though.
@Mike Loughlin: Since Orchis is controlling the official narrative, contrary views like Iceman’s would be suppressed as “misinformation” ala COVID.
@neutrino: yeah, that’s what I was getting at. I was thinking of how a large segment of the U.S. population reacted to any facts or opinion that clashed with their beliefs during the last few years. I can see Iceman’s truth getting drowned out by Orchis’s lies and their hold on the public.
Of course, denizens of the Marvel Universe used to turn on the super-heroes every other month so there’s precedent for that sort of reaction in-universe. Not to mention regular anti-mutant prejudice being reinforced by Orchis’s lies…
I just thought of something- Orlando is very clear that Bobby isn’t teleporting- he’s just creating new bodies and allowing them to break apart when he’s done. But if that’s the case, then how does he get food, drink, etc. to the ice palace for Romeo?
Well , Romeo is both Inhuman and a member of their government (which is how he conveniently got stuck in another dimension , where time flowed faster , while on a diplomatic mission , allowing him to naturally reach the same age as Bobby) so maybe he’s got home delivery as part of his employment package ?
The question mark on the recap page beside Bobby’s profile (and the struck-out “apparent” death of Iceman) raises the question for me – is this actually Iceman? Is Romeo helping Bobby bring his “self” (extremely nebulous given his powerset) together on a per-patch basis as Alexx Kay posits upthread? Or is Bobby dead and Romeo is (likely unwittingly) re-animating his “corpse” to be with him and do what he believes Bobby would want to be doing? Is this essentially the adventures of Zombie Iceman?
It strikes me as notable that Iceman, being one of the most gregarious X-Men, is in outright isolation during a time of desperate need. There’s more to come, obviously. Something feels amiss here.
@dannythewall:
“If I didn’t know that Steve Orlando was a queer writer, this issue would confirm that for me. Mostly because of the kiss. I’ll let all the straights that semi-random kisses is not uncommon. (Which is not to say unproblematic. After all, capital-d Drama is also not uncommon.) I’m not sure it’s meant to be read as romantic but instead celebratory.”
Didn’t think it worth mentioning at the time, but something similar came to mind. Paul noted twice (here and in the weekly x-axis review batch) that the kiss failed because it was executed in an overly romantic manner, rather than a more congratulatory vibe.
How people jumped from there to noting the scene should have included an explicit statement of consent is a bit beyond me.
I’m not sure it’s a “straight” reading necessarily, but it does suggest a really rigid correspondence between verbal communication and physical contact that doesn’t quite translate to the format: in comics, we’re shown specific moments in a general flow of events, not the whole, continuous duration of whatever’s happening.
It feels like an odd extrapolation of the “words matter more than images” mode of thinking, which strikes me as a bit at odds with comic book storytelling itself.
And yes, there are a lot of conversations to be had about informed consent in queer spaces. But to read the scene through the same prism you would a straight Kiss feels very off-base.