This is going to be something a little different because there is a lot that needs to be said about this comic and the direction and given how few LGBTQ leads there are from either DC or Marvel, I figure I can devote a little time to this one, explain some stuff, and give a review of the first issue. I'm thinking since I'm going to be keeping up with this one, that I may just keep an on-going review of this particular series for the time being and tell you what I ultimately think.
This will be good for a couple of things. First of all, I get to talk about this book that I want to talk about and no one I know is actively reading. Second, you guys get to see some of my reasoning and thought process behind books, why I might or might not recommend something or even why I like some things over others. Finally, I get to talk about a few elephants in the room that desperately need to be discussed that I haven't seen anyone really discussing.
With that said, let's set this book up and explain how we got here shall we? So a few years ago Marvel wanted to revitalize the X-Men line (again) because it was getting stale (again). They decided the only possible way to do that is to have an X-Man (present day Beast) go back in time and pull the original 5 X-Men, Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Angel, Beast, and Iceman from the past into the future. They eventually decided to stay in the future and fight because reasons and stuff. Honestly, none of this makes sense and it really just makes comics even more confusing. Marvel Girl discovers her telepathic powers earlier than the original Jean Grey-Summers and has to get some training from "reformed" villain Emma Frost. Marvel Girl then decides to poke around in her teammates' minds "accidentally" and it all comes to ahead with her confronting Past Iceman (referred to from now on as Iceboy) and force him to admit that he's gay. It's a really badly written scene and it's painful to read for anyone who is LGBTQ since he is literally forced to admit it and Jean refuses to let up on it.
This leads some people to rationalize that Jean made him gay since he was not before and she's perfectly capable of changing someone's mind and well.. she did force it out of him. At this time, people began to speculate that these Original 5 X-Men are not the same as the ones we've known all this time and they are from a divergent reality.. So the writer of the forced coming out scene, Bendis, decides that Iceboy will go see Iceman with Marvel Girl as moral support and confront Iceman about his sexuality. This leads to Iceman eventually being forced to come out as well, in another really painful scene and again with Marvel Girl present, it's easy to believe that she is forcing this to happen (or that Marvel can at least write it that way later if they want to undo all this). With me so far?
Now we flash forward and Iceman is starting his own series to flesh out his homosexuality and convince people yeah he really is gay now (plus give Marvel a gay male lead in an on-going which they didn't have before). So interviews come out and Sina Grace, the writer, is talking about how Iceman has to deal with all his ex-girlfriends now that he's gay.. and this doesn't seem like a great direction for a book where you really really want to highlight a gay character, but yeah.
Anyhow onto issue 1. Thankfully, none of Iceman's exs appear in this issue and it's over all an OK issue for me. So the set up around the entire issue is a 30 something Iceman setting up a dating profile for the first time as a gay man and trying to figure out how that is going to look.
We start off with Iceman and Iceboy doing some training so Iceman can teach Iceboy how to use his powers. This whole scene is difficult because the two aren't differentiated enough so it's easy to tell except that Iceman is wearing clothes in his iced up form. Add to that that they're essentially the same person, making the same jokes to each other, back and forth and.. it's not great. They both make a joke about dad jokes within pages of each other. It didn't work and the two don't play off each other well since.. they're the same person essentially. The scene ends with Iceboy going off with his boyfriend after inviting Iceman along as the 3rd wheel. Obviously, Iceman doesn't want to do that. Then Iceman gets a message from his parents that his dad is in the hospital, so Iceman rushes to the hospital.
At the hospital, Iceman's parents give him a hard time incessantly about being a mutant and daring to save the world. Iceman sticks around because it's his parents. A young mutant girl busts into the hospital calling for sanctuary as a bad guy in armor that protects against mutant powers pursues and tries to kill her. Iceman intervenes and the action is OK. He has to trick the bad guy and finally beats the bad guy. He returns to his parents giving him crap and as he leaves, he decides his dating profile should basically be a shrug emoji.
So yeah, it was an OK book. I get Iceman as an older guy trying to figure out how to date now that he's willing to admit he likes guys while his teenself obviously finds it easier being young. But again, the less of Iceboy in this book the better. Iceman feels like himself too, making jokes and trying to be light-hearted about everything including his dating profile.
The real issues are the art. First of all, never ever ever should there be a cover with glamour shots of straight male villains all over it. No one wants to see Mister Sinister as a pretty boy. Some people have had issues with Iceman's pose, but it's OK to me.
The interior art though just.. needs to be sexier and clearer. This is a book about a gay man for dudes that like dudes and fans of dudes that like dudes. We want the art to be sexy. We want guys looking hot, though not over the top. Midnighter did this perfectly and there is a great balance of sex and sexuality in the book. Iceman needs that vibe.
And finally, the big thing for future issues is.. Iceman needs a past. Not Ex-girlfriends, no one cares about them. We've seen Bobby deal with them a bazillion times. It's not remotely interesting and no one cares. No, he needs a past with men. Yes, he's just coming out, but if he's always been gay then.. he has a past with men. I mean other than the whole Cloud thing where he confesses his love to Cloud regardless if Cloud is a man or woman, we need more. He may have past hook ups. He may have flirted with guys in the past or had guys flirt with him in the past. These guys should be out there and we should see this. He's out now, how do they handle it when maybe one of them wanted more from Bobby and he was pretending this was all a game? Build that up, sell that to us.. and convince people that Bobby has a legitimate past with men.. because we know he has a past with women that has always been terrible and has never worked. Now it's time to fix the crapfest of outing scene that we got and stop making it seem like this whole thing is forced.
My other suggestion? I recommend Jean-Paul Beaubier aka Northstar come into the book. I know he's married to the guy nobody bothered to give a personality to, but you can pretend that never happened (because it pretty much didn't) or have their relationship fall apart as Jean-Paul was the complete and utter jerk that he really is. Then we can have Northstar and Iceman build a foundation.. They have a past after all.
As for recommendations, right now, I'd recommend this book, but it still has a way to go and it has to prove that it's better than this.. It needs to be stellar, not just OK.
Update: A friend asked me why I don't add number ratings on these reviews.. so I thought I'd explain.
First, reason is that's not really what this blog is about. It's not about ratings. It's not about reviews really. It's about comics and getting librarians to look at their collection and see how they can modify/add/change their collections or if they already have a perfect one. It's also to give more options to recommend to people than just.. the same 3 titles everyone recommends.
Second, the ratings are completely arbitrary and don't really make a lot of sense to me even on sites that use them. "Oh it's a 4/10, but you just said how amazing the book is!" I'd rather talk about the book than worry about how it "rates" because those don't really mean anything in the long run anyhow..
And finally, I just don't want to. Really. Again this blog is not really about rating books. This book is just one that is coming out, I think it would appeal to libraries or at least libraries would have it on their radar so.. I've decided to review it as I read it. These reviews are not getting many looks, I'm not really promoting it beyond just on the page. In fact, they could probably easily disappear and no one would notice..
This will be good for a couple of things. First of all, I get to talk about this book that I want to talk about and no one I know is actively reading. Second, you guys get to see some of my reasoning and thought process behind books, why I might or might not recommend something or even why I like some things over others. Finally, I get to talk about a few elephants in the room that desperately need to be discussed that I haven't seen anyone really discussing. With that said, let's set this book up and explain how we got here shall we? So a few years ago Marvel wanted to revitalize the X-Men line (again) because it was getting stale (again). They decided the only possible way to do that is to have an X-Man (present day Beast) go back in time and pull the original 5 X-Men, Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Angel, Beast, and Iceman from the past into the future. They eventually decided to stay in the future and fight because reasons and stuff. Honestly, none of this makes sense and it really just makes comics even more confusing. Marvel Girl discovers her telepathic powers earlier than the original Jean Grey-Summers and has to get some training from "reformed" villain Emma Frost. Marvel Girl then decides to poke around in her teammates' minds "accidentally" and it all comes to ahead with her confronting Past Iceman (referred to from now on as Iceboy) and force him to admit that he's gay. It's a really badly written scene and it's painful to read for anyone who is LGBTQ since he is literally forced to admit it and Jean refuses to let up on it.
This leads some people to rationalize that Jean made him gay since he was not before and she's perfectly capable of changing someone's mind and well.. she did force it out of him. At this time, people began to speculate that these Original 5 X-Men are not the same as the ones we've known all this time and they are from a divergent reality.. So the writer of the forced coming out scene, Bendis, decides that Iceboy will go see Iceman with Marvel Girl as moral support and confront Iceman about his sexuality. This leads to Iceman eventually being forced to come out as well, in another really painful scene and again with Marvel Girl present, it's easy to believe that she is forcing this to happen (or that Marvel can at least write it that way later if they want to undo all this). With me so far? Now we flash forward and Iceman is starting his own series to flesh out his homosexuality and convince people yeah he really is gay now (plus give Marvel a gay male lead in an on-going which they didn't have before). So interviews come out and Sina Grace, the writer, is talking about how Iceman has to deal with all his ex-girlfriends now that he's gay.. and this doesn't seem like a great direction for a book where you really really want to highlight a gay character, but yeah.
Anyhow onto issue 1. Thankfully, none of Iceman's exs appear in this issue and it's over all an OK issue for me. So the set up around the entire issue is a 30 something Iceman setting up a dating profile for the first time as a gay man and trying to figure out how that is going to look.
We start off with Iceman and Iceboy doing some training so Iceman can teach Iceboy how to use his powers. This whole scene is difficult because the two aren't differentiated enough so it's easy to tell except that Iceman is wearing clothes in his iced up form. Add to that that they're essentially the same person, making the same jokes to each other, back and forth and.. it's not great. They both make a joke about dad jokes within pages of each other. It didn't work and the two don't play off each other well since.. they're the same person essentially. The scene ends with Iceboy going off with his boyfriend after inviting Iceman along as the 3rd wheel. Obviously, Iceman doesn't want to do that. Then Iceman gets a message from his parents that his dad is in the hospital, so Iceman rushes to the hospital.
At the hospital, Iceman's parents give him a hard time incessantly about being a mutant and daring to save the world. Iceman sticks around because it's his parents. A young mutant girl busts into the hospital calling for sanctuary as a bad guy in armor that protects against mutant powers pursues and tries to kill her. Iceman intervenes and the action is OK. He has to trick the bad guy and finally beats the bad guy. He returns to his parents giving him crap and as he leaves, he decides his dating profile should basically be a shrug emoji.
So yeah, it was an OK book. I get Iceman as an older guy trying to figure out how to date now that he's willing to admit he likes guys while his teenself obviously finds it easier being young. But again, the less of Iceboy in this book the better. Iceman feels like himself too, making jokes and trying to be light-hearted about everything including his dating profile.
The real issues are the art. First of all, never ever ever should there be a cover with glamour shots of straight male villains all over it. No one wants to see Mister Sinister as a pretty boy. Some people have had issues with Iceman's pose, but it's OK to me.
And finally, the big thing for future issues is.. Iceman needs a past. Not Ex-girlfriends, no one cares about them. We've seen Bobby deal with them a bazillion times. It's not remotely interesting and no one cares. No, he needs a past with men. Yes, he's just coming out, but if he's always been gay then.. he has a past with men. I mean other than the whole Cloud thing where he confesses his love to Cloud regardless if Cloud is a man or woman, we need more. He may have past hook ups. He may have flirted with guys in the past or had guys flirt with him in the past. These guys should be out there and we should see this. He's out now, how do they handle it when maybe one of them wanted more from Bobby and he was pretending this was all a game? Build that up, sell that to us.. and convince people that Bobby has a legitimate past with men.. because we know he has a past with women that has always been terrible and has never worked. Now it's time to fix the crapfest of outing scene that we got and stop making it seem like this whole thing is forced.
My other suggestion? I recommend Jean-Paul Beaubier aka Northstar come into the book. I know he's married to the guy nobody bothered to give a personality to, but you can pretend that never happened (because it pretty much didn't) or have their relationship fall apart as Jean-Paul was the complete and utter jerk that he really is. Then we can have Northstar and Iceman build a foundation.. They have a past after all.
As for recommendations, right now, I'd recommend this book, but it still has a way to go and it has to prove that it's better than this.. It needs to be stellar, not just OK.
Update: A friend asked me why I don't add number ratings on these reviews.. so I thought I'd explain.
First, reason is that's not really what this blog is about. It's not about ratings. It's not about reviews really. It's about comics and getting librarians to look at their collection and see how they can modify/add/change their collections or if they already have a perfect one. It's also to give more options to recommend to people than just.. the same 3 titles everyone recommends.
Second, the ratings are completely arbitrary and don't really make a lot of sense to me even on sites that use them. "Oh it's a 4/10, but you just said how amazing the book is!" I'd rather talk about the book than worry about how it "rates" because those don't really mean anything in the long run anyhow..
And finally, I just don't want to. Really. Again this blog is not really about rating books. This book is just one that is coming out, I think it would appeal to libraries or at least libraries would have it on their radar so.. I've decided to review it as I read it. These reviews are not getting many looks, I'm not really promoting it beyond just on the page. In fact, they could probably easily disappear and no one would notice..
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