Originally Posted by
BobbysWorld
Blatant irrational Iceman stan rant forthcoming! LOL.
My greatest wish is for every writer who thinks the only thing worth exploring about Bobby's character is 'the untapped potential of his powers' to like....actually READ enough of his stories to know what is actually new territory for him. Versus a wheel that's literally been reinvented a dozen times by a dozen writers who each think they're the first to come up with a particular use of his powers. The most recent example of this was in Marauders #26, where Duggan clearly thought he was having Bobby do something new and impressive given the reactions every other character had to him growing to giant-size to fight Fin Fang Foom....except um:
Bobby first did that when Chuck Austen had him absorb a lake and grow to giant size to fight the Collective Man.
And AOA Bobby fought Remender's X-Force lineup as a giant multiple times.
And Sina Grace had Bobby create multiple giant golems the size of Sentinels to fight them.
And Marjorie Liu had Bobby grow big enough to dwarf skyscrapers.
Etc, etc, lol. Its just really frustrating that not only do writers constantly reduce Bobby's character down to just being all about his powers and his untapped potential, but the only reason he never moves PAST that is because none of them bother to notice that writers before them had the exact same idea and have already had him explore the exact same feats they now 'invent' for him!
Like X-writers, please understand......Bobby's been able to come back from being shattered, blown up, or otherwise destroyed in either ice form OR flesh and blood form since before Mike Carey made that a fairly regular feature of his power usage back in his X-Men run ten years ago. The Draco is the first time he built a new body from scratch and he's been coming back from having holes blown through the center of his body since Onslaught. Its not new.
Writers have LONG-since established or explored the idea that he can teleport by stepping into any body of water like the ocean or even just sublimating into water vapor and recreating his body (and those of anyone he teleports with him) from moisture elsewhere like....going back to when Emma hijacked his body and did it in the early nineties. His alternate self did it regularly to transport the whole team in the original Age of Apocalypse, he did it in the X-Men Forever mini that established him and Jean as omegas, and Liu did it in the Dark Iceman arc. Its not new.
He's been making golems of all sizes and shapes for over five years now. Not new. Sina Grace and even Bendis with Battle for the Atom established that they're not always mindless, that he can actually put his consciousness in a second golem body even while remaining in his main one. Claremont's had him freezing the air so cold it basically acts as liquid nitrogen and flash freezes any attack sent his way so bullets and metal shards literally just shatter under their own weight. Austen had him kill someone in the Brimstone dimension by yanking all the moisture out of her body and using it to build his new body. All the way back in Uncanny #300 he was adding mass and spikes to his ice form to go toe to toe with Frenzy and taking out Acolytes by literally just forming vehicle sized chunks of ice way up in the air and dropping them to take out super durable enemies on the ground. Writers still occasionally act like fire is somehow a threat to him and can melt him despite his history of using the fact that his power isn't so much 'freeze things' as 'stop/take energy away' to prevent fire and plasma powered mutants like even SUNFIRE from activating their power at all. Fire and plasma can't melt him when he keeps the the energy of ambient molecules so low they never even get a chance to ignite. And there's like, a ton more because Bobby's powers are actually versatile as hell and every writer who thinks they're the first one to realize this simply never bothered to read some of his most key stories.
LOL. Sorry to be a stereotypical stan obsessed with their fave being the MOST POWERFUL BLAH BLAH BLAH, because tbh, as much as I like Bobby's powers, I reeeeeally hate that they're basically the only thing a lot of writers consider interesting about him, as it limits his characterization so so much. But its like, if you're going to make that the only thing you focus on at least do something NEW with it, instead of just repeating what a dozen people before you have already done. Its like this endless series of writers being like look! A new and shiny gift for Iceman fans! And its the same damn thing regifted over and over again with identical wrapping even lol. We're like yeah no, we've already seen this. We got this already.
And then the rest of the time, writers just treat his character as this guy who just makes ice slides and ice beams and basically resets his character back to basics because they think THAT'S all he's capable of, which is what usually gives the next writer that comes along the impression that they're the first one to try and grow him past that.
Anyway. That's my overlooked/unexplored feat for Iceman. Just all the ones that get reinvented every few years as though its the first time we're seeing him do something like grow to giant size or make a new body from scratch.
/rant