{"id":3992,"date":"2018-01-02T21:49:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T21:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3992"},"modified":"2018-01-02T21:49:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T21:49:34","slug":"iceman-8-iceman-vs-iceman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3992","title":{"rendered":"Iceman #8 – “Iceman vs Iceman”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iceman<\/em> is on its way to a swift cancellation with issue #11, which shouldn’t come as any surprise. \u00a0For whatever reason, Marvel persist in launching new X-Men solo titles and, unless there’s a Wolverine involved, watching them crash within a year. \u00a0Similarly,\u00a0Generation X<\/em> joins a growing list of short-lived titles about the students, a format which has only really sold when it was folded it into\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>. \u00a0The message should have got through long ago that the X-Men brand is not strong enough to support these spin-offs, but Marvel are implacably determined not to take the hint.<\/p>\n

None of this is particularly a reflection of the quality of the individual books. \u00a0Iceman<\/em> is a good enough title, which has done some solid character-driven work on an underdeveloped lead. \u00a0Admittedly, issue #8 is a patchy example of that.<\/p>\n

The cover curiously bills this as “Iceman vs Iceman, Part 1 of 1” – which is curious not just because of the strange numbering, but also because it’s not an Iceman vs Iceman story at all. \u00a0It does indeed guest star the other Iceman – the time-travelling teenager from\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> – treated here as simply a second Iceman from another timeline rather than the same person at a different point in his life. \u00a0Which is clearly the less confusing way to deal with him, though it’s also understandable that the book has chosen to downplay the teen X-Men continuity snarl until it’s eight issues down.<\/p>\n

Iceman’s parents want to meet the younger Iceman – which is fair enough since, given the point of divergence several issues into the Silver Age run, he’s their son too. \u00a0After a token opening scene in which the two Icemans team up to beat Pyro (who they largely ignore while carrying on their own conversation), it’s pretty much a whole issue of the Bobbys going for dinner with his\/their parents, and young Bobby being too nervous to talk to them. \u00a0That nervousness manifests as him first being unable to de-ice, and then freezing into a statue as the evening gets ever more awkward.<\/p>\n

It’s one of those smart visual metaphors that can’t help provoking a “yeah, but” response, given that it’s such an established character – yeah, but when has Iceman ever had this problem before? \u00a0It would be lovely if he did, because it feels very right for the character, and Robert Gill’s art sells it very nicely with the deer-in-the-headlights stare. \u00a0But it’s the sort of thing that can’t help but feel a little odd when it comes up for the first time.<\/p>\n

The hook here is that Bobby’s parents see the younger Bobby as a chance for a do-over, and want him to come live with them and start fresh. \u00a0Again, this is an idea I like more in theory than in practice. \u00a0In theory it’s very clever. \u00a0It fits with the basic concept of the\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> team, that they’re getting a second chance at life with the benefit of seeing where they went wrong the first time round – but it inverts that by playing it from the perspective of his parents. \u00a0And since we’ve previously established that they feel they lost Bobby when he became a superhero and his life took a wrong turn, it also makes sense for them to see this as an opportunity.<\/p>\n

But… the opening arc of this book was rather more nuanced in its approach to Bobby’s parents. \u00a0They were intolerant, but they were also allowed to stand up to the Purifiers. \u00a0And while that arc wisely fell short of having them miraculously reconciled to Bobby being gay, it did seem to show them taking on board how he felt and going off to think about it. \u00a0So to have them show up here trying to just turn back the clock feels like it undercuts the ending of that earlier story, by disregarding whatever progress they seemed to have made. \u00a0It would square away nicely enough if the Drakes’ response seemed more multifaceted and confused, but it comes across as one note instead.<\/p>\n

Still, there are good ideas in here, and I’d have been happy enough to see this book stick around. \u00a0It’s at the upper end of the scale for\u00a0X-Men<\/em> solo spin-offs, but the whole concept of these books doesn’t seem to be something that interests the marketplace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iceman is on its way to a swift cancellation with issue #11, which shouldn’t come as any surprise. \u00a0For whatever reason, Marvel persist in launching new X-Men solo titles and, unless there’s a Wolverine involved, watching them crash within a year. \u00a0Similarly,\u00a0Generation X joins a growing list of short-lived titles about the students, a format […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}