Astonishing X-Men #62-65 – “Frozen”
If you haven’t listened to this week’s special bonus podcast, one post down, then do. I’m not in it, but it’s great.
There’s one more issue to come out in this series, but that’s the epilogue and wrap-up. We’ve reached the end of “Frozen” itself (which is going to be the bulk of vol 12, if you’re getting the collections), and thus Marjorie Liu’s last full storyline.
It’s a simple enough idea. In the previous arc – the “X-Termination” crossover – Iceman picked up a bit of Apocalypse’s power, and so he’s both powered up and going mad. The result is that the world plunges into a new ice age, while duplicate Icemans run around making contact with his ex-girlfriends. The story can’t quite make up its mind whether the Apocalypse seed is meant to be a big reveal. It’s pretty much signalled up front in the recap page of part 1, but the actual story seems to start off trying to suggest some uncertainty about what’s going on. It doesn’t really matter, though, since the seed is just a macguffin anyway. The more important point is that the duplicate Icemen apparently represent the other parts of Iceman’s personality which have lost control of him, but are still wandering around trying to protect people he cares about – in other words, all his ex-girlfriends, up to and including Mystique. Presumably they just didn’t have the phone number of Zelda from the Silver Age. Mystique both tries to steer the X-Men in the direction of sorting Iceman out, but also has a brief stab at stealing the power for herself, which doesn’t work out well. Naturally, in the end they get the Apocalypse power out of him and everything’s basically fine.
Which… yeah, it’s kind of hard to summarise this story in a way that makes it sound particularly satisfying. There’s a lot to like about this story, but there’s something about it that doesn’t quite click.
The strongest point by far is the art by Gabriel Hernandez Walta. Hardly a conventional superhero artist, Walta used to look a bit blocky and rough around the edges when he turned up on anthology titles. Now he seems to have found a happy compromise which preserves a lot of what made his work interesting, but also brings in the scale and drama. I’ve always seen him as a character artist first and foremost, and certainly there’s something about his figures here that makes them seem just a little more real than usual. But when he’s called upon to draw giant ice structures and ice giants over a snowbound New York, the results are remarkably impressive. It’s Walta’s art that’s going to stick in my mind most of all from this story, and hopefully we’ll see more of him.
It’s also a story that understands that superhero comics tend to work best as melodramatic metaphor. So we have here Iceman working through his psychological issues on a grand scale. It’s plainly intended to be a story where the big epic threat turns out to really be all about one character’s insecurities. In theory, this is all very solid. Plus, it’s been a good long time since anyone really tried to do a story about Iceman. He’s a character who’s drifted over the years from being the rookie of the team to a veteran whose function is little more than to hang around in the background reminding us that we’re reading an X-Men comic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for the series; there’s a lot to be said for having characters whose main function is to be the familiar landmarks around whom others orbit, because even if they’re not doing much themselves, they’re still bringing something to the team dynamic. It’s basically the role that Wolverine performs in the X-Men, or Captain America in the Avengers. Even so, a character like this needs some attention from time to time (especially if they don’t have their own series), so we’re way overdue for an Iceman arc.
So why doesn’t it quite work? Partly, I think, because Liu isn’t really all that interested in the mechanics of the surface plot, except to the extent that they illustrate the psychological stuff she’s really interested in. So the ending feels a bit arbitrary, when Iceman gets beaten because he’s finished now. Mystique is pressed into service as the de facto antagonist for the final issue, which feels a little out of the blue, and also suffers from the fact that the character is being wildly overused right now – so you know this can’t be heading towards any series change in her status quo.
Moreover, a lot of the psychological stuff is similarly heavy handed. Part 4 seems to want to tell us that the crux of everything is Iceman’s relationship with his father. This leads to on-the-nose dialogue like “Why do you hate your father?” and characters imploring Iceman to have a good cry, which is evidently meant to be the emotional core of the whole thing. And this just seems forced. It doesn’t help that Iceman’s father has barely appeared in the story until now – he gets a few pages, but Liu is mainly playing off ideas dating from the Scott Lobdell run which this story tells rather than shows. But there’s also the fact that Liu is imposing Grand Angst on a character whose appeal, and whose value to the cast dynamic, lies largely in the fact that he stands out from his compatriots by not being particularly angsty. Surely that’s the value of Iceman in an X-Men story; he is, if not angst-free, at least angst-lite. Liu’s trying to bring depth to an often thin character, and I get that, but this strikes me as the wrong kind of depth, for the same reasons that Mopey Religious Nightcrawler was a mistake.
I can’t help but suspect that none of the other X-Men writers have the faintest intention of going near the traumas of this story, which is a further problem from the perspective of this story, but probably wise in the greater scheme of things. It’s not a direction for the character that seems like it would have been productive, and buried at the end of a cancelled series, it’ll probably go down in history as an odd curio – hey, remember that time Iceman had an enormous mope and nearly wiped out the human race? I’d like to be more positive about it, since there are some good ideas (the Icemen trying to squirrel his ex-girlfriends to safety in a completely futile gesture is a lovely concept) and gorgeous art, but I just can’t imagine wanting to see more of this rather maudlin take on the character.
I have to add, its also completely at odds with Bobby in Wolverine And The X-Men (making giant Power Ranger Zords out of ice and being promised sex), and All New X-Men, where his apparantly still going relationship with Kitty is met with revulsion by younger Bobby, but, whatever.
I do agree, that Walta is turning into a real talent. I liked his blocky rough style, but his current stuff is excellent.
I’m a pretty big Iceman fan for his few but exceptional story lines and the role he plays as the fun-loving, drama-free everyman in most books. The best depth given to his character is usually something like, “yeah, sometimes his life really sucks and yeah, sometimes he falls short… but he pulls it together and does his best, if not for himself but for his friends and for the world.” That’s what makes him a character you can relate to, I think.
This storyline felt a bit like character assassination to me. Sort of like the occasional Polaris or Gambit story lines that truly slaughter the characters then jettison them off until someone needs them again. I mean, when a writer like Li fudges continuity to make someone like Opal Tanaka look like a sympathetic character and someone like Iceman look like a pathetic jerk, well… you know her priorities are a bit off. The idea that Bobby’s personality is, essentially, a mask and fake and at his core he’s an emotional train wreck who secretly wants to see the world burn is… pretty shitty.
But hey, Walta’s art really was pretty enjoyable if not your standard fare. Here’s hoping this storyline is ignored largely in favor of the work Aaron and Bendis are doing with Iceman.
I used to be a huge Iceman fan, before I actually got into comics. But then when I did I found it really hard to find particularly good or strong stories where he was the focus and kind of lost interest.
What Paul says about being a background constant, that everybody knows and is instantly recogniseable might actually be the best approach to Iceman, since nobody really has much to say about him.
Back when the AoA originally came out, Iceman suddenly had great potential. Freeze dried villains, absorbing the mass of others and then taking it back out of himself, seeing in thermal imaging even. Things looked there was potential to take Bobby to a new level. Sabretooth said he had more power in his pinkie than the rest of the team. -I waited hopefully for years for any of those moments to be capitalized on and give Bobby’s fans something worth cheering about. -You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to write about a character that was a bit more laid back.
I think that’s the problem, though: people confusing an escalation in power (aka “power creep”) with depth of character or interesting motivations.
The things that make Bobby likable as a character – to the point where he had his own bally cartoon once, kind of, separate from the X-Men, where he makes *Spider-Man* the straight man! – are also the sorts of things that make him harder to shine up in the modern day. His origin puts him pretty much square into Archie comics territory, and he’s a bit too even-tempered in comparison with the other X-Men. I mean, Shawn Ashmore pitches him as an even straighter arrow than Cyclops!
Maybe he needs a break from the X-Men, to grow past being overshadowed by frickin’ Broo and Glob Herman. You can’t do Oblivion every issue, no, but you could do something. Put him alone in the Sahara at midday, broken arm in a sling. Something.
//\Oo/\\
I suppose what we’re really saying here is that Iceman is another character who really can’t be a leading man. I mean, if his whole character is based on him being the drama-free member of a team, can he really anchor a dramatic story?
Also, didn’t we pretty much just do the same story with Archangel over in X-Force?
Sigh. I want to like Liu’s work and respect her ambition but it falls flat for me. So Rememder did a very successful story arch in Uncanny X-Force of Angel being overtaken by the Archangel side of his persona and ultimately becoming Apocalypse. AvsX of course concluded with Cyclops dealing with daddy issues (and baggage from his late wife) and general lack of a life outside his work. So the heavy handed psychological issues she seems bent on exploring have already been recently explored with two other original x-men in the last year. So doing a story line like this with iceman just seems totally unnecessary. Perhaps it’d have impact if those other stories hasn’t just been told.
This arc was a very drawn-out, over-the-top take on the usual “Iceman: The Crying Clown” stories, with an extra reminder of Bobby’s self-imposed allergy to responsibility. I liked the horror vibe, I liked the art, but the ending fell absolutely flat for me. Bobby killed people worldwide under the Death Seed influence, we get the implication that he’s still got some of that influence lingering even once it’s removed, the issues closes with him saying how much he liked being a monster — how he was better as a monster, and no one’s benching the guy. No one’s saying “Here’s Doc Samson’s phone number. If you can’t talk to your friends, talk to him.” He’s just popping the mask back on and calling it a day, and everyone seems willing to go along with that. It doesn’t work, because it really does leave Bobby looking like the irresponsible loser he keeps pretending he is, and his supposed friends looking like utter creeps. This was an ambitious plot and maybe we’ll get some more satisfying closure in the last few issues, but Liu just went too big for the reset button to work on this one.
There have been parts of Liu’s run that I have very much enjoyed, but she does seem to like leaving her characters to wallow in their flaws. If I hadn’t come into this run with a strong attachment to several of the cast, I’d be wondering why we’re supposed to find these people likable, let alone heroic, and this is another example of the same.
I also wasn’t terribly pleased with all of the guest stars in this arc. Kitty and the X-Exes I’ll take as necessary to the story, but not the others. You’ve got an event that’s threatening the whole world, and two of the primary cast are missing to make room for Mystique, Thor, and a couple of Avengers cameos, all of whom are getting plenty of page-time elsewhere. Not a fan.
I’ve really enjoyed Liu’s run (for the most part – that opening story did go on for far too long), and this has been my favourite arc (that said, I still haven’t read #65, so I may change my mind).
I know I’m in a minority, but my love for the tone of the book (I feel it’s had a lovely melancholy to it) kind of overrieds any issues I might have had with the plot.
I really hope Marvel give her another book after this (same for Kathryn Immonen). I’m losing so many of my favourite books soon.
It’s an interesting point that Angel and Cyclops have recently had their “consumed by evil force/do horrible things” stories done and for Iceman to go through the same experience is a bit redundant. Maybe it would have been more original if Liu gave it a different spin, like, oh I dunno… Iceman comes out of it on a positive note? Aside from being the funny every man, Bobby’s defining characteristics have often been that he’s one of the most normal members of the team who has good relationships with people, is likable, emotional, and trusting (maybe too trusting as in with Mystique).
This arc describes most of that as either a facade or simply false, and Liu even twists continuity a bit to support that. Why? What was the real aim here? It definitely hasn’t done the character any favors and either it’s going to be ignored, ran with, or retconed (none of which are good solutions). Rather liking the character’s spirit and archetype, I’d rather we not get yet ANOTHER twisted version of a once heroic character. It’s getting a bit old to see everyone have their run as villains (Gambit, Polaris, Wolverine, Cyclops, Angel, etc).
At the very least, within the parameters of the story, Iceman should now understand the lengths of the possession Cyclops was going through when he killed Xavier. That’s something for story progression…
I don’t like the whole idea of the life/death seeds. The point’s been made that dark posession’s been done quite a bit recently, but the death seed even seems to suggest Apocalypse’s whole survival of the fittest thing was only ever because of the death seed, which makes him less interesting. Is Evan supposed to be less powerful because he’s ‘unseeded’? Does everyone who was ever the Death horseman have some of it in them, same as Angel did?
Would it have been worth trying Iceman on one of the Avengers teams, and not in X-books, for a while? Has it been properly acknowledged that with Jean dead, Cyke off the rails, Angel mind-wiped and Beast going through another mutation, and going Illuminati, AND losing the plot by messing with the timeline, that Bobby’s kind of lost all his original friends (and Xavier, too)? This would seem to be the time where he’d consider whether or not he still needed to be with the X-Men.
You know, between Onslaught, two Phoenixes, Iceman’s unleashed id, and Hank McCoy destroyer of worlds I’m pretty sure that the member of the original X-Men with the lowest body count is the one that nuked a town. It was a small town.
My favorite moment was Warbird’s speech: “You power was always great… but it was your even greater restraint that made you, in my eyes, a magnificent warrior.”
This actually feels like a perfect resolution to the long-standing “untapped potential” Emma Frost storyline from the 90s. That Iceman has this incredible power but manages to stay grounded and in control, unlike so many other over-the-top, out of control mutants with giant powers. It would be great to resolve that “weakness” as a strength.
I wish the story could have went more in that direction. But I was happy that it had some of that. Plus that art was amazing.