Bobby Drake: Iceman Appreciation 2022

[Icefanatic]

Agreed. There's SO many potential Bobby subplots and storylines they could be playing with, which is a large part of why it bugs me that the only thing writers ever seem interested in is his powerset.

Like......I doubt it'll ever happen, but the second Iceman limited series from the early 2000s (which interestingly was written by Dan Abnett, the long time writing partner and collaborator of Al Ewing) introduced Opal Tanaka's son Robert, a biracial half-white boy named after Bobby and with implications he had abnormalities in his genome that could be explained by him being a potential mutant down the line or by having a mutant father. Now obviously the story ended with the reveal on the last two pages that despite initially being told Robert was Bobby's son, this wasn't true and with Bobby saying he'd known all along it wasn't true and would have stayed anyway.....but I always got the sense that the original plan WAS for him to be Bobby's son and at the last minute editorial pulled the plug on that, likely because of the usual bullshit fears that having a kid would make a character feel too old in readers' eyes. Which I think is dumb, but whatever. Anyway, I maintain that Robert always should have been Bobby's son and there were too many clues dropped that he absolutely was no matter what the official claim was for it to be believable for him not to be (I mean, who names their kid after their ex if that ex isn't even the kid's actual father, y'know?) I'm not the only one to think so, other writers have as well, with Marjorie Liu making a point to bring both Opal and Robert Jr. back into Bobby's life during the Dark Iceman arc and Opal talking about how she had thought more than once about maybe someday getting back together with Bobby and raising Robert Jr. together.

Now, obviously that's not ever going to happen now since Bobby came out, and I'm glad for that (not just because I prefer Bobby as gay but also because I think Opal gets a bad rap with readers but I still prefer her dynamic with Bobby more when they're not together and think they were always a hot mess as a couple, even when Bobby was being written as straight). BUT I still would love for somebody to someday retcon the Robert Jr. isn't actually Bobby's son 'twist' and say that no, he definitely is Bobby's, and a mutant as well. Like, its 2022. The traditional heteronormative nuclear family structure isn't the only way for people to be a family. I think there's SUCH a cool story to be told - and one that could cut to the heart of a lot of the Krakoan era's biggest themes - in Bobby and Opal reconnecting as friends, discovering Robert Jr. is a mutant, and co-parenting Robert without needing to be in a relationship or even with both of them moving on to each having a longterm romantic relationship with someone else, all without this impacting their parenting of Robert one bit.

Like, show us what it looks like for a gay mutant and a straight Asian woman to successfully and happily raise a son who exists fully in BOTH of his parents' worlds, spending time with his mother in New York and his father on Krakoa and all three coming and going as they please and the full weight of Opal and Bobby's complex history honored as something that was real and mattered even if Bobby was never truly in romantic love with her and just in denial due to his being closeted. I think its all the better that Robert Jr.'s identity includes him being not just the son of a human and a mutant, but biracial as well, with stories of this unconventional family unit thus being ideal to explore what its like to have an identity that includes more than one marginalization, to have parents with more than one marginalization, to have a cross-section of identities and communities even within just this single three-person family unit that means none of the three of them belong wholly to the same communities or reflect each others' identities exactly, but this in no way lessens the fact that they're family and part of each other's identities and community.

Robert Tanaka could be SUCH a powerful character for readers to learn about and invest in - a mutant who is both white and Japanese, who has a straight parent and a gay parent, a human mother and a mutant father, and every single facet of this is just as relevant and important to who he is himself and a part of his identity, without any single angle being more important to who and what he is than any other.

There's SO much good stuff to explore there, IMO.

Man, I've ranted about Robert Tanaka for YEARS!

My feelings for a long time were a lot like yours, in that Marvel chickened out on character development and maturing the character. But I now think the reasons are more complicated.

At a con just before the announcement of the second Iceman miniseries one of the X-editors said there were 'aborted plans for Iceman and Clan Tatsu'. That Clan Tatsu was an ancient clan steeped in lore and prophecy that foretold the coming of a Dragon. That Dragon was depicted on the mon(or crest) of the Clan(The mon shows a circle symbolizing the whole world with the dragon's claws holding it in it's grip). The Dragon foretold by Clan Tatsu was said 'not to be born of the Clan but would be bound to it by blood'.

The fans discussing it at the time didn't seems to know of the theory that Iceman is actually an analogue to the Phoenix called the Dragon, or that that theory was something worked on by an assortment of writers over the years including Louise Simonson who created Clan Tatsu(and Opal Tanaka) during her X-Factor run(most fans seemed to attribute those aborted plans to either Scott Lobdell or Fabian Nicieza but they likely began with Simonson).

What fans did know was that the current leader of Clan Tatsu(aka the Dragon Clan), Opal's Grandfather, is called the Dragon. Generally addressed as Lord Dragon or Dragonlord, or simply as Tatso'o with the honorific indicating the same thing. Fans assumed that the Dragon was simply a title, that a leader of the clan was destined to rule the world. What they were easily able to figure out, with even limited knowledge, was that someone 'not to be born of the Clan but would be bound to it by blood' could easily be accomplished through a shared child, as between Bobby and Opal.

And then a few months later the second Iceman mini happens and Bobby has a kid with Opal! A mini-bust by Bowen designs comes out at the same time with the box bio proudly proclaiming that Bobby now had a kid with Opal! And then there was a delay between issue 2 and 3, and a fill-in artist was used for 3(Skottie Young in his debut), and much of the art appeared rushed and lacking in background detail. I heard the whole issue was rewritten/redrawn but I don't know if that was true or not. And then at the end of issue 4 Opal says the kid isn't his, despite the kid being shown to have ICE POWERS!

And Bobby believed her. And for years I thought Marvel wanted fans to believe it, too, but I now think the opposite. I think they just weren't ready to pull the trigger on all the Dragon stuff so they left it out there, waiting. Considering that the writers of the Iceman mini(Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning) went on to do such great stuff with Marvel's cosmic properties, I would have loved to see what they would have done with Iceman as the Dragon, but not to be...

[Wiccan615]

Personally, I never really liked the weird ways a lot of white writers wrote Japanese/Asian culture in comics during the 70s- early 2000s; as a weirdly “mystical” place for white characters to get their development so I’m not too mad at that development being scrapped, but I would definitely like Opal and Bobby to interact again, after all of the development he has gotten over the past few years, it would be interesting to explore how she feels, especially with how she was written in Liu’s run and how she felt about his internal conflicts.

6879600B-0377-4559-A910-732B7E713B1D.jpg

[MexM]

I love the idea of Bobby and Johnny friendship, it is funny/weird how they seem to alternate between friendly buddies to guys at each other’s throat through comics and other media lol would love a writer to explore these relationships that are outside of the mutant zone (that Iceman solo issue with the Champions was fun). I think Moondragon would be fun as well.

And 100% agreed on Opal’s son, that would be an amazing storyline to have.

[PolarIceFire]

Well Christian is an interesting subject, actually, as his non-relationship with Bobby is one of my pet peeves with Duggan. I feel like he falls into the Bendis trap of a straight writer who wants a pat on the back for using a gay character or putting him in a relationship but not only has no interest in actually SHOWING that relationship, he can't even come up with a starting point as to why two men would be together or what they would even talk about. Thing about Christian is he actually has a ton of potential depth and issues arising from his backstory as invented by the Emma Frost series and Morrison and expanded upon via Sina Grace's reintroduction of the character and how that tied into Bobby's own ongoing story.

And not a single facet of ANY of that previous look at Christian Frost is present in Duggan's sporadic use of him, as he's essentially just written him as a generic cardboard cut-out of a character whose only dialogue is idle chit chat with Bobby and discussion of his mutant name (I harp on that last bit but it bugs me SO much lmao, because since when before Marauders has Bobby ever been shown giving a **** about stuff like mutants using codenames?)

But admittedly, a fair amount of my interest in the Bobby/Christian pairing is based on one specific element of both their backstories and ongoing narratives, which I just haven't gotten around to expanding on yet but which drives a LOT of my thoughts on both their potential as a pairing, and my biggest issue with how Bobby's been written ever since Bendis wrote him coming out. There's a HUGE, HUUUUUUGE fundamental plothole in Bendis' coming out narrative that not only exemplifies my problem with straight writers writing gay characters without centering them in their own narratives or just using superficial developments that let them say 'see I'm using this gay character' but without requiring they actually DO anything with them....

But anyway, lol. This wasn't meant to turn into a Duggan rant, I honestly don't care about him or his work enough to hate him or anything, I'm just grouchy and annoyed by it often enough I figured it was worth it to expand on where that comes from. Rambling aside though, like I said earlier, I DO like the Christian/Bobby pairing and have hopes for it that I know aren't shared by many, largely because of how undeveloped the relationship is despite its very existence being one of the only developments we can point to for Bobby in the Krakoan era. But again, the potential I see in it is due to a shared connection/element both Bobby and Christian's backstories and coming out narratives have and that's gone completely untouched or unacknowledged. I'll expand on that later when I have time, but as I said, it all stems from the huge, gaping plothole Bendis left in how he wrote Bobby coming out that's so fucking large you could drive an eighteen wheeler through it, and that I've been desperately been waiting six plus years for SOME writer to acknowledge and explore.

Wow, so many of you have such like, almost arcane Iceman knowledge. It's really interesting to read.

You, BobbysWorld, are one the most intensely passionate fans I've ever come across, for any character. And that's nothing but a compliment. I only have Sina Grace's and Marauders' Christian to go by and feel the less said about how Bendis handled things, the better. I'll refrain from doing so, because it's a sore spot for me, too. I used to get mad, and rage, to let it be known. But now it just makes me sad, because it was such a missed opportunity, and I feel like Bobby got robbed really bad. Maybe it'll be handled with more sensitivity and thoughtfulness elsewhere, though, if and when it does. I look forward to seeing what parallel connection there is, you see between him and Christian. I'm guessing it may have something to do with their fathers, and the lack of acceptance they both experienced from them, if I remember correctly? If so and touched upon, that could prove to be a good bonding storyline for them. The insistence on mutant only codenames was supposed to be a Krakoan thing, I think, about them leaving their human identities behind. I don't think it stuck, though.

I can't disagree with your thoughts concerning his romantic life, or lack thereof, as it were. And I'd rather not comment on all the rest, except to say that you obviously care about the character very much, and I think that's wonderful. That he's captured your imagination so, and inspired all these intricate ideas, is a testament to what I believe is the infinite, limitless potential he has, that's barely been tapped.

[Icefanatic]

Wow, so many of you have such like, almost arcane Iceman knowledge. It's really interesting to read.

You, BobbysWorld, are one the most intensely passionate fans I've ever come across, for any character. And that's nothing but a compliment. I only have Sina Grace's and Marauders' Christian to go by and feel the less said about how Bendis handled things, the better. I'll refrain from doing so, because it's a sore spot for me, too. I used to get mad, and rage, to let it be known. But now it just makes me sad, because it was such a missed opportunity, and I feel like Bobby got robbed really bad. Maybe it'll be handled with more sensitivity and thoughtfulness elsewhere, though, if and when it does. I look forward to seeing what parallel connection there is, you see between him and Christian. I'm guessing it may have something to do with their fathers, and the lack of acceptance they both experienced from them, if I remember correctly? If so and touched upon, that could prove to be a good bonding storyline for them. The insistence on mutant only codenames was supposed to be a Krakoan thing, I think, about them leaving their human identities behind. I don't think it stuck, though.

I can't disagree with your thoughts concerning his romantic life, or lack thereof, as it were. And I'd rather not comment on all the rest, except to say that you obviously care about the character very much, and I think that's wonderful. That he's captured your imagination so, and inspired all these intricate ideas, is a testament to what I believe is the infinite, limitless potential he has, that's barely been tapped.

I'm going to assume I'm one of those I bolded.

I certainly didn't start off that way. I started off as a very general Iceman fan. I liked the character when I first discovered him on the old Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends cartoon as a kid. I followed him into the comics first with the New Defenders and later X-Factor and his eventual return to the X-Men. It wasn't until the previously mentioned Uncanny X-Men #319, the 'Untapped Potential' issue that I really connected with the character in a more emotional way. I think that was true of a lot of the fans I have talked to over the years for a variety of reasons. I stated hunting down back-issues trying to get his every appearance. I started looking for articles in fan magazines. I dove into the explosion of online fandon. I think at one point I was a member of or in some way connected with about two dozen Iceman fan groups and sites, all of which are now sadly gone. It was when I came to the old CBR and went to register and 'Icefan' was taken(likewise Icefan1, Icefan2, etc.) and I thought 'well, fan is short for fanatic', and Icefanatic was born that things really went hardcore.

Turns out when you call yourself a 'fanatic' of something, people expect you to be very knowledgeable about it. Which I was compared to a lot of fans, but that grew exponentially after that. People started bringing me information like I was some Iceman-centric library of congress. When a lot of misinformation and disinformation about the character started to heavily circulate online I was the one a lot of people expected to have the straight scoop. At times it has felt like an unpaid job, lol. At times because I've learned so much over the years I've been able to deduce upcoming things and had to sit on what I knew to avoid spoiling things. Oftentimes I leave little breadcrumbs that I hope savvy fans interested in such things can put together and figure out.

I want to second your comments about BobbysWorld and add that I don't know of anybody other than myself and a guy who use to post here that went by 'the Profezzor' whose knowledge of Iceman comes close. Props and respect to BobbysWorld.

As for Bobby's relationships post-Bendis, the only pairing I have liked was with Judah. His creation was also a nice nod for longtime fans to Bobby's first love Judy Harmon, as shown in his origin story back in the '60's. His pairings with Simon and Christian have lacked substance and I loath Daken.

[PolarIceFire]

Mr. Mike Carey's thoughts on who Iceman is:



I agree with him, with the one, obvious exception, of course.

And more most memorable Bobby moments by Duggan, came from the Mar. '21 King in Black tie-in, Savage Avengers #19:



Which just might be my favorite, single issue for him, of the whole Krakoan era, so far.


Icefanatic, you most definitely were, no question. With that, a proposal for you, BobbysWorld, and all other present or incoming Iceman fans of the thread:

You're a creator and have been asked to develop a winning concept for an upcoming project centering around and focusing on Bobby, what's your best pitch?

[AJpyro]

Hey if you havent seen it yet, Xmen Marauders by Mike Carey is on sale on comixology.

[Icefanatic]

Icefanatic, you most definitely were, no question. With that, a proposal for you, BobbysWorld, and all other present or incoming Iceman fans of the thread:

You're a creator and have been asked to develop a winning concept for an upcoming project centering around and focusing on Bobby, what's your best pitch?

Wow, that is incredibly hard. I have had a ton of ideas for stories over the years but a lot of them have either been done or made impossible(pairing him romantically with ex-girlfriends). Back in the day when I fancied myself a prospective writer I worked up an outline for a four-issue mini-series that would culminate with the shocking reveal that Bobby had had a kid with Opal. I wrote and rewrote it for years, and then... Same with the Frozen arc in Astonishing X-Men.

One thing that has annoyed me over the years is writers centering almost every Iceman story around either his romantic relationships or feats with is powers, like he couldn't have the same kind of stories other heroes get. I had the idea for a one-shot that could get him away from all that for a bit, with a cover blurb that pretty much says it all.

ICEMAN
Alone...
Powerless...
Stalked by SABERTOOTH!

No team to fall back on, no amazing feats with his powers. Just a balls-to-the walls fight to survive against an ultimate predator.

But if I could tell one Iceman story, and I have no idea how I would do it, I would try to find a way to heal the divided Iceman fandom.

For decades, you had a vocal minority of Iceman fans insisting he was secretly gay and was being forced to live a lie(Iceman is hardly unique in that, you see that with a ton of fictional characters). Post-Bendis you have the main of his fans saying he was actually totally straight and is NOW being forced to live a lie. It's the worst 'broken base' I have ever seen in fiction and it has sadly cost Iceman the majority of his fans. I would love to tell a story that fixes that, heals that, but I have no idea how to do it.

[cam18]

I will always remember Iceman most fondest when he was still with Opal Tanaka and during that era.....some of the more recent stuff not my cup of tea.

[scourge]

For decades, you had a vocal minority of Iceman fans insisting he was secretly gay and was being forced to live a lie(Iceman is hardly unique in that, you see that with a ton of fictional characters). Post-Bendis you have the main of his fans saying he was actually totally straight and is NOW being forced to live a lie. It's the worst 'broken base' I have ever seen in fiction and it has sadly cost Iceman the majority of his fans. I would love to tell a story that fixes that, heals that, but I have no idea how to do it.

I'm going to disagree HARD with that. "Vocal minority" ...no. And the whole "lost fans" thing rings hollow. When Bobby came out, suddenly he had fans materialize out of thin air claiming to be fans that never gave him the time of day previously crying that he was "ruined forever". (The same thing happened with Tim Drake).
And quite frankly, the fans that abandoned the character for being gay are not ones I want any healing or unity with.

[Wiccan615]

I'm going to disagree HARD with that. "Vocal minority" ...no. And the whole "lost fans" thing rings hollow. When Bobby came out, suddenly he had fans materialize out of thin air claiming to be fans that never gave him the time of day previously crying that he was "ruined forever". (The same thing happened with Tim Drake).
And quite frankly, the fans that abandoned the character for being gay are not ones I want any healing or unity with.

Co-signed. Also, not surprised at all that the tone of this conversation went into this direction lol, I could smell it coming a mile away. Who cares if we are a vocal minority? That doesn’t make the fact that we see ourselves in the character wrong. Also, who cares if lots of other fictional characters have fans who read them as queer? It’s almost as if queer fans aren’t a monolith. The difference between most established characters and Bobby is that multiple writers have confirmed that they were pulling from queer themes when writing his personal arcs (even if the goal wasn’t for him to be queer), so it makes sense that a lot of us *would* see ourselves in Bobby.

If you like bobby as straight, just say that lol, no need to invalidate how others relate to him as if it’s “lesser than” or it isn’t coming from the “main fans.” It’s not about “knowledge of the character”, it’s about how you relate to his themes, and that’s not universal and creator intent doesn’t have to be the be all end all of what that means to each reader. Him having a broken base is what it is but when aren’t comic fans a polarizing bunch anyways?

I also would say that “him being gay cost him most of his fans” is a massive overstatement. Any announcement of the character, whether it be Anthony writing him for the pride issue or Luciano recently writing him in an infinity comic, gets 1000s of likes on Twitter. And not just the main marvel Twitter but on the social media of those relatively niche artists/writers too. Gay fanart of the character is also quite consistent and get a good amount of likes and interactions online. His recent solo series has a good aggregate rating on goodreads with over 800 ratings. He is amongst the most wanted character on X-Men Red, and the biggest complaint about Marauders was the fact that Bobby wasn’t used. I would say he has a healthy and growing following. He may have lost fans too but they’re irrelevant when it comes to these numbers.

[Icefanatic]

I pretty much expected that knee-jerk reaction. I'm going to use the TV show Supernatural as something of an analogue.

For anyone who doesn't know it was a show about two(straight) brothers who go around hunting monsters and helping people. It had two distinct audiences, the larger TV audience which was mostly male and saw the characters as written and depicted, and the online fandom which was smaller and mostly female who saw the characters as gay and secretly lovers. Each group saw themselves as the main and true fans. Both groups tried to treat the other as if they didn't exist and tried to invalidate the other group's view of things. The show struggled to do things to play to both audiences while still staying true to who the characters actually were and generally did a good job with it in some really cleaver and innovative ways(the school play was probably the biggest and best example).

Marvel did something similar with Iceman for a long time, not because they didn't want him to come out as gay, but because making an actually-straight character gay was going to be reality-breaking for many fans, perhaps most fans, regardless of whether they liked him as gay or straight. Personally, I have enjoyed him as both, I just don't believe 'the retcon'. You see people reading around the orientation-change, or reading around the character. Iceman fandom use to be predominately straight with a significant amount of LGBTQ and a LOT of women. Iceman was one of those comic book characters that had a large female fanbase, one that shipped him with a LOT of female characters. Now the remaining organized fanbase is almost entirely LGBTQ and mostly gay men at that.

Yes, Iceman still has fans wanting to see him in books, but many of them are reading around the orientation change. It's a pocket of unreality they try not to look too closely at. You see them even here on the X-boards at CBR, which was practically the home of the Iceman-is-secretly-gay theory. They post mostly in the other appreciation threads, still shipping him with Laynia, Lev, Opal, Emma, Angelica, Kitty...

They broke the reality of the character, that's the problem, and all these years later the fandom has never recovered from that. Instead of anyone acknowledging that, everyone now just sits in their respective camps waiting to rabidly defend their positions while spewing vitriol at the other.

[Wiccan615]

I think the vantage point of what constitutes “reality of the character” is kind of where the issue of conflict really resides.

It’s like you mentioned with Supernatural fans, there are people who like the reality of what’s given to them and just assume that what they consume in the canon is all there is and justifiably engage with that. But the difference here is that marginalized fans very much engage with “the reality of canon” from a different vantage point. Reality in that sense can be seen as malleable and open to interpretation as opposed to fixed or static. This is where we get the age old transformative vs curative fandom discussions.

And that’s fine. I don’t personally care how others engage with the character or with media in general. I think most iceman fans who read the character as gay or saw themselves in him acknowledge and have consistently had to deal with (mostly straight male) fans who feel like their reality was broken. It’s not hard to find and it’s understandable for either side to become defensive. I just think reducing it to “vocal minority” vs “main fans” implies a correct vs incorrect hierarchy, if that assumption was inaccurate then fine, but I think it’s a fair read of that statement.

Going from “he has lost the majority of his fans” to “he has fans they just read around his sexuality” feels like moving goalposts. It’s no surprise people “read around” his orientation change, but the people giving viral support specifically to the queer centred stories like the pride issue, the infinity comic, the fan art and the goodreads reviews aren’t those people, and there’s a lot of them, which adds more nuance to “he has lost a majority of his fans.” There are straight men and women who don’t care about the change, there are queer fans who always saw it as a possibility and there are new fans that are exploring his narrative because of it. There will always be people who are on either side of the fence and that isn’t uncommon because comics as a whole have been at the forefront of the current culture war, it’s far from exclusive to Bobby, yet despite that, his journey still gets a good amount of viral attention. His one drag race reference in Marauders got almost 2000 notes on Tumblr lol.

Side note; I am aware of all of those female love interests btw, I think I had a few more female crushes than that before I came out, actually. If people genuinely still ship stuff like Bobby/Lev, I feel sorry for them lmao, how mundane. I think some of ya’ll who think someone genuinely having feelings for the opposite sex and then coming out as gay later in life is some incomprehensible narrative, maybe listen to people who actually lived through it? Here’s a primer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskGaybrosO...tm_name=iossmf

And here is a good one if you want to watch a video, too:

https://youtu.be/yZiltLvaiDE

[PolarIceFire]

There's so much I want to say, but just don't know where to begin, right now. I'm disappointed (in myself mostly), and wishing I'd worded things differently, so as to avoid any confusion. By "upcoming project" I meant at this time, in the new era, *as he is*. And from there, I'd revise and ask *in general only*, what would you like to see done with the character? What does he need, in your estimation and again at this very point, to take him next level? What would, or could, give him his own Captain Kate or Britain moment? Something that would signify the same sort of progress, and sense of achievement.

I don't want to discourage participation, but any contemptuous, sensationalistic assertions aimed at already marginalized groups, seem painfully out of place here.

Personally, Bobby's never spoken to me louder than he does now:



Or resonated more. I feel more connected to, and prouder to call him a favorite, than ever before. He's my spirit animal.

[Icefanatic]

I think the vantage point of what constitutes “reality of the character” is kind of where the issue of conflict really resides.

It’s like you mentioned with Supernatural fans, there are people who like the reality of what’s given to them and just assume that what they consume in the canon is all there is and justifiably engage with that. But the difference here is that marginalized fans very much engage with “the reality of canon” from a different vantage point. Reality in that sense can be seen as malleable and open to interpretation as opposed to fixed or static. This is where we get the age old transformative vs curative fandom discussions.

And that’s fine. I don’t personally care how others engage with the character or with media in general. I think most iceman fans who read the character as gay or saw themselves in him acknowledge and have consistently had to deal with (mostly straight male) fans who feel like their reality was broken. It’s not hard to find and it’s understandable for either side to become defensive. I just think reducing it to “vocal minority” vs “main fans” implies a correct vs incorrect hierarchy, if that assumption was inaccurate then fine, but I think it’s a fair read of that statement.

Going from “he has lost the majority of his fans” to “he has fans they just read around his sexuality” feels like moving goalposts. It’s no surprise people “read around” his orientation change, but the people giving viral support specifically to the queer centred stories like the pride issue, the infinity comic, the fan art and the goodreads reviews aren’t those people, and there’s a lot of them, which adds more nuance to “he has lost a majority of his fans.” There are straight men and women who don’t care about the change, there are queer fans who always saw it as a possibility and there are new fans that are exploring his narrative because of it. There will always be people who are on either side of the fence and that isn’t uncommon because comics as a whole have been at the forefront of the current culture war, it’s far from exclusive to Bobby, yet despite that, his journey still gets a good amount of viral attention. His one drag race reference in Marauders got almost 2000 notes on Tumblr lol.

Side note; I am aware of all of those female love interests btw, I think I had a few more female crushes than that before I came out, actually. If people genuinely still ship stuff like Bobby/Lev, I feel sorry for them lmao, how mundane. I think some of ya’ll who think someone genuinely having feelings for the opposite sex and then coming out as gay later in life is some incomprehensible narrative, maybe listen to people who actually lived through it? Here’s a primer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskGaybrosO...tm_name=iossmf

And here is a good one if you want to watch a video, too:

https://youtu.be/yZiltLvaiDE

I get all of that, I even agree with almost all of what you said. But for me, some of that is also way too close to those people arguing that 2 + 2 doesn't necessary equal 4, that maybe it's 3 or 5, literally waging war on objective reality. People are certain things, characters are certain things. Not everything is mutable. We don't just rewrite reality because of people's feelings.

I'm not sure why I typed Lev, I intended Lorna. That was a deep-cut brain fart. And the last thing I wanted to do is offend anybody, be they marginalized or not. If I hurt anybody's feelings I apologize.

I don't blame the fans on either side of the divide. Ideally, I would wish so many people wouldn't have gotten so invested in trying to make a fictional, actually-straight person gay. That Marvel would have flat out said Iceman was straight instead of trying to play to both sides for so long that it became some massive thing. I can think of several TV shows that have done the same thing, but most of them generally quickly dialed it back or manage to go off the air before having to deal with the fallout from fans. Marvel somehow did the dance for twenty years. It's ridiculous they managed to sustain it for so long.