Bobby Drake: Iceman Appreciation 2023

[Krakoa]

Bobby fans... who do you think his three closet or best friends are?

I think those most consistently shown as close friends are Rogue, Jean, Angelica, Kitty, Warren, and Hank. I think depending on the era different relationships of those are most highlighted. Across his whole history I think it's tough to narrow down between Rogue, Jean, Hank, and Warren, but would probably say Rogue, Jean, & Hank.

[BobbysWorld]

I also think WHEN this question is asked/answered is a major variable. Like I would say historically Jean is obviously one of his closest friends, but having Bobby actively be on a team with her and Scott without yet having so much as a single personal conversation or encounter with them makes it kinda almost feel harder to pick them for this answer whereas ironically, if Bobby WEREN'T on a team with them right now, I feel like I'd probably find it easier to focus on their historical closeness and pick one of them here? Idk if that makes sense.

[Nicoclaws]

Bobby fans... who do you think his three closet or best friends are?

Jean, Rogue, Kate, Sam, Hank.
Maybe Ororo, but I think she's have more like a mentor relationship with him.

One interesting relationship is Emma though. I would say they are very close, but are they actually friends ?

[BobbysWorld]

Jean, Rogue, Kate, Sam, Hank.
Maybe Ororo, but I think she's have more like a mentor relationship with him.

One interesting relationship is Emma though. I would say they are very close, but are they actually friends ?

Bobby: We're frenemies.

Emma: I forget you exist the second you're out of sight.

Bobby: Lies and balderdash. I ever die, you'll catch her in the front row at my funeral, crying the biggest honking tears you've ever seen.

Emma: If I even bother attending your funeral, it'll only be to gloat about getting away with killing you.

Christian, looking pained: Lunch with my boyfriend and my sister, what could possibly go wrong there, I said. Its not like this is the sister who got me institutionalized, even....

Bobby: I MEAN just because I'm actually GRACIOUS enough to let that time she HIJACKED MY BODY AND TRIED TO DIE IN IT slide without so much as an apology....

Emma: Why on Earth would I apologize for bringing your attention to your true levels of power? If anything, I should be saying YOU'RE WELCOME....

Bobby: Yes, that was CLEARLY out of the goodness of your heart, that was it, you were trying to help me, that's why you begged the armed men with guns to KILL YOU AS ME -

Emma: I'm sorry, did you die? No? GET OVER IT, DRAKE.

Bobby: HAH! I did it! I got you to say I'm sorry! I WIN!

Emma: You absolutely insufferable toddler of a manchild -

Christian: Fuck it. Next time I'm literally inviting Adrienne instead.

[Nicoclaws]

Bobby: We're frenemies.

Emma: I forget you exist the second you're out of sight.

Bobby: Lies and balderdash. I ever die, you'll catch her in the front row at my funeral, crying the biggest honking tears you've ever seen.

Emma: If I even bother attending your funeral, it'll only be to gloat about getting away with killing you.

Christian, looking pained: Lunch with my boyfriend and my sister, what could possibly go wrong there, I said. Its not like this is the sister who got me institutionalized, even....

Bobby: I MEAN just because I'm actually GRACIOUS enough to let that time she HIJACKED MY BODY AND TRIED TO DIE IN IT slide without so much as an apology....

Emma: Why on Earth would I apologize for bringing your attention to your true levels of power? If anything, I should be saying YOU'RE WELCOME....

Bobby: Yes, that was CLEARLY out of the goodness of your heart, that was it, you were trying to help me, that's why you begged the armed men with guns to KILL YOU AS ME -

Emma: I'm sorry, did you die? No? GET OVER IT, DRAKE.

Bobby: HAH! I did it! I got you to say I'm sorry! I WIN!

Emma: You absolutely insufferable toddler of a manchild -

Christian: Fuck it. Next time I'm literally inviting Adrienne instead.

bestest friends then

[Krakoa]

Jean, Rogue, Kate, Sam, Hank.
Maybe Ororo, but I think she's have more like a mentor relationship with him.

One interesting relationship is Emma though. I would say they are very close, but are they actually friends ?

Agreed, I thought about putting Emma but don't know that I'd call them friends. But I think their relationship has a level of emotional intimacy of her really being in his head during her coma episode and her pushing him after.

[NewMutant]

Another random question; especially for long term readers/fans...

When do you think Bobby was at the height of his popularity?

[BobbysWorld]

Another random question; especially for long term readers/fans...

When do you think Bobby was at the height of his popularity?

Hmm, I think his popularity/visibility right now is around the highest its ever been, but aside from that, I'd say the 90s. I think its worth noting that considering how much of the X-Men's overall popularity/visibility came from the animated cartoon and what people associate with it....the fact that he literally only showed up in one episode there but overall remained almost as prominent in the comics, video games and as well-known as most of the core animated cast like Scott, Rogue, Hank, Storm, Gambit, etc....that says a lot about his popularity in the 90s IMO.

[Krakoa]

Another random question; especially for long term readers/fans...

When do you think Bobby was at the height of his popularity?

Despite being such an old character, it's recent. In the 2000s he had a prominent role in the movies and then since being outed he's been increasingly on the rise in the comics.

And I bet he'll end up in MCU team so... maybe it's still to come?

[Nicoclaws]

Another random question; especially for long term readers/fans...

When do you think Bobby was at the height of his popularity?

I feel his popularity has always been kinda the same, with the cartoons, the games and the movies. He was never the most popular of the X-men but he is consistent.

[Fokken]

Jean, Rogue, Kate, Sam, Hank.
Maybe Ororo, but I think she's have more like a mentor relationship with him.

One interesting relationship is Emma though. I would say they are very close, but are they actually friends ?

I know that I and many others are desperate to see he and Rogue's friendship get a renaissance.
Additionally, he and Remy were on Astonishing together, and I imagine these two could have some serious chemistry given the chance. Playful ribbing, even playful flirting. Why do I see these two playing video games together, and Bobby being superior at it and Remy shouting? I dunno.
And since I brought up Astonishing -- I'd really love to see he and Jean Paul grow closer. I would not be mad at Kyle getting jealous.
And since he and Sam seemed so tight back in the 90's Joe Mad / 00's Carey runs, I'd enjoy some revisiting there. But real talk: I can absolutely see Sam's becoming a family man AND fully skipping orbit being a major factor in their having lost that loving feeling. And the same COULD be said for his relationships with Jean and Scott -- particularly during the Krakoa era when they really doubled down on their domestication mindset.
I did enjoy the buddy-cop banter between he and Bishop during Grace's run, but I would enjoy it more with Remy because of the flirtyness.

Am I alone in wanting to see him play off Exodus? That feels ripe for the lolz.

OH! OH! And with his whole freezing time thing in Luciano's glorious solo (still desperate to have that collected and printed) I'd enjoy seeing him sit down with Tempo and talk TIME and what that's all like from their very unique vantage points.

[Icefanatic]

*shrugs* I mean, if we get an actual story out of it I guess that'd be one thing, but also I'm leery of that because one of the things I really liked about the original Liu story was....she actually bothered to delve into the aftermath, like Bobby was AFFECTED by it. Deeply. So I don't hold out hope for Duggan to be familiar w/all of that, based on his track record, and I'll be bummed if like, we get another Dark Iceman arc like the first one didn't happen and he learned nothing from it because that literally just feeds into all my dislike of Duggan's use of him in the first place....that thing where I'm like 'he keeps having Bobby perform feats or have character beats he's literally had before but acts like its the first time, every single time.'

Soo....I can one hundred percent see it as a possibility, but I'd hate it not because I'm averse to a Dark Iceman arc in general if its meant to actually develop Bobby's character, but like. I don't trust it from someone who seems to have such a finite awareness of Bobby's actual character arcs and history and little interest in learning more.

One of the things I dislike most about the cyclical nature of comics is when characters repeat things that already happened before and were originally depicted as something that affected and changed them, that they learned from....because when things happen for a second time all over again, and stories/writers refuse to acknowledge the context of the character before, during and after the FIRST time this happened....you can almost guarantee the new story is never going to be as fully developed as the story where this already happened because there's an opportunity inherent there to BUILD upon pre-existing work and thus make an even bigger or more nuanced story....but a rejection of all that potential right there for a writer to REVISIT instead of just...reinvent....almost always IMO guarantees the second time around is gonna be just paint by numbers.

But also its early and I'm just cranky so I'm gonna go now, lol.

I think it is fairly obvious and has been for some time that the events of the 'Frozen' arc in Astonishing X-Men(aka the 'Dark Iceman Saga') never happened to the current-adult Iceman.

Fans at the time wondered why nothing that happened in that story was being referenced in other titles. Jason Aaron said "I don't want to step on Marjorie's stories", and Bendis said he "didn't want to write stories about stories". But even after Astonishing X-Men ended it still went un-commented on in other titles. We started to get some clues as to why in the Iceman ongoing, when Bobby's dad suffered a heart issue and no mention was made of Bobby inducing a heart-attack in him during 'Frozen', as if it never happened. Emma later probed his mind and we saw Bobby had an awareness of some dark monstrous thing inside him(Dragon) that he said he must never become, again not showing any indication that he already had.

The only acknowledgement of the events of the 'Frozen" arc ever happening come from Daken, when he tells current-adult Iceman that he 'saw how big you got with the Apocalypse seed in you.', a clear reference to Iceman growing to the size of a skyscraper in 'Frozen'.



That's significant because Daken was resurrected in the future of a timeline that was destroyed in Uncanny Avengers. That almost certainly means that the Iceman(along with everyone else) from Astonishing X-Men was erased from existence when that timeline was destroyed.

That's hugely significant.

After the Frozen arc, fans who were aware of the 'Dragon Mythos' regarding Iceman were speculating that the obvious next step now that he was awakened to his true nature as the Dragon was a return to the Outer Void and the cosmic abstract Oblivion, to complete his transformation into a cosmic entity. The problem was the Outer Void is a death realm, and the only way a living being could enter it was by being erased from existence, as Iceman was as a consequence of time being rewritten in the first Iceman miniseries(from 1984).

If the Iceman from 'Frozen' was erased from existence and was returned to the Outer Void, then that transformation into the Dragon has likely already happened(tricky when talking about destroyed timelines and a realm that exists outside of space/time). The question is how and when will that Iceman return...

[PolarIceFire]

https://twitter.com/KylerClodfelter/...66567891914759

Kyler Clodfelter - C2E2 F-08
@KylerClodfelter · Mar 18, 2023

❄️C2E2 PRINT ALERT❄️

You guys didn’t think that the best X-Man of all time would be getting left out of the all the fun now, did you?

#xmen #iceman

[Nicoclaws]

I finally read the X-men Annual and I LOVED the few Iceman appearances. LOVE LOVE LOVE the costume there.



Also, David Talaski made an Iceman Pin-up on his patreon. Here is a preview.

talaski iceman.jpg

[JB]

It would have been awesome if Talaski got a pride variant for Bobby. I love his work.