Astonishing Iceman #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ASTONISHING ICEMAN #3
“Out Cold, part 3”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Iceman in action alongside Aaron Fischer.
PAGES 2-4. Aaron Fischer defends the Y-Men from Mr Clean.
Mister Clean. We’ve had a couple of issues of build to Orchis sending Mr Clean after Iceman – as we’ll see later, this attack is a deliberate attempt to lure Iceman out of hiding. I covered Mr Clean’s background in the annotations for the previous issue.
Aaron Fischer. Aaron Fischer debuted in 2021’s United States of Captain America miniseries. He’s part of the Captains Network, basically an assortment of grass roots Captain America imitators intended to represent the diversity of American society, who wind up being endorsed by Steve Rogers. Fischer is one of the most prominent characters from the Captains Network, having shown up subsequently in Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty and had a solo storyline in Love Unlimited Infinity Comic #49-54. In that storyline, he gained superhuman powers from an experimental super-soldier serum created by the Alchemax corporation.
Fischer’s back story involves him running away from home as a gay teenager to escape his abusive father, and becoming a makeshift Captain America to defend other homeless teens from Roxxon. He’s a fairly obscure character if you don’t read Captain America, and while he does get a footnote to make clear that he’s appeared before, I’m slightly surprised that he doesn’t get a text page to fill out more of his history.
The Y-Men. The group of superhumans that Fischer is protecting are apparently a new version of the Y-Men, from Young X-Men #8-9. The original Y-Men were criminals who gained powers from mutant tatoo artist Leon Nunez, who could give people superpowers by tattooing them with an appropriate icon. The Young X-Men member Ink was one of his clients, and the twist was that Nunez was the mutant, not Ink. This group seem to be a completely different set of Y-Men without any criminal involvement, but they’re still from Los Angeles and retain the back story of getting powers from a mutant tattoo artist. Nunez hasn’t been seen on panel since Young X-Men, though Ink mentioned him in X-Men Gold, so as far as we know, he’s just been hanging around running his tattoo parlour.
According to Mr Clean, the Y-Men here are:
- Debrider, who can make soap. He’s the guy in the white vest.
- Miss Maillard, a chef who can turn her arms into cast iron griddles, according to Clean. The art seems to show that she can actually heat them up as well – at any rate, they glow red – which sounds reasonably useful in a fight.
- Lojack, who seems to have a perfect sense of direction to locate a place or (possibly) object. He’s the guy in the black T-shirt.
- Jump Scare, whose had gets bigger for no apparent practical benefit beyond intimidation. She’s… well, she’s the one who does that.
- Lightshow, a model who can glow in different colours. He’s the guy with the pure white tattoos covering his upper body.
None of them appear to be pre-existing characters. Aaron says that they’re all “rejected for [they] are” and “living rough”, which doesn’t really fit the back story that Clean gives for some of them – presumably they’ve recently been driven onto the streets during Fall of X due to being mutant-adjacent. We’ve seen before in this series that Orlando is trying his best to stick to the “all the mutants have left Earth” gimmick by using characters who aren’t quite mutants.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGES 6-8. Iceman and Romeo in the Antarctic.
The Euphotic Zone is just the part of the ocean which receives sunlight, so that photosynthesis works there. Iceman and Romeo are apparently relying on undersea growth and sea life as their source of food. (That just leaves the question of why Romeo hasn’t frozen to death yet…) I’m not sure Iceman can literally be foraging “below the ice”, as Romeo says, if there’s enough light there for plants to grow.
Romeo asks Iceman where his fight ends – which seems at first to be raising the question of what Iceman is actually seeking to achieve here. However, Romeo’s bigger concern seems to be that they’re going to attract the attention of Orchis, he’ll get killed, and then Iceman won’t have him as an anchor to reform his body after each mission. Obviously, Iceman as the hero is never going to stop going on missions for that reason – and he makes the point that he’s able to leave for longer and longer each time anyway. Romeo is absolutely right to be concerned about this, because it’s precisely what Mr Clean is trying to achieve.
I have some trouble following why Mr Clean’s attack on the Y-Men is supposed to be the thing that stands out to Romeo in the whole world, at least if he’s meant to be monitoring emotional states. Surely the Y-Men’s level of terror can’t be that exceptional in the global scheme of things? It sounds as though Romeo is specifically monitoring for emotional states linked to Orchis-related attacks, but it’s not clear how he can do that.
PAGES 9-18. Iceman joins the fight against Mr Clean.
Largely a straightforward fight scene. As in previous issues, Iceman seemingly outwits the Orchis weapons, saves the innocents, and escapes successfully, but this time Mr Clean has planned ahead and plans to track Iceman back to his base. It sounds like some sort of tracing device is involved. That’s not to say that Mr Clean wouldn’t have been happy to kill Iceman here and now if he could, but that was very much Plan B.
Molecular napalm is, as Mr Clean says, the same thing that was used to zap Iceman in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, and the reason why he hasn’t been able to hold his body together since then. This time, he just lops off the affected part of his body and reconstitutes it from different water – basically, this stuff only works with the element of surprise.
PAGE 19. Data page: Mr Clean writes a handwritten note to his Orchis handler, Pequod, outlining his thinking in going after the Y-Men.
“The XPerience users up in the bay.” Orchis’s target in issue #1.
PAGE 20. Iceman bids farewell to the Y-Men.
Iceman is only belatedly noticing that his body is failing – and sees it mainly as a sign of how his condition is improving – while Romeo seems to be working overtime to hold him together. It’s not clear that Iceman fully realises how much work Romeo is putting in here.
Judah Miller was Iceman’s love interest in the 2017 Iceman solo series.
PAGE 21. Mr Clean and Pequod.
Randall’s Island is the location of Orchis base where Cyclops and Juggernaut are being held in X-Men.
PAGE 22. Iceman returns home.
And is immediately summoned back out there again. Evidently the plan is to divert Iceman while he’s still recovering, and leave Romeo especially vulnerable.
Note that Iceman says he “stayed solid a whole six minutes longer – on my own!” We saw Romeo providing a lot of assistance to that.
PAGE 23. The Orchis distraction.
Spider-Man is fighting… well, it seems to be Feral covered with techno-organics. We last saw her as an Orchis prisoner in Uncanny Spider-Man #1, where the Vulture was indeed carrying on techno-organic experiments.
Spider-Man’s connection with Iceman, of course, comes from the 1980s Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends cartoon, referenced in the “next issue” caption. Note that their co-star from that series, Firestar, is also available for use.
PAGE 24. Data page: Pequod reports to Judas Traveller on Iceman’s improvement. The “narrative petal” is Orchis’ propaganda wing – “petal” just means “department” here, following their flower motif.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan just says OUT COLD PART FOUR.
While this is very slight I’m enjoying it, it has clear stakes, I’m interested in seeing how Iceman and Romeo’s relationship developed. I’m fine with Romeo’s seeming power inflation we never had any idea how strong he was if he put his mind to it. So sure he can tell when people are being threatened by Orchis, why not.
So far this series has been kind of meh for me (but in a perfectly cromulent sort of way).
Fischer tells the Y-Men to get to the Morlock Tunnels where they’ll be safe. Did he mean the Morlock Tunnels in New York? They were in Los Angeles.
“We’ve seen before in this series that Orlando is trying his best to stick to the “all the mutants have left Earth” gimmick by using characters who aren’t quite mutants.”
It’s not just that. Orlando explained his thinking in an interview here:
https://aiptcomics.com/2023/08/09/x-men-monday-214-steve-orlando-iceman/#
“Steve: Well, it’s not just Xperience — you’ll see the Y-Men, you’ll see a couple of other things. But it’s about the cultural appropriation of mutant culture. For me, the statement was all these people wanted the cool part of being a mutant. They wanted the fun, they wanted the powers, the vibe, and then the rush. Now, perhaps karmically, they get to face the other side of being a mutant. They get the persecution, they get all the things that they thought they wouldn’t have to deal with in a privileged world. So for me, it’s about interrogating what those stories were really about. It was about appropriating mutant abilities. And now, they’re getting the real experience — they’re finally getting hated and feared. So for better or worse, now they really know what it is to be a mutant. Or at least they’re starting to get an idea.”
So basically Orlando thinks being hunted like this is karmic punishment for “appropriating” mutant culture. It’s funny because in Nick Spencer’s Spider-Man run Kraven kidnaps animal-themed characters and hunts them down and claims it’s justified because they sought to appropriate the fearsome qualities of the animal without appreciating its spirit. And Peter points out that only a madman would believe something like that. But Orlando seems to be taking it seriously.
I don’t know that Romeo himself has a clear notion of how much he may be contributing to Iceman’s physical integrity. I mean, how could he? Odds are that he never attempted anything quite comparable – after all, Iceman’s physiology is very unique and may not be biological at all.
From what we have seen it is conceivable and even likely that it is all psychosomatic. Whatever “molecular napalm” may be, odds are that Bobby discarded every single molecule of it weeks ago; he may be dissolving after a period of time as a coping mechanism for dealing with residual trauma.
Besides, Romeo’s powers act on emotions rather than bodily conditions. Perhaps Romeo is actually disturbing Bobby’s self confidence and harming his recovery without meaning to; perhaps Bobby is channelling his (historically significant) self-doubts to Romeo in order to deal with the trauma more quickly. It is even conceivable and IMO likely that Bobby would simply keep solid for longer and longer periods even if left on his own and without Romeo’s intervention. It is just way too new a situation for much certainty to exist either way.
On another note, I don’t know how Mr. Clean might conceive of any tracking system that would work on Iceman, who by my reading is currently discarding bodies more often than Swamp Thing ever did.
…. (That just leaves the question of why Romeo hasn’t frozen to death yet…)
Oh don’t you know, Paul? Iceman is keeping him from freezing with the power of love.
Did the gay Captain America really need a little neckerchief?
“Fischer tells the Y-Men to get to the @ @Michael: “Morlock Tunnels where they’ll be safe. Did he mean the Morlock Tunnels in New York? They were in Los Angeles.”
Well, there was a Morlock community in Chicago as well (the protagonists of the 2002 miniseries of the same name), easy to think that even in a metropolis like Los Angeles there was a community of outcasts living in the tunnels.
“Did the gay Captain America really need a little neckerchief?”
I assumed it was so he could dry the tears of the anti-“Woke” haters. 😉
At least it’s not an ascot.
@Midnighter- But the Morlock Tunnels were specifically abandoned military tunnels. Unless there’s a mutant with the power to locate abandoned military tunnels it would be a stretch to say that mutants inn every big city found abandoned military tunnels.
“Unless there’s a mutant with the power to locate abandoned military tunnels”
I kind of want that superpower now.
“My name is… Tunnel Rat. I have the ability to locate any form of underground tunnel, structure, or facility. Because I also happen to -look- like a giant humanoid rat, I can’t get a job in any legitimate field, so I hire myself out to supervillains, secret societies, cult leaders, mutant communities, and so forth.
What, how did you THINK these guys always found such convenient places to do whatever it is they do?”
Let’s not forget the London Morlocks also lived in tunnels. And the real life example of the Las Vegas unhoused community sometimes called Mole People.
Re: Romeo only picking up Orchis- related events: In this week’s issue of Children of the Vault, Serafina says that Orchis doesn’t realize how the Dominion is manipulating them. Presumably the Dominion is trying to ensure the chain of events that led to its existence. So maybe the Dominion is making sure that Romeo picks up Orchis-related events, because it “remembers” Bobby fighting Orchis in its timeline.
Romeo is a mutant though. If the Dominion is manipulating events, it would seem to work through machines. Nimrod and Omega Sentinel are part of Orchis, and based on Omega Sentinel’s comments about black holes and singularities in Moira’s Life Nine, they have some understanding of their “machine gods”. Serafina’s comments would most likely reference Nimrod and Omega Sentinel steering Orchis in the direction which leads to the creation of the Dominion and the eventual supremacy of machine intelligence.
Chris V> Romeo is a mutant though
Inhuman. It was a Whole Thing.
Whether it’s the intent here or not, you could easily make Romeo a fully constructed entity designed specifically to manipulate Iceman. There’s the name. There’s the identity, a newly minted superbeing – not a mutant, that puts him in danger of being identified, but someone a mutant would bond with. There’s the powerset, good for subtle control. There’s the fact that he mysteriously advanced from just the right age for teen Bobby, to just the right age for adult Bobby.
Yes it’s all just lazy plotting and embarrassingly twee romance plots. But it can also be an awesome retcon.
No, not any underground structure.
Only abandoned, underground military tunnels.
“From what we have seen it is conceivable and even likely that it is all psychosomatic. Whatever “molecular napalm” may be, odds are that Bobby discarded every single molecule of it weeks ago; he may be dissolving after a period of time as a coping mechanism for dealing with residual trauma.
I like this because it’s consistent with Bobby’s behaviour on previous occasions: significantly after M-Day where he convinced himself he was no longer a mutant, but also when he was damaged by Post and didn’t think he could turn back to human, or when he thought he was losing his ability to be human in the Carey/Austen run, and even when he thought he couldn’t control the power boost Loki gave him with out the belt.
When Bobby convinces himself he’s something he really goes all in on it.
Does clean really see a difference between getting power tattoos and augmenting his own skin? I do understand the whole thing of being scared of mutation but not of spider bites, even if it’s still unjustifiable xenophobia, but Clean seems to be splitting cilia here.
[…] ICEMAN #3. (Annotations here.) So this is episodic but it’s fun. Aaron Fischer’s a slightly odd choice of guest star, […]