Iceman is easily the most boring of the original X-Men. Beast has a whole bunch of things that make him interesting—his freakish appearance (especially since he turned blue), his intellect, etc.; Cyclops is the leader; Jean Grey has boobs…Angel would be the boringest, but he’s rich and that leads to some improved options. Iceman has nothing, really. They made him gay forty years after creating him because they just wanted SOMETHING that would make people care about him as a character. So, picking him as a solo character probably wasn’t a great idea.
The book starts with him meeting his parents, and it’s a perfectly fine scene, and then there’s a bunch of “little bads” before the big one:
The main story for the series has Bobby pursued by a new character called Oblivion. Oblivion has some kind of cosmic power (not the best choice of villain for a kid who can turn into a snowman), and he wants to kill Iceman because…Wait for it…Iceman is dating Oblivion’s daughter, who is posing as a human named Marge.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Actually, you can. And JM did.
Oblivion is basically God, and he created his human daughter because he was bored—just like God created Adam, see? And his war against Iceman ends when he sees how much Bobby Drake’s parents love him, which makes Oblivion feel all sentimental. Along the way, he has Iceman hallucinate about his old Champions buddies.
If this sounds like the kind of weird, trippy, and so-outlandish-it’s-sillly stuff you usually find in The Defenders, you’re right. This feels like a Defenders story DeMatteis never got to write before the team got revamped and he was assigned to different books. The whole thing makes no sense, because a being with Oblivion’s power level should have been able to turn Bobby to dust with a mere thought. There’s just no reason for any of this story to have occurred.
I agree with the author that this mini-series blew chunks-it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and was a chore to push through it. And, as a big Original X-Men person from way back, I was really expecting big things from this miniseries. So disappointed. Where the author and I disagree is on his assertion that the Iceman is the least interesting member of the Original X-Men. Marvel Girl’s boobs, as lovely as they are, do not make her more interesting than a fellow who could single-handedly trigger the next Ice Age whenever he feels like it. The Iceman is, technically, an ‘ice-elemental’, at least according to Thor, and I believe the Asgardian God of Thunder would know. That is more interesting than a great rack, even if it belongs to Marvel Girl. Over the past two decades or so, the Iceman has ( finally ) been coming into his own, realizing his vast potential to become one of the most powerful beings on the planet, with a considerable bit of assistance from the White Queen. I will furthermore agree with the author that this decision to have the Iceman “switch teams” was done more for shock-value than anything else, and I would protest the validity of it, if people in the real world did not “hop the fence” all the time. The Iceman’s in-continuity reasoning for doing so does resonate, since all of his efforts to connect with a woman for sixty-one years now have all gone flat. “Well, I’ll just show all YOU ungrateful bitches- I’ll go QUEER!!! THAT’LL show you!!!!” Unfortunately, it does happen- in real life, and now, apparently, on the four-colored page, as well. The Iceman actually has the potential to be a great character, and, in the hands of the proper talents, he could be. But the less said about this mind-numbing sleeping pill from 1984, the better. Word!