Iceman Almost Came Out as Gay Back in the 1990s
So prior to Brian Michael Bendis revealing Iceman (aka, Bobby Drake) was gay in the pages of his All-New X-Men run from 2015, apparently writer Scott Lobdell had planned to have Bobby come out of the closet two decades earlier but was unable to go through with his plans. Lobdell did however, lay the ground work for Bobby coming out during his time on the X-books in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Specifically, during an encounter with Emma Frost back when she was still a villain, the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club briefly took control of Bobby’s mind and actually used his mutant powers in more creative ways than he ever had done before. Emma accurately pointed out that Bobby was intentionally holding back the true potential of his powers, and was using humor as a shield to mask his own insecurities due to his conservative upbringing by mutantphobic parents.
Writer Sina Grace actually followed up on this old plot point from the 90s during his Iceman solo-series which immediately followed Bobby being outed by the time-displaced Jean Grey in All-New X-Men. In addition to depicting Bobby becoming more comfortable with his sexuality and gradually out to his fellow teammates, ex-girlfriends like Kitty Pryde, and especially his bigoted parents...
...Grace finally allowed Bobby to fully embrace his potential as an Omega-Level mutant. Not only did Iceman singlehandedly defeat the unstoppable Juggernaut in combat after after overcoming his greatest fear by coming out to his parents, but he began using his powers in more creative ways than before such as constructing ice-shuriken and multiple ice-clones and kaju.
Furthermore, Grace also revealed in his run that yes, during that time Emma Frost had mind-controlled Bobby back in the 90s, she actually did learn that Bobby was gay. But unlike the time-displaced Jean Grey, Emma never outed Bobby’s closeted sexuality to him or anyone else, and instead respected his privacy due to her own tragic experiences with her older brother Christian Frost being forced into "gay conversion therapy" (aka, torture...) by their abusive father.
Essentially, all of the people who try to argue that Iceman coming out makes zero sense or that it somehow "ignores/erases several decades of past continuity" (I'm looking at you homophobic Comicsgaters!) completely miss the fact that both Bendis & Grace were simply building upon the foundation that was already put in place by Lobdell back in the 90s! That’s NOT “ignoring or erasing several decades of continuity,” but the exact opposite!
And if you still need further proof that Bobby was always gay, just a reminder that during his very first appearance in X-Men (1963) #1 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Iceman was the only person who was not acting like a horny jack-rabbit at the mere sight of the then-new student Jean Grey.
In other words... Iceman was always gay even as far back as his inaugural issue! Suck it Comicsgaters!
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... Brian Michael Bendis inspired.
I remember having this idea after reading the preview of his first issue, quickly drew something and now I thought it was time to revisit it and properly draw it (hope i can find the old sketch)
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bendis owes me money for this shit, how you gon have bart put kon’s gay ass on blast like that 😭😭😭
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#whiteQueenWed
‘We want to go shopping…’
‘Oh god yes, yes like normal people. Let’s go’
From Uncanny X-Men #15 by Brian Michael Bendis and Kris Anka
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How do you feel about revolutionary era cyclops? Both in premise and execution?
A fascinating premise fatally undermined in execution by contradictory editorial and writing choices.
To start with, Revolutionary Cyclops was a completely logical extension of where Cyclops’ character arc had been going ever since Utopia and AvX and the Phoenix Five. All his life, Scott Summers had been Charles Xavier’s perfect soldier - not his favorite student or his most trusted student, by the one that Xavier could count on to put the mission above himself no matter the cost. And for many decades, that’s who Cyclops was, to the point where it destroyed his first marriage and caused his second to founder under the weight of his repression and trauma. But after the Decimation, Scott had to move past that, to take up the mantle of independent leadership for mutantkind - something he pursued with unflinching pragmatism and ruthlessness, before it culminated in the ultimate Oedipal rebellion. So having completely severed himself from the legacy of Charles Xavier and his dream, Cyclops had to find a new purpose, a new direction for his life, and he found it in revolutionary politics. I think that’s a quite compelling arc.
Where I think the execution got messed up was that editorial clearly wanted to portray him as being in the wrong, another well-intentioned extremist in the vein of Magneto (who not coincidentally was increasingly loyal to and admiring of Cyclops as time went on), but Brian Michael Bendis never quite agreed. We would keep reading stuff about how Scott was going too far, that his ends couldn’t justify his means, and so on - but when it came to actually showing on the page what he was doing, it wasn’t anything more extreme than the X-Men had done in their “outlaw” era, and arguably much less morally questionable than the stuff he did when he was running Utopia and was coded more consistently as heroic. (This reached its peak of ridiculousness in the post-Bendis era with Death of X and IvX, where turned out that the thing that had convinced the world Cyclops was “worse than Hitler” was to make a big psychic projection of his head and destroy one of the Terrigen Mist clouds that were threatening to wipe out mutantkind.)
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I love this panel because why is it so funny that the core 4 are having a bonding moment and then these three randos are just standing there watching like this :)
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Superman #12
by Brian Michael Bendis (W,); IvanReis (P.); Joe Prado (I.); Alex Sinclair (C.) and Josh Reed (L.)
DC
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