{"id":8024,"date":"2022-06-28T19:48:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T18:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8024"},"modified":"2022-06-28T19:48:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T18:48:30","slug":"marvels-voices-iceman-infinity-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8024","title":{"rendered":"Marvel\u2019s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic"},"content":{"rendered":"

MARVEL\u2019S VOICES: ICEMAN INFINITY COMIC #1-4<\/strong>
\nWriter, artist & colourist: Luciano Vecchio<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Sabino<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the second Iceman story that Luciano Vecchio has done for the Infinity Comics line, the first being the catchily titled\u00a0Mighty Marvel Holiday Special: Iceman\u2019s New Year Resolutions Infinity Comic<\/em> #1. That\u2019s the one with the ball drop moment, which I still think is one of the cleverest uses of the vertical scroll format I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

Now he gets four issues – which equate to something closer to one and a half regular comics – under the Marvel\u2019s Voices banner. The Marvel\u2019s Voices anthologies are, let\u2019s be honest, a bit patchy. For every good story there\u2019s a vignette in which a character tells us, very directly, how important their identity is to them, without the burdensome obstacle of a plot.\u00a0Still, patchiness is to be expected, because they\u2019re Marvel anthologies. Very short stories are deceptively tricky to make work, and when you couple that with a remit to do identity-related stories, there\u2019s an inevitable risk of hitting the point so directly that it feels very heavy handed. I\u2019d rather see things given a bit more time to breathe.<\/p>\n

Iceman\u00a0<\/em>does get a bit more room to breathe, over the course of four issues. But that\u2019s four Infinite Comics issues, which doesn\u2019t quite translate to regular issues. When Marvel collected the first four issues of\u00a0X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em> in print, as\u00a0X-Men Unlimited: Latitude<\/em>, the solicitations say it clocked in at 64 pages. That\u2019s roughly three regular issues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, what do we get here? Well, Iceman has moved to Los Angeles. He\u2019s also in one of his phases of coming to terms with being an Omega mutant, and enjoying the X-Men\u2019s current relative popularity.\u00a0Vecchio seems to be of the view that if you want to do stories about Bobby making up for lost time after coming out of the closet, he can\u2019t just be wandering around Krakoa with the same handful of established gay characters, or even a bunch of new ones created for the purpose. Because, well, there\u2019s no such thing as Krakoan gay culture, or at least, if there is, it\u2019s basically indistinguishable from the rest of Krakoan society. It\u2019s doesn\u2019t have very much to do with the experience that Bobby missed out on.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, this is another reason why Krakoa really, really needs a second bar. Everyone meets at the same place and does the same thing. But I digress. Vecchio wants Bobby to be part of gay culture, and that can\u2019t happen unless he\u2019s in the human world – which in itself creates tension with Krakoa. Quite rightly, the story treats that as the angle, or at least one of the angles. Bobby needs to embrace his Omega-ness, but he also needs to embrace his humanity at the same time, and that\u2019s a perfectly good idea. It hits the remit for\u00a0Marvel\u2019s Voices but it also gives the character an angle and picks up on an aspect of Krakoa that feels underexplored.<\/p>\n

The big problem here is that the book is cramming too much into its 3-4 issues. Vecchio brings back Romeo, the Inhuman empath who was the first love of time-travelling Silver Age Iceman from\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em>. By a happy turn of events, Romeo has apparently been off on a time travel adventure and so remains the right age for a relationship. To be honest, since Vecchio\u2019s art – while rather charming – makes everyone look very young, it might have been easier just to gloss it over. But regardless – having brought back Romeo, we move on to Christian Frost, who seems to be a concurrent romantic interest (and to be fair, not\u00a0<\/em>playing it as a romantic triangle is a pleasant change). Bobby\u2019s father has died – off panel! – and Bobby gets to vent his anger at a Frost Giant through a parallel with guest star Loki\u2019s father issues. And\u2026 then we get Iceman overreaching his omega powers, and his supporting cast needing to rally round to bring him back. The overall moral being, as I say, the need to embrace being human as well as being an omega mutant.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Vecchio wants a separate villain-of-the-week in every issue, with a complete story going on there too. And there\u2019s more – a rather excessively direct scene where a character shows up for the sole purpose of telling us how important it is to have icons, or Bobby giving a speech about climate change. (Points for trying to explain why the X-Men can\u2019t solve climate change, though – basically, Iceman\u2019s answer is that creating an ecosystem from scratch on Mars is easier than tinkering with one that already exists on Earth). It\u2019s all a bit cramped – it\u2019s a four-issue Infinite Comics mini with enough content to fill a year of an ongoing title. And I wouldn\u2019t mind reading that title, if Vecchio would just slow down a bit.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit chaotic, this, but the worst you can say is that it\u2019s trying too hard to do too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MARVEL\u2019S VOICES: ICEMAN INFINITY COMIC #1-4 Writer, artist & colourist: Luciano Vecchio Letterer: Joe Sabino Editor: Sarah Brunstad This is the second Iceman story that Luciano Vecchio has done for the Infinity Comics line, the first being the catchily titled\u00a0Mighty Marvel Holiday Special: Iceman\u2019s New Year Resolutions Infinity Comic #1. That\u2019s the one with 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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8024","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\/8024","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=8024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8026,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024\/revisions\/8026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}