Your Dream pick Avengers Roster

[whitecrown]

Still think a good group for and Avengers team and also keeping it on the small side would be,

Captain America
Gambit
Iron Man
Jean Grey
Nightcrawler
Scarlet Witch

Gives you three true Avengers and three X-Men who would be new additions to the Avengers roster.They interaction and dynamic between Iron Man/Gambit,Nightcralwer/Scarlet Witch & even Cap/Jean would all be interesting to say the least.Cap and Jean both people in a way out of time,Gambit and Tony as you ladies men and snarky guys and Nightcrawler/Witch with religion and magic and seeing how thing mess.

I like this. Since we know Kurt and Wanda end up together in an alternate universe, I was always curious about how they would interact with each other in the 616 universe. And I've always wanted to see more of Cap and Jean together beyond Fantastic Four 286 where he praised her heroism and spirit. AvX would have been a very different event if Jean had been alive.

[Icefanatic]

I heard this was a planned lineup at one point in the 80s, with half the team being the "original" Avengers and the other half being the Champions.

Captain America
Iron Man
Thor
Hulk
Black Widow
Hercules
Iceman
Angel

Good choices, I would love to see that lineup!

I believe that was considered in the late 1970's at the time of the Champions disbanding. The resolution to the Champions series was planned for an issue of the Avengers(it was even stated in the final Champions issue in the letters page that the story of the Champions would be resolved in an upcoming issue of the Avengers). Apparently there was discussion about the possibility of using it as an opportunity for a lineup change for the Avengers. That was nixed altogether and the Champions instead disbanded in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #17-18 (April-May 1978).

Part of the problem may have been competing plans for Iceman. There was a planned mini-series for him in the late 70's that was changed to a planned ongoing, which was changed to a tryout issue in Marvel Spotlight, but that series was canned before it could be published so the story ended up in Bizarre Adventures (1981) #27 along with stories featuring Phoenix and Nightcrawler. It was a magazine format book and not even available to buy in a lot of places. Between that and the multiple stories focusing on multiple characters, it was imposable to use as a sales barometer for a possible Iceman ongoing.

Eventually Iceman was re-teamed with Beast and Angel as the New Defenders, where he finally got a solo miniseries. A miniseries that first introduced the cosmic abstract Oblivion to the Marvel Universe, a sibling to Infinity, Eternity and Death. A being so powerful it would destroy the universe if it were to enter it, and yet Iceman somehow bested it, which has helped fuel speculation about the true extent and nature of Iceman's powers for decades as well as possible connections between him and Oblivion.

Fans wanting to see more interactions between them have sadly been out of luck, not least of all because the only way a living being can enter the realm of Oblivion is to be erased from existence, as Iceman was during his first mini as a result of time-travel.

[whitecrown]

Good choices, I would love to see that lineup!

I believe that was considered in the late 1970's at the time of the Champions disbanding. The resolution to the Champions series was planned for an issue of the Avengers(it was even stated in the final Champions issue in the letters page that the story of the Champions would be resolved in an upcoming issue of the Avengers). Apparently there was discussion about the possibility of using it as an opportunity for a lineup change for the Avengers. That was nixed altogether and the Champions instead disbanded in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #17-18 (April-May 1978).

Part of the problem may have been competing plans for Iceman. There was a planned mini-series for him in the late 70's that was changed to a planned ongoing, which was changed to a tryout issue in Marvel Spotlight, but that series was canned before it could be published so the story ended up in Bizarre Adventures (1981) #27 along with stories featuring Phoenix and Nightcrawler. It was a magazine format book and not even available to buy in a lot of places. Between that and the multiple stories focusing on multiple characters, it was imposable to use as a sales barometer for a possible Iceman ongoing.

Eventually Iceman was re-teamed with Beast and Angel as the New Defenders, where he finally got a solo miniseries. A miniseries that first introduced the cosmic abstract Oblivion to the Marvel Universe, a sibling to Infinity, Eternity and Death. A being so powerful it would destroy the universe if it were to enter it, and yet Iceman somehow bested it, which has helped fuel speculation about the true extent and nature of Iceman's powers for decades as well as possible connections between him and Oblivion.

Fans wanting to see more interactions between them have sadly been out of luck, not least of all because the only way a living being can enter the realm of Oblivion is to be erased from existence, as Iceman was during his first mini as a result of time-travel.

I read about those plans here.
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chron...gers_211.shtml

Thanks for the additional information though. I always thought it was odd that the Champions disbanded in Spectacular Spider-Man after the final issue claimed the resolution would be in Avengers. I feel this lineup would have worked pretty well since Hercules and Black Widow were former Avengers and Angel and Iceman seemed like the most PR friendly out of the X-Men of the time. Angel's identity was revealed to the public and Iceman had non X-Men connections like Spider-Man and Human Torch. I'm actually kinda surprised to this day that neither character, particularly Bobby, were ever Avengers.

I remember hearing that Iceman being booked for a series is the reason why he couldn't pop up in The Dark Phoenix Saga alongside Beast and Angel. I didn't know that info about why he ended up in Bizarre Adventures though. I'll need to check out Iceman's solo miniseries one of these days because I never read it and it doesn't get talked about very often. It's a pity he didn't have a higher profile back in the late 70s and early 80s, despite all the teams he was on. It certainly didn't help that Iceman was clearly Chris Claremont's least favorite member of the O5 X-Men because he never used him for anything substantial.

[ngroove]

^^^This one’s nice.
Cap as leader, natch. Iron Man and Giant Man as the team powerhouses, and resident geniuses. Two power couples,
And Johnny Storm taking some time off from the FF.
Seeing Abner Jenkins, an engineer himself, trying to keep up w. Tony would be cool. Johnny, who’s used to working w. Reed might have a little fun at both Tony and Hank’s expense. Wasp trying to redesign Mockingbird’s costume is pretty much a given.

My reasoning, alongside some stablemate regulars to glue the title, Human Torch picked simply because he'll be fun, the rest of the FF had been Avengers one time or another, and it'd be pretty neat to see him finally included, on an all-members-over-the-years Avengers collage.

I chose Abner Jenkins and Melissa Gold, because it would be neat to see them further their redemption as heroes, and what better way than to be official Avengers?

[Photon Torme]

T’challa- turn of the century gear and abilities
Wasp
Beast
Wonderman
Hellcat
She Hulk- classic
Nova( Sam)
Polaris

[pageturner]

Secret Avengers

Black Widow
Winter Solider
Mockingbird
Shang Chi
Hulkling
Spider Woman (jessica)
Moonknight

Lacks power but fantastic stealth.

[Icefanatic]

I read about those plans here.
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chron...gers_211.shtml

Thanks for the additional information though. I always thought it was odd that the Champions disbanded in Spectacular Spider-Man after the final issue claimed the resolution would be in Avengers. I feel this lineup would have worked pretty well since Hercules and Black Widow were former Avengers and Angel and Iceman seemed like the most PR friendly out of the X-Men of the time. Angel's identity was revealed to the public and Iceman had non X-Men connections like Spider-Man and Human Torch. I'm actually kinda surprised to this day that neither character, particularly Bobby, were ever Avengers.

I remember hearing that Iceman being booked for a series is the reason why he couldn't pop up in The Dark Phoenix Saga alongside Beast and Angel. I didn't know that info about why he ended up in Bizarre Adventures though. I'll need to check out Iceman's solo miniseries one of these days because I never read it and it doesn't get talked about very often. It's a pity he didn't have a higher profile back in the late 70s and early 80s, despite all the teams he was on. It certainly didn't help that Iceman was clearly Chris Claremont's least favorite member of the O5 X-Men because he never used him for anything substantial.

From the link...

This is now relying on memories of over thirty years ago, but I seem to recall talk in the fanzines stating that Mantlo would take over as the new writer (which Mantlo himself thought was the case, in the letters page of #206), who was then replaced by Shooter. When the news of Shooter's return broke, there was much rejoicing; in hindsight we might have been better off with Mantlo. But here is where the memory could be a bit wobbly, as the line-up which was announced was to be Thor, Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, Hercules, Black Widow, Iceman and the Angel. I can't remember if this was tied in with Mantlo or Shooter, but it does seem to effectively be a merging of the Avengers and the Champions. This was also before the Banner gains control of the Hulk, so I don't know how that would have worked.

The Champions was bedeviled by problems from the start. The series was supposed to start with Giant-Size Champions #1, coming out right after Giant-Size X-Men #1. Instead it was delayed for months and then that issue was divided to create the first three issues of the Champions ongoing which shipped bimonthly. By the time the third issue shipped it was a year behind where it should have been. The series lost it's momentum and lacked direction. The changing creative teams didn't help. Chris Claremont even did a standalone issue. Bill Mantlo came on as writer halfway through the series and totally turned things around. The issues he did with John Byrne on art are as good as anything Marvel was putting out at the time. By then the writing was on the wall, it didn't matter how good the book had become, people had already made up their mind about it. Attempts to boost interest and sales by having the Champions guest star in other books failed to movie the needle and the book was cancelled.

Still, Marvel knew what Mantlo had accomplished and there was speculation of him taking over Avengers, possibly testing the waters by having him write a fill-in issue or two. Having him do that while also concluding the Champions story seemed a no-brainier but someone apparently balked at it. Mantlo was also writing Spectacular Spider-Man and he eventually took advantage of that to conclude the Champions story there. Apparently there was another push to get Mantlo in as writer on the Avengers before Jim Shooter ultimately got the position again.

There were on-again off-again plans for Iceman for decades at Marvel. Marvel concluded based on the letters they were getting that Iceman was the most popular of the X-Men at the time of the series cancellation(the start of the reprint era) so they announced in Marvelmania Magazine #5 (1970)that a new upcoming split book series(in line with Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense) would be featuring Doctor Strange and Iceman, each in solo adventures. The series was unnamed but speculation is it would have been a reboot of Strange Tales which had recently been cancelled. Strange Tales was a title Dr. Strange had previously shared with the Human Torch, so pairing him with Iceman in such a title isn't as random as it might first appear.

For whatever reason it never happened. The Dr. Strange story for the first issue was created and ultimately saw print in an annual a few years later, no idea if the Iceman story was ever completed. Marvel apparently decided to test the waters by having Iceman guest-star in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #92 and sales weren't what they were hoping for so they nixed it(that issue did help inspire the creation of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, so... worth it!). Iceman ended up in the Champions instead, and after that did a few guest appearances before appearing in the New Defenders.

What was going on behind the scenes at Marvel regarding Iceman around that time is... complicated. There was a fan theory regarding Iceman being an analogue to the Phoenix called the Dragon that originated around the time of the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga. This was based on Asian mythology connecting the fiery female Phoenix with the Dragon, depicted as a male water-based elemental... that combined with Iceman's surname Drake being an English word for Dragon, derived from the Norse word 'Draka', meaning Great Serpent or Dragon. There's never been any mention of what Claremont thought of that theory, but it's unlikely he was against it as his good friend and former editor Loisue Simonson and her husband Walt took that ball and ran with it the pages of X-Factor and Thor, beginning the connections between Iceman and Norse and Asian mythologies that would be added to by other writers over the years. J.M. DeMatteis was apparently supposed to do the same thing with connecting Iceman to a more cosmic aspect in the Iceman mini-series with Oblivion, but DeMatteis has said repeatedly over the years that he didn't do the story justice, though by his own admission "it was the biggest-selling thing I'd ever done". It was in or just outside the top-ten of all comics being sold at that time(and some people at CBR like to say Iceman comics have never sold well).

According to artist John Bryne, Claremont had planned on using all the original X-Men during the Phoenix Saga but was prevented from using Iceman by editorial because another writer had claimed him for something that never saw print. That was around the time that Jo Duffy was pitching an Iceman mini to Marvel which almost became an ongoing, which instead was okay-ed for a tryout issue in Marvel Spotlight and ultimately ended up in Bizarre Adventures. It's unlikely that anything Jo Duffy had planed would have conflicted with having Iceman do a guest appearance in X-Men and if anything they would have likely tried to use the guest turn to build interest for any potential series. I think it's far more likely that Marvel and Claremont were trying to decided what, if anything, to do with the 'Dragon theory' in relation to the Phoenix and decided to at least temporarily avoid the issue entirely by not using Iceman.

Iceman was considered for Avengers membership in and out of the comics several times over the years. He's actually refused to join twice that I know of, first after Moondragon tried to mindcontrol him into potentially becoming an Avenger, the second was after an invite from Black Widow in the wake of Onslaught decimating the team. I have a had time believing he has never been a member, too.

I agree it's a shame Claremont didn't do more with Iceman. As for not liking him(some on the X-Boards here like to say he 'hated' him), I don't think that's a fair take. Claremont said in an interview years ago that he found him 'boring'. That he was too much an 'everyman'. 'Average middle-class guy... family... background' and he found writing such characters boring.

[whitecrown]

The Champions was bedeviled by problems from the start. The series was supposed to start with Giant-Size Champions #1, coming out right after Giant-Size X-Men #1. Instead it was delayed for months and then that issue was divided to create the first three issues of the Champions ongoing which shipped bimonthly. By the time the third issue shipped it was a year behind where it should have been. The series lost it's momentum and lacked direction. The changing creative teams didn't help. Chris Claremont even did a standalone issue. Bill Mantlo came on as writer halfway through the series and totally turned things around. The issues he did with John Byrne on art are as good as anything Marvel was putting out at the time. By then the writing was on the wall, it didn't matter how good the book had become, people had already made up their mind about it. Attempts to boost interest and sales by having the Champions guest star in other books failed to movie the needle and the book was cancelled.

Still, Marvel knew what Mantlo had accomplished and there was speculation of him taking over Avengers, possibly testing the waters by having him write a fill-in issue or two. Having him do that while also concluding the Champions story seemed a no-brainier but someone apparently balked at it. Mantlo was also writing Spectacular Spider-Man and he eventually took advantage of that to conclude the Champions story there. Apparently there was another push to get Mantlo in as writer on the Avengers before Jim Shooter ultimately got the position again.

There were on-again off-again plans for Iceman for decades at Marvel. Marvel concluded based on the letters they were getting that Iceman was the most popular of the X-Men at the time of the series cancellation(the start of the reprint era) so they announced in Marvelmania Magazine #5 (1970)that a new upcoming split book series(in line with Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense) would be featuring Doctor Strange and Iceman, each in solo adventures. The series was unnamed but speculation is it would have been a reboot of Strange Tales which had recently been cancelled. Strange Tales was a title Dr. Strange had previously shared with the Human Torch, so pairing him with Iceman in such a title isn't as random as it might first appear.

For whatever reason it never happened. The Dr. Strange story for the first issue was created and ultimately saw print in an annual a few years later, no idea if the Iceman story was ever completed. Marvel apparently decided to test the waters by having Iceman guest-star in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #92 and sales weren't what they were hoping for so they nixed it(that issue did help inspire the creation of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, so... worth it!). Iceman ended up in the Champions instead, and after that did a few guest appearances before appearing in the New Defenders.

What was going on behind the scenes at Marvel regarding Iceman around that time is... complicated. There was a fan theory regarding Iceman being an analogue to the Phoenix called the Dragon that originated around the time of the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga. This was based on Asian mythology connecting the fiery female Phoenix with the Dragon, depicted as a male water-based elemental... that combined with Iceman's surname Drake being an English word for Dragon, derived from the Norse word 'Draka', meaning Great Serpent or Dragon. There's never been any mention of what Claremont thought of that theory, but it's unlikely he was against it as his good friend and former editor Loisue Simonson and her husband Walt took that ball and ran with it the pages of X-Factor and Thor, beginning the connections between Iceman and Norse and Asian mythologies that would be added to by other writers over the years. J.M. DeMatteis was apparently supposed to do the same thing with connecting Iceman to a more cosmic aspect in the Iceman mini-series with Oblivion, but DeMatteis has said repeatedly over the years that he didn't do the story justice, though by his own admission "it was the biggest-selling thing I'd ever done". It was in or just outside the top-ten of all comics being sold at that time(and some people at CBR like to say Iceman comics have never sold well).

According to artist John Bryne, Claremont had planned on using all the original X-Men during the Phoenix Saga but was prevented from using Iceman by editorial because another writer had claimed him for something that never saw print. That was around the time that Jo Duffy was pitching an Iceman mini to Marvel which almost became an ongoing, which instead was okay-ed for a tryout issue in Marvel Spotlight and ultimately ended up in Bizarre Adventures. It's unlikely that anything Jo Duffy had planed would have conflicted with having Iceman do a guest appearance in X-Men and if anything they would have likely tried to use the guest turn to build interest for any potential series. I think it's far more likely that Marvel and Claremont were trying to decided what, if anything, to do with the 'Dragon theory' in relation to the Phoenix and decided to at least temporarily avoid the issue entirely by not using Iceman.

Iceman was considered for Avengers membership in and out of the comics several times over the years. He's actually refused to join twice that I know of, first after Moondragon tried to mindcontrol him into potentially becoming an Avenger, the second was after an invite from Black Widow in the wake of Onslaught decimating the team. I have a had time believing he has never been a member, too.

I didn't know most of that information such as the intended origin for the Champions and how they were essentially set up to fail from the start. Thank you for all of this! It seems that if Mantlo would have taken over the Avengers instead of Jim Shooter's return, we might have gotten the Champions as part of the Avengers.

I'm not surprised Bobby was the most popular of the O5 back then since he had the most unique powers and made a good foil to the Human Torch, another popular character. I remember he and Angel used to guest-star the most in the early 60s (Angel guest-starred in Iron Man) so it seems like these were the two most liked characters. It was a mistake not creating a book for Iceman, the Torch, and Spider-Man imo. I would have thrown in Marvel Girl as well because there was a lot of emphasis about how she was joining Metro College, where Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot studied, but there was never any crossover between the two characters in all that time. That makes me think that if they could have used Johnny for the Amazing Friends cartoon, Jean would have been a good replacement for Firestar as the female character since like Firestar, she was a redhead, a mutant and former X-Man alongside Bobby, wore a funky mask, and known for "fire powers" of sorts.

I actually had no idea about this fan theory about Bobby as the Dragon as a foil to the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix storyline. I read X-Factor a lot and all of this clearly went over my head so I must re-read those X-Factor issues with Thor and Loki. I guess after I read the Iceman miniseries, I'll probably have better context for Bobby's cosmic evolution but it makes his inclusion in the X-Men Forever miniseries even more notable since that's when he was revealed as an omega-level mutant and one of the most powerful mutants to ever walk the earth. And was the Iceman miniseries really one of the best-selling comics that DeMatteis had ever done? I had no idea about that either or how lucrative and popular this character has been because he's always been treated as a solo character.

I never understood how Bobby couldn't be included in the main Dark Phoenix Saga storyline but he could be included in the funeral epilogue. I suppose they couldn't account for him appearing in multiple issues in TDPS while he was meant to be in another book, whereas a single funeral issue wouldn't be an issue to handle, but it always rubbed me the wrong way that Bobby was excluded from major Jean stories like this and Endsong when all the rest of the O5 were always included.

I know the Moondragon story is when he would originally have joined the Avengers alongside the Champions before Jim Shooter nixed that idea. I wasn't aware of the Onslaught scenario.

To be fair, if Claremont found Iceman boring and not interesting enough to use, that basically suggests he didn't like him. Probably didn't hate him, but he definitely was not a character Claremont cared for. While he didn't have a high opinion of Warren either it seemed, he definitely utilized Warren more. Brought Warren back in the Dark Phoenix Saga, kept him as the 05 member of the team after Jean died and Scott left, used him to introduce the Morlocks, planned a story about Warren's trauma from being captured by the Morlocks (I don't think he ever ended up following through with that though but it's still pretty telling that he must have cared for the character enough to write a story like that), tied in a rivalry between Warren and Logan over Jean and Apocalypse having been responsible for both their transformations (Wolverine's original origin under Claremont was meant to reveal that Apocalypse was responsible for the adamantium skeleton and claws), and even brought Warren in as a replacement for Kitty during the X-Men Revolution period. Claremont broke up Warren and Betsy and apparently when asked why he did this by a fan, he responded that Warren wasn't worthy of Betsy. Still, that's a lot more material for Warren that Claremont did than he ever did for Bobby which is a real shame considering that Dragon fantheory.

[Icefanatic]

I didn't know most of that information such as the intended origin for the Champions and how they were essentially set up to fail from the start. Thank you for all of this! It seems that if Mantlo would have taken over the Avengers instead of Jim Shooter's return, we might have gotten the Champions as part of the Avengers.

I'm not surprised Bobby was the most popular of the O5 back then since he had the most unique powers and made a good foil to the Human Torch, another popular character. I remember he and Angel used to guest-star the most in the early 60s (Angel guest-starred in Iron Man) so it seems like these were the two most liked characters. It was a mistake not creating a book for Iceman, the Torch, and Spider-Man imo. I would have thrown in Marvel Girl as well because there was a lot of emphasis about how she was joining Metro College, where Johnny Storm and Wyatt Wingfoot studied, but there was never any crossover between the two characters in all that time. That makes me think that if they could have used Johnny for the Amazing Friends cartoon, Jean would have been a good replacement for Firestar as the female character since like Firestar, she was a redhead, a mutant and former X-Man alongside Bobby, wore a funky mask, and known for "fire powers" of sorts.

I actually had no idea about this fan theory about Bobby as the Dragon as a foil to the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix storyline. I read X-Factor a lot and all of this clearly went over my head so I must re-read those X-Factor issues with Thor and Loki. I guess after I read the Iceman miniseries, I'll probably have better context for Bobby's cosmic evolution but it makes his inclusion in the X-Men Forever miniseries even more notable since that's when he was revealed as an omega-level mutant and one of the most powerful mutants to ever walk the earth. And was the Iceman miniseries really one of the best-selling comics that DeMatteis had ever done? I had no idea about that either or how lucrative and popular this character has been because he's always been treated as a solo character.

I never understood how Bobby couldn't be included in the main Dark Phoenix Saga storyline but he could be included in the funeral epilogue. I suppose they couldn't account for him appearing in multiple issues in TDPS while he was meant to be in another book, whereas a single funeral issue wouldn't be an issue to handle, but it always rubbed me the wrong way that Bobby was excluded from major Jean stories like this and Endsong when all the rest of the O5 were always included.

I know the Moondragon story is when he would originally have joined the Avengers alongside the Champions before Jim Shooter nixed that idea. I wasn't aware of the Onslaught scenario.

To be fair, if Claremont found Iceman boring and not interesting enough to use, that basically suggests he didn't like him. Probably didn't hate him, but he definitely was not a character Claremont cared for. While he didn't have a high opinion of Warren either it seemed, he definitely utilized Warren more. Brought Warren back in the Dark Phoenix Saga, kept him as the 05 member of the team after Jean died and Scott left, used him to introduce the Morlocks, planned a story about Warren's trauma from being captured by the Morlocks (I don't think he ever ended up following through with that though but it's still pretty telling that he must have cared for the character enough to write a story like that), tied in a rivalry between Warren and Logan over Jean and Apocalypse having been responsible for both their transformations (Wolverine's original origin under Claremont was meant to reveal that Apocalypse was responsible for the adamantium skeleton and claws), and even brought Warren in as a replacement for Kitty during the X-Men Revolution period. Claremont broke up Warren and Betsy and apparently when asked why he did this by a fan, he responded that Warren wasn't worthy of Betsy. Still, that's a lot more material for Warren that Claremont did than he ever did for Bobby which is a real shame considering that Dragon fantheory.

I found out about the Dragon fan-theory back in the 90's. I was getting more hardcore in my Iceman fandom and was searching the internet for everything I could about the character on a daily basis. I knew the Tatsu(Dragon) clan had factored into two issues of X-Factor and two issues of Uncanny X-Men, all with Iceman, and was looking to see if there were more appearances of the Tatsu Clan and if Iceman was involved. I ended up on a website where a guy was posting about what a weird coincidence it was that Iceman, whose surname meant Dragon, had ended up in a relationship with a girl(Opal Tanaka) whose Clan name Tatsu also meant Dragon, and this other guy was like 'coincidence? Let me tell you something'. I started digging into it as much as I could but finding out anything was hard as most people seemed to have never heard of it and of those that had most didn't know much more than I did. It seems to be a factor in a lot of Iceman stories over the years in ways large and small. It's likely the reason Iceman had wings in the "Frozen" arc in Astonishing X-Men and briefly had a dragon-headed-form when he 'ate' Thor. Also the reason he hid his ex-girlfriends away in an ice-cave, Dragons in mythology routinely hide treasure and things precious to them in caves. We even had an alternate-reality Iceman who was a god called Draka... https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Draka_(Earth-20329)

Finding sales data about Iceman FIRST mini from 1984 is hard, but here's this from over at Comichron.

www.comichron.com/faq/directmarketsalesdata.html

Q: When did comic-book distributors first start releasing sales charts?

A: Capital City Distribution began releasing rankings in its "Internal Correspondence" newsletter in the early 1980s. Capital was also the first to introduce the "order index number," reporting what the sales of all titles were relative to a single benchmark title, usually one of the best-sellers. Diamond Comic Distributors, which began running rankings in the late 1980s, later adopted the order index procedure, which it continues to use today in its reports.

The first Capital City chart with order index numbers, from October 1984...

Iceman #2 from 1984 ranks 13th in overall sales for the month! It's selling 37.4% of what the top selling original Secret Wars #10 did(by comparison Uncanny X-Men #190 ranked 2nd at 80.9%)! And that's with Iceman retailing at $.75 in a market where most books were still $.60.

To give that a bit more context...

Each year, Marvel(and all other publishers) were required to publish the sales data of each ongoing series, and it was usually included in the letters page every 12 months or so. This would include things like the Print Run and the Paid Circulation. Using an average for Uncanny X-Men for the years 1983-1985 and given the sales trend, Uncanny X-Men was probably selling around 350,000 copies a month when Iceman #2 came out, which would put Secret Wars #10 at around 433,000 copies, and with Iceman #2 at 37.4% of that, we are looking at estimated sales for Iceman #2 at around 162,000 copies. While there is no known data for the first issue publicly available, number #1 usually sell at much higher numbers than #2s which would likely put Iceman #1 at or near the top five for it's month.

Natasha tried to rebuild the Avengers in the wake of Onslaught in Avengers Annual 1999. It was just one panel , but Bobby, Hank and Warren were the first people she reached out to to join. Hank as a former Avenger and Bobby and Warren because they were her former teammates in the Champions. They all declined feeling the X-Men needed them more.

I'm going to shoot you a PM so we don't derail this thread.

[whitecrown]

I found out about the Dragon fan-theory back in the 90's. I was getting more hardcore in my Iceman fandom and was searching the internet for everything I could about the character on a daily basis. I knew the Tatsu(Dragon) clan had factored into two issues of X-Factor and two issues of Uncanny X-Men, all with Iceman, and was looking to see if there were more appearances of the Tatsu Clan and if Iceman was involved. I ended up on a website where a guy was posting about what a weird coincidence it was that Iceman, whose surname meant Dragon, had ended up in a relationship with a girl(Opal Tanaka) whose Clan name Tatsu also meant Dragon, and this other guy was like 'coincidence? Let me tell you something'. I started digging into it as much as I could but finding out anything was hard as most people seemed to have never heard of it and of those that had most didn't know much more than I did. It seems to be a factor in a lot of Iceman stories over the years in ways large and small. It's likely the reason Iceman had wings in the "Frozen" arc in Astonishing X-Men and briefly had a dragon-headed-form when he 'ate' Thor. Also the reason he hid his ex-girlfriends away in an ice-cave, Dragons in mythology routinely hide treasure and things precious to them in caves. We even had an alternate-reality Iceman who was a god called Draka... https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Draka_(Earth-20329)

Finding sales data about Iceman FIRST mini from 1984 is hard, but here's this from over at Comichron.



Iceman #2 from 1984 ranks 13th in overall sales for the month! It's selling 37.4% of what the top selling original Secret Wars #10 did(by comparison Uncanny X-Men #190 ranked 2nd at 80.9%)! And that's with Iceman retailing at $.75 in a market where most books were still $.60.

To give that a bit more context...

Each year, Marvel(and all other publishers) were required to publish the sales data of each ongoing series, and it was usually included in the letters page every 12 months or so. This would include things like the Print Run and the Paid Circulation. Using an average for Uncanny X-Men for the years 1983-1985 and given the sales trend, Uncanny X-Men was probably selling around 350,000 copies a month when Iceman #2 came out, which would put Secret Wars #10 at around 433,000 copies, and with Iceman #2 at 37.4% of that, we are looking at estimated sales for Iceman #2 at around 162,000 copies. While there is no known data for the first issue publicly available, number #1 usually sell at much higher numbers than #2s which would likely put Iceman #1 at or near the top five for it's month.

Natasha tried to rebuild the Avengers in the wake of Onslaught in Avengers Annual 1999. It was just one panel , but Bobby, Hank and Warren were the first people she reached out to to join. Hank as a former Avenger and Bobby and Warren because they were her former teammates in the Champions. They all declined feeling the X-Men needed them more.

I'm going to shoot you a PM so we don't derail this thread.

Thank you for all that! Looking forward to your PM but feel free to post it in the Iceman thread as well since I'm sure other Bobby fans will love to read all this.

[Photon Torme]

Cap
Falcon
Hercules
Antman( Scott)
Tigra
Shadowcat
Havok
Firestar
Blue Shield
Agatha Harkness- formindable Magic user but fragile and prone to exaustion.

[Riv86672]

^^^what a neat line up!

[Steroid]

Blue Marvel
Spectrum
Nova
Moondragon
Quasar
Captain Marvel
Manifold
Thor

[Photon Torme]

^^^what a neat line up!

Thanks! I appreciate that.

[Riv86672]

Thanks! I appreciate that.

There's an Agatha Harkness/Blue Shield joke in there just waiting to get some supervillain’s butt KICKED if he makes it, too!