Iceman #5 sees Bobby Drake, aka Iceman of the X-Men go head-to-head with the unstoppable Juggernaut, a super villain imbued with mystic power that makes him unbelievably strong and impossible invulnerable when he’s charging forward. But would you believe that’s only the second hardest thing Bobby has to do in this issue? The fun-loving, wise-cracking Bobby is also forced to get serious for a moment and finally come out of the closet to his parents.
“Telling your parents something difficult is universal. And so we just felt that’s something that someone like Bobby Drake would totally want to avoid, but have to face. And we knew that it would come after or around a brutal fight with Juggernaut, because there’s no better metaphor for the unstoppable nature of things than the goddamn Juggernaut,” Iceman writer Sina Grace told us in a phone interview. “Talking to your parents is one of the most emotionally exhausting experiences for a lot of young gay men, myself included. I just wanted him to really show off as a hero right as Bobby Drake, human being, is at his lowest point. That’s where the best Marvel stories come from, is when a hero is basically stripped of everything, and still somehow has the spirit to save the day.”
The end of Issue #4 saw Bobby at a low point after a confrontation with Daken that left him emotionally raw, so when his nagging parents showed up unannounced at the X-Mansion, he just let it out. Readers who have been following Iceman’s adventures for the past few years already know that a younger, time-traveling version of Bobby was outed by the mind-reading Jean Grey, and then he confronted his older self about it, sending present-day Bobby on a journey of self-discovery. The character has dated several women over his decades-long history and was assumed to be straight by his teammates and readers alike, so this new Iceman series (by Grace and artists Alessandro Vitti and Edgar Salazar) follows Bobby when he’s not being an X-Man and digs into his personal life, showing how he was gay all along and, more importantly, why he decided to hide it (in addition to a fair amount of superheroics, natch).
Grace used both his own personal experiences and the experiences of friends to tell Bobby’s coming out story. And as the issue demonstrates, those experiences were not always pleasant ones.
“My rule with writing all the personal stuff in Iceman is that it has to come from somewhere real. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to stand up against any criticism. Whether it’s my story or not is different per issue and per example,” Grace said. “With Bobby and his parents, it’s a blend of my story, a friend from high school’s story when she came out to her parents as a lesbian, and an ex-boyfriend’s story about him coming out to his parents. I just wanted to make sure people understand, this is what parents say to their kids, and it’s not always fair, and it’s not always nice. And that’s what makes us really amazing heroes, and that’s what makes us really strong as a community, because we have to just absorb so much pain from our loved ones, and still love them back.”
Some readers have cited Bobby’s past romances with women as the reason his coming out story doesn’t work, but Grace explains that it’s not uncommon for people to hide who they truly are, to the point where they have full relationships with people they’re not attracted to.
“Real people do that. I have at least half a dozen real human being examples where they compartmentalize a part of their personality and they’re able to look at their sexuality in a way where they can kind of grin and bear it. One of my mother’s friends, who was in a 20-plus year marriage and had a kid, came out as gay. But he kept it to himself because he comes from a very conservative culture. Besides that, it’s been there in the subtext throughout a lot of Bobby Drake’s modern history, and there are people who do this. That’s the whole point, and that’s the whole value of this series. People do this to themselves to hide a part of their personality in plain sight,” he said.
During the fight with Juggernaut, Iceman escapes his grasp by turning into water vapor. While it’s a neat trick (one that harkens back to Mike Carey’s X-Men run), it’s the least of what Bobby can do. Or at least should be able to do. Fans have often voiced frustration that Iceman never reaches his full potential as an Omega-level mutant, and Grace uses this story to explore the reason behind that.
“I wanted to give readers a little insight into why Bobby’s not tapping into his Omega-level powers. Bobby’s state of mind speaks so much to his powers. There have been arcs where he can’t get out of his ice form, there have been arcs where he can’t control his ice form. And it always comes back to where he is with his head,” Grace explained. “So, now that he’s taken care of what is maybe the most important thing in his journey as a gay man -- he’s out to everyone, he’s being accepted, he has an example of himself being accepted to greater degrees with his time-displaced self -- he is going to start taking advantage of who he is as an Omega-level mutant.”
While the coming out narrative is one often seen in queer stories, Grace felt it was still a valuable one to tell with Iceman.
“I think it’s still important to have this kind of story in existence because the issues surrounding acceptance and love and tolerance are still present. We live in a post-Glee world, where you can be a high school student and you can sing Beyonce and you can get internet famous before you’re 18. That narrative exists and is wonderful, but there are still people who struggle so much with their identity. I dated a guy who didn’t come out until he was 32. It’s a real thing, and there’s value to that story. And that’s what I was always drawn to with Bobby Drake. When the notion came up that I could be writing this comic book, I started looking at the character, and I was like, oh, he’s hiding in plain sight. I’ve done that, not necessarily with my sexuality, but with parts of my personality that I didn’t think people would like. I would keep it down and read the room. I’d distract with humor. I related to that so much that that’s why I just felt like this needed to be a part of the story. And it was a good way for me to also, as an X-Men fan, reconcile this tension with Bobby and his powers. When he had the Apocalypse scene and him in Marjorie Liu’s run, he became this towering monolith of a monster. There are all these allusions in Brian Bendis’s run about how powerful he has the capacity to become. And also how evil he could become. And I wanted to use all of this and turn it into a story about a hero choosing to be a hero, choosing to live his life and do the right thing,” Grace said.
Now that he’s finally come out to his parents, Iceman’s next adventure will see a reunion with some familiar faces.
“Iceman definitely takes the geographic solution, which is, if you change your location, maybe the problems go away. And you see him in the next issue reuniting with a team he used to be a part of called the Champions. And it turned into such a touching story because Marvel gave me the hint-hint that Black Widow was going to die, and this sounds so terrible, but as a writer, I was like, yes! Perfect! What a [dramatic] thing to give to a character who’s already dealing with so much. What better way to put things in perspective than the death of a teammate? There’s just so much that he has to explore in those two issues in Los Angeles, and it’s really great, and you really get to see who he was versus who he is now.”
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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