{"id":4046,"date":"2018-02-22T22:37:18","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T22:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4046"},"modified":"2018-02-22T22:37:18","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T22:37:18","slug":"iceman-9-10-the-apocalypse-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4046","title":{"rendered":"Iceman #9-10 – “The Apocalypse Seed”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sina Grace’s\u00a0Iceman<\/em> stories have tended to be strong on character and theme, a bit wonkier on the plot. \u00a0This is a case in point.<\/p>\n

Since Bobby decided in the previous issue to move to LA, this is his going away party, and he’s invited Judah along to meet his friends. \u00a0Naturally, that leads to the familiar fish out of water routines, where one normal person finds himself baffled by the weirdness of the X-Men’s world – always worth doing now and again, to keep up the contrast.<\/p>\n

But Daken shows up, with Zach from a few issues ago in tow. \u00a0Zach is the obnoxious mutant kid whom Bobby rescued from small town panic, only for him to run off and join the much cooler Daken. \u00a0With vaguely defined powers to amp up or turn down other people’s superpowers and, well, stuff generally, he’s now calling himself Amp. \u00a0So Daken apparently has a plan to lure away the X-Men (by staging a Purifier attack as a distraction) and Generation X (by getting Amp to lock them in the Danger Room), after which he confronts Iceman and…<\/p>\n

Okay. \u00a0So let’s see if I’m following this. \u00a0Daken reminds us all that he’s still got an Apocalypse Seed inside him, which is a callback to an\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em> storyline from a few years ago. \u00a0The Seed can give him great power, but would also put him in thrall to Apocalypse. \u00a0So his plan is to get Amp to amp up the seed, but at the same time dial down the Apocalypse effect, so that he gets the power without losing his mind. \u00a0Then he makes a fairly vague comment about “a catastrophe of some sort” being needed “to start this fire”, and runs Judah through with his claws.<\/p>\n

That’s quite the cliffhanger, since Judah was being set up as a long term supporting character, and fridging him so early is unexpected. \u00a0As it turns out, though, he doesn’t die and he’s simply carted off to the doctors in part 2, which feels like a bit of an anticlimax. \u00a0 At any rate, part 2 involves Michaela – the other mutant that Iceman rescued earlier in the series, because it’s getting cancelled next issue and we need to draw the threads together – taking care of Amp, at which point Daken loses control and Iceman defeats him by kissing him and freezing the seed. \u00a0That’s the last we see of Daken, so hopefully he’s coming back next issue to round out the question of what happened to him.<\/p>\n

For our epilogue, Judah is confirmed to be fine, but tells Iceman that he should stay with the X-Men after all, because their worlds are too different and all that. \u00a0Bobby’s not too happy about that. \u00a0But this fits in nicely with a key theme of the series, which is Iceman trying to reconnect with a real world outside the X-Men. \u00a0He’s been doing so rather successfully until now, but this is the storyline where he runs up against the limits of that, as soon as he actually tries to bring the two sides together. \u00a0It’s also echoed somewhat in a subplot with Idie and Michaela, where we establish that Idie has the useful superpowers but would quite like a normal life, while Michaela has largely useless powers but kind of relishes her place with the X-Men.<\/p>\n

This side of the story works just fine, for the most part. \u00a0Okay, so Judah remains a bit of a wish-fulfilment cipher, but that’s fine for his role here.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the Daken side of the plot, which is where I have more issues. \u00a0Let’s leave aside the glaring clash between his portrayal here, and the way he was being written in\u00a0All-New Wolverine<\/em> at the same time. \u00a0That’s for the editors to sort out, rather than being a specific problem with this series.<\/p>\n

In theory, this seems to be meant as a story about Iceman’s compassion and willingness to engage with the world, as against Daken’s nihilist apathy and self-absorption. \u00a0You can see the angle; it ties in with the first theme of Bobby trying to reconnect with the world outside the X-Men, and it also fits in with Amp’s arc of being led astray by the cooler, eviller guy. \u00a0We know this is intended as the theme, because characters talk about “apathy” and a “nihilist abyss”, and Iceman freezes the death seed by kissing Daken, which is close to a power-of-love ending. \u00a0Oh, and Grace more or less tells us outright on the letters page of issue #10.<\/p>\n

But this doesn’t seem to connect up very coherently with the actual plot. \u00a0The Apocalypse Seed, a plot device from several years ago in another book, could have used some fuller explanation, but it’s an established idea. \u00a0Freezing the death seed is a vague idea but I guess the symbolism is clear enough. \u00a0But then… what exactly is Daken’s plan – get power but be dependent on Amp remaining focussed forever, so he can keep it in check? \u00a0That doesn’t sound too smart. \u00a0What does clawing Judah actually contribute to anything? \u00a0And why is Daken breaking into the Xavier Institute to activate the Apocalypse Seed, when from the looks of it he and Amp could have done this anywhere? \u00a0There’s a vague suggestion that he needs to do something awful just after activating the power, but why does it need to be with Judah?<\/p>\n

This doesn’t hang together. \u00a0The big picture stuff is there, but the story mechanics don’t work. \u00a0As for the art, Robert Gill is good on the ice effects, and good at establishing a sense of place – the mansion looks like somewhere people actually live and work in, which isn’t always the case.\u00a0 Amp’s a suitably brattish character, too. \u00a0On the other hand, his Daken feels a bit heavy, and some of the characters are a bit bland – the party scene has a lot of smiley interchangeable people in it.<\/p>\n

File this one under “less than the sum of its parts”, I think. \u00a0There’s a perfectly good story idea in here but it glosses over a few too many plot mechanics to entirely pull it off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sina Grace’s\u00a0Iceman stories have tended to be strong on character and theme, a bit wonkier on the plot. \u00a0This is a case in point. Since Bobby decided in the previous issue to move to LA, this is his going away party, and he’s invited Judah along to meet his friends. \u00a0Naturally, that leads to the […]<\/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-4046","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\/4046","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=4046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4048,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions\/4048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}