Astonishing Iceman #5... The End?.... Reviews, Spoilers, Shade, oh my!

[NewMutant]

And in the end....

First page is Cleaner narrating to Iceman as it shows him "one hour ago" destroying Clyde the Ice Golem and Romeo.

Back to present... Cleaner reveals he discovered his Ice Castle by a plant he had within the Y-Men in the Cap of the Rails issue. Injured Romeo pops up to warn Iceman that Cleaner will kill him and then they battle..

Brief Cut Scene to Orchis Station The Bloom where we learner Cleaner himself has a nuclear bomb heart and if he fails they can use that as a failsafe.

Iceman insists he is well enough to bring himself together without Romeo and forces Romeo into an escape hatch/sub.

After the Cleaner is near defeated he grabs onto Iceman and reveals he is also a nuclear bomb. Iceman does not resist and says he almost died at the Gala and needs to face his fear re-form again on his own. And even if he doesn't... no mutant or inhuman will have to deal with the cleaner again.

BOMB.

The Bloom: Agent Pequod is monitoring Cleans heart rate which flattens. And the Orchis agents as we watch Iceman slowly melt/evaporate... "And Iceman? There's nothing to do but wait. Wait, and see where and if... he shows his face." (side note: this page is really well drawn)

Romeo talking out loud in the sub asking for Iceman to come back to him. And draws a heart on the window of the sub.

Memo to Statis on Iceman. (pretty much a series summary)

Orchis Digital Brief: Agent Pequod was demoted. List of cities all over the world with Iceman related sightings.

X Days Later - New York: Romeo is in his boxers at his or some dude his banging apartment and comments on the its being early for frost on the window. He turns and written in frost on the bathroom mirror is "See you Soon! <3 Bobby"

ICEMAN WILL RETURN!

End.
____________________

Thoughts coming shortly....

[Dante Milton]

This truly could have been an email. The series ends with Bobby being right back where he was after the HFG, what a waste of time.

[JB]

The "Iceman will return" and "see you soon" do seem to indicate a possible new Iceman series. Most of the other minis have an image of the cover of FotHoX #1 at the end.

[NewMutant]

While I enjoyed some of the beats of the series it ultimately lead to nowhere. Any action that happened in this book was not noted in an other book and the status quo is literally exactly the same as the start. My guess (and hope) is Iceman will reappear in Duggan's X-Men and he will have more of complete arc for this era. But the reality is you could skip this mini. I do wonder what went into the pitch of the mini. And why LV got digital treatment and this got printed (which I hope gets a TPB treatment).

But if you like Iceman... the book is a fun generic superhero title. I'm an old softy and will likely always support a solo Iceman series since he finally came out. And while we haven't had the run we had yet, I grateful for queer creators like Sina, LV, and Steve's work building Icemans solo story in the world of X. Hopefully all these strings will connect for a hell of an Iceman solo one day.

I suggest everyone check out Orlando's Midnighter run at DC. It is much much better than this.

The real star of this series is artist Vincenzo Carratu. I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.

[ChronoRogue]

Sorry, but this mini was terrible. It really cemented my dislike of Romeo and this relationship. There is no emotional weight behind any of their actions, Bobby does not seem like he is in love and Romeo high-key seems manipulative.

Also Orlando very clumsily explored how a queer open relationship might work. PAD did this much better with Rictor and Shatterstar a decade ago. :/

[Uncanny X-Man]

This was a very uneven mini. It started off fairly strongly and had a very good issue with the Madelyne Drake story... and then kind of fizzled out in the end.

It's a shame because I enjoyed Steve Orlando's other works in the past (his Wonder Woman and Midnighter were both great) but I really struggled to connect with his X-work. Only his recent Firestar story in Unlimited co-written with Steve Foxe, the Mutant Strike Force one-shot and really just a couple of issues of Marauders here and there I felt were up to snuff, with the rest not really my cup of tea. I do think he can be a great writer but I can't say I'll miss him on the X-books.

[Kingdom X]

This was a very uneven mini. It started off fairly strongly and had a very good issue with the Madelyne Drake story... and then kind of fizzled out in the end.

It's a shame because I enjoyed Steve Orlando's other works in the past (his Wonder Woman and Midnighter were both great) but I really struggled to connect with his X-work. Only his recent Firestar story in Unlimited co-written with Steve Foxe, the Mutant Strike Force one-shot and really just a couple of issues of Marauders here and there I felt were up to snuff, with the rest not really my cup of tea. I do think he can be a great writer but I can't say I'll miss him on the X-books.

Yeah I feel the same way. I feel like he swung too far with Marauders, but then dialed it back waaaay too much with this series.

[H-E-D]

If it weren’t for Uncanny Spider-Man and Children of the Vault, I’d say this was the strongest of the Fall of X era.

[Nicoclaws]

It's too bad that it doesn't look like Orlando tried too much with this. I honestly really liked the theory of Romeo creating Iceman out of grief.
BUT I like the message that Bobby has to rise up by himself. If it's a set up fot something I' m happy with it.

I really thought tbe mini would tie a bit more to the other books. With the use of the I ferno inspired sentinels in the first issue.

[Dante Milton]

I've enjoyed a lot of Orlando's other work, and his Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver mini will probably be great. But his X-Men books have been consistently disappointing and I wouldn't be mad if this was his last bit of work in the X-office.

In the unlikely event that there is a new incoming Iceman solo, Marvel needs to call Anthony Oliveira to write it.

[BobbysWorld]

My thoughts on this mini are best left at: Well this certainly was a mini that happened.

LOL. Not to be completely negative though, I do at least like the new status quo it leaves Bobby in. There is definitely potential in Bobby entering his Cryptid era, where he's essentially Swamp Thing if Swamp Thing were a chaotic mutant prankster intent on using his newfound unkillable irrepressible cryptid status to troll the **** out of mutantkind's enemies & also anyone else he thinks it would be funny to annoy. *Shrugs* I can work with that.

(I 100% believe that list of Bobby 'sightings' at the end was inspired by that meme a few months back where scientists discovered an iceberg in the North Atlantic that was shaped like a giant dildo and twitter ran with it and the "Iceman made that" jokes abounded, lol. I'm not mad about it if that was the inspiration - art imitates life imitates art and all that).

[Mutant X]

Bobby is back to the same status he was before this 5 issues.

What waste of a story.

[Micabe]

Bobby is back to the same status he was before this 5 issues.

What waste of a story.

And, what status might that be? Robert is all but immortal (he can be killed) and capable of single-handedly dispatching Thanos with impunity... If he's back to being characterized as that I don't see what the problem is.

[Icefanatic]

Wow. This was crap.

I speculated in a review of an earlier issue that the only reason I could fathom for this series's existence was to provide the adult All-New Iceman a more dignified exit after his demise at the Hellfire Gala. They went all the way there, hit all the emotional beats, and then at the last second chickened out leaving this series entirely pointless. The run was mediocre to outright bad, the only really good thing was the art.

The only way Marvel even generates sales for Iceman's series anymore are variant covers. They front-load a series with variants(issue #1 had 3 covers, issue #2 had three, issue #3 had two, and by the end of the series, when they stop them and the comic has to sell by it's own merits:

https://www.comicbookrevolution.com/...ales-rankings/

Astonishing Iceman #4, the first in this series without a variant, ranks way down at 127th. The previous issue, Astonishing Iceman #3, was down at 91st even WITH a variant.

I've read every solo Iceman outing the character has ever had, for four decades, and the last good solo Iceman issue was early on in Sina Grace's run. As bad as much of Grace's run was, that was the high-point for Iceman solo stories in several years.

The stories are bad, there is no point to them, and the sales are terrible. But rest assured, All-New Iceman will return...

I can't tell... is that a promise, or a threat?

[Dermie]

I really enjoyed this mini overall and I thought this issue was a strong finale. It was also a really nice showing for Romeo, who in the past was mostly a non-combatant....which is fine. Not every super-powered person is necessarily suited to fighting (either by personality or power set) and there are roles for people to be heroes without having to throw punches. That said, it was cool to see that Romeo clearly has been training in how to fight and how to weaponize his powers if needed.

I disagree with those who are suggesting there was no point to the mini since Bobby is back to being disembodied again at the end. He's not back to the same state he was in after the Hellfire Gala--at that point he was unable to reform himself without Romeo's assistance. After what he's gone through in this miniseries, gradually restoring his strength, he is now doing it on his own again. He's not fully formed yet--but he's partway there, and doing it under his own power. That's progress.

Leaving that detail aside, there is also what was accomplished along the way. We further explored and developed the Bobby/Romeo relationship. I realize that will not be a selling point for some people, since Romeo is unpopular with several people on the board--but still, that's not nothing. We also had Bobby dealing with his relationship with his mother. Bobby continued to save lives and undermine Orchis--resulting in another Orchis department head getting fired! So the series did rack up a few 'wins' along the way both for Bobby's personal life and for the war against Orchis.

Plus we just got to have 5 issues of fun Iceman action! Even if the series had no greater "impact" than that, I think it was worth it to get these adventures of Iceman either on his own or teaming up with guest stars like Spider-Man or Aaron Fischer. Hopefully we will get to see more Iceman solo action in 2024!