Iceman's Wacky Existential 80's Adventure

One thing I share in common with my Marvel cohort Tim Dillon is that Iceman is far and away my favorite member of the X-Men.

As with so many of my favorite characters, I'm note entirely sure when or why I started digging Iceman, but I think it can be traced back to somewhere around 1991 when Chris Claremont and Jim Lee unleashed X-Men #1 on the world and likely had a lot to do with aesthetics. Particularly the way Lee drew him back then, I just thought the character looked cool (pun unintended), with his sleek, simple "costume" and it was something most artists could nail pretty easily. He also had neat powers that were different from the ill-defined energy blasts, generic super strength and claws of every kind that populated the 90's.

Just like with Wally West and Rich Rider, as I got to know the Bobby Drake side of Iceman, I found in a nice coincidence that he had a persona I really dug as well. He's the perennial cocky wiseass of the X-Men, but he's also extremely powerful albeit mostly via untapped potential and is crazy insecure about that and a litany of other things; a perfect cocktail for a fun, multi-layered character in my book.

Unfortunately, it seems more often than not that creators don't have much use for Iceman. Don't get me wrong, most of the time writers have good intentions for the guy, but the fact is there are five million X-Men and Iceman just doesn't often make the cut for the A-team. Folks like Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Mike Carey and others have made great strides at tapping some of that aforementioned potential, but poor Bobby just seems to get perennially lost in the shuffle.

However, Iceman has had his share of solo stories over the years, and some really stand out; one such tale is the Iceman limited series from 1984 by J.M. DeMatteis and Alan Kupperberg. I nabbed it in full during college right after I discovered eBay, off which I also got an Iceman action figure from the 90's that I used to freeze in my mini-fridge and a bootleg t-shirt with him and the Human Torch on it.

Anyways, the comic is trippy as shit.

At the time, Iceman was a member of the DeMatteis-written New Defenders, an eclectic group made up of former X-Men like Bobby, Beast and Angel as well as oddballs such as Cloud, Gargoyle and Andromeda. It was a weird time for an Iceman mini, but it happened, and the results were cee-razy.

It starts with Bobby Drake paying a visit to his parents and catching up with some extended family. Bobby's dad as well as most of his relatives consider him a disappoinment because he ditched a job as an accountant, which everybody else in his family does, and they ride him for it during most of issue one.

(On a side note, I've always found it fantastic that Iceman is a certified public accountant)

Bobby gets pissed off, flirts with some mysterious girl who has moved in next store, then this weird characters named White Light and The Idiot show up. From there it gets weird.

Turns out the neighbor girl is some sort of cosmic entity whom White Light and Idiot are trying to recapture for their mysterious boss. Over the course of the next couple issues, she drags them and Iceman back in time where he meets his parents as teenagers for a little "they used to have dreams like me" bit until his dad gets freakin' shot and he gets whisked away again.

The third issue is a surreal journey of self-discovery as Bobby Drake seemingly gets aged through childhood, the founding of the X-Men, his tenure with the Champions and into his Defenders gig, complete with more of his parents calling him a failure, jokes about Jean Grey being dead, Darkstar dissing him because he's a capitalist pig, and other assorted wackiness. It is absolutely bizarre and DeMatteis makes it cool and cerebral like only he can.

Ultimately, we find out that neighbor girl is Mirage, the daughter of the abstract entity Oblivion, who makes his first appearance here before going on to be a Quasar villain and floating head at those power meetings Eternity calls to order whenever Thanos gets the Infinity Gauntlet. Most recently he showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy.

So yeah, the Marvel Universe's embodiment of nothingness and ennui first showed up in an Iceman limited series--how rad is that?

Anyways, our hero gets caught in a tug of war between father and daughter over whether or not life is worth living, taking charge of your existence and destiny, following your dreams, and a lot of other heady concepts you'd think the X-Men's class clown would be the last character you'd use as a window to, but again, credit Marc DeMatteis for being able to pull it off.

In the end, more weirdness happens, but Iceman does end up gaining a victory of sorts over a guy who gives the Silver Surfer fits and then heads home to reconcile with his parents, tell them he loves them, reiterate his lack of desire to be an accountant, then get called away by Beast and Angel for a new mission.

Summarizing that was a load of fun and I know I got a ton of details wrong because I haven't actually read the book in ages, though I now need to rectify that ASAP. The moral is that while most Iceman stories involve him creating slides and throwing snowballs in the background of a big X-Men battle, he had a four issue epic where he traveled through time, fought a guy named The Idiot more than once, almost scored with a cosmic entity, then overcame the universe's most powerful force for entropy.

Thank you, Mr. DeMatteis. And Marvel Collected Editions, let's get working on this, please.

Remember the Secret Defenders?

Over my five years as a proud comic book semi-professional, more often than not when I hear the term "Secret Defenders" it has been as the punchline of a joke, both in fan circles as well as among my peers. At this point I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of those making the joke don't even know who or what they're talking about.

Secret Defenders launched back in 1993 with the high concept of a team with no set roster, but instead Doctor Strange using his magic to determine which groupings of Marvel heroes were best equipped to deal with certain missions and then bringing them together to do just that. As explained by writer Roy Thomas on a text page in the back of the very first issue, it was more or less a natural outgrowth of the original Defenders--Strange, Hulk, Namor and the Silver Surfer--who were called a "non-team" in that they weren't particularly chummy and only hung out when there was work to be done.

Let's give credit where credit is do right off the bat: the conceit behind the Secret Defenders was a pretty bad ass idea. I mean, the New Avengers are the most successful super hero group of the past decade on at least a commercial level based on Brian Bendis bringing together a disparate group of popular characters and making them a team then watching the interpersonal dynamics fly (ok, obviously he does more than just watch, but you get my gist). Going even further back (way further back), the Justice League and even Justice Society were solo heroes who didn't necessarily have any need to band together other than it was a cool idea that publisher knew would sell comics, so let's go for it.

Part of the fun of team books and what has made the Avengers and Justice League in particular work so well over the years is the idea of throwing characters who work well on their own into a blender and then seeing how they mix (I'm excepting "family" concepts like the Fantastic Four, X-Men and even Teen Titans as they have a different vibe to them). With Secret Defenders, you got that mix and match, but not just every couple years when writers felt like shaking things up and not with members coming and going one by one or two by two, no, you got a whole new team just about every other month!

Honestly, it's as basic a "kids will love this" concept as giving a bad guy a black and white version of Spider-Man's suit plus some fangs and then counting the money you make; it should have worked. And hey, I wasn't on the inside 16 years ago, so maybe Secret Defenders did work on some level, but it only lasted 25 issues, so even accounting for the shark-infested comics landscape of the mid-90's it couldn't have done that well, and in spite of what I'm sure were solid efforts by guys like Roy Thomas (no slouch by any stretch of any imagination) I don't think the book ever achieved it's creative potential.

I think you can look at the initial Secret Defenders line-up that was featured over the first three issues and kinda see the big problem: it consisted of Strange, Wolverine, Darkhawk, Nomad and the second Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter). Obviously Wolverine was (and is) an absurdly popular character while Darkhawk and Nomad were both guys struggling to keep solo books afloat and Spider-Woman was an ancillary member of the West Coast Avengers. I remember reading the first issue and not finding anything particularly compelling about how these four heroes interacted; it was a nice lady, an insecure kid and two gruff loners, but there was no real conflict or neat bonding moment that showed me the worth of this cool concept really being mined.

Looking back on it, while I admit I could be totally wrong, it seems to me from an "insider" perspective that three random characters were just stuck with Wolverine because somebody higher up figured maybe that could give their respective books some heat. If you look at the second arc, it's the same basic deal with the Punisher in the Wolverine role with solo "star" Sleepwalker and New Warriors member Namorita tagging along. In the third arc, Strange hooks up Spider-Man with Captain America and the Scarlet Witch to face a villain they've all fought before, so there's a bit more logic there, but then after that we get the Surfer, War Machine and Thunderstrike (I guess Surfer was supposed to be the "draw" in that group, but I'm not entirely sure).

Incidentally, issue #11 is the only one I own besides #1 and I do kinda love it because it's got Nova teaming with the Hulk (in my favorite of his incarnations as "the Professor") and Northstar to smash a robot during the Starblast crossover (it also featured the classic line "Not once has anybody ever yelled 'Look! Up in the sky! It's the Man Called Nova!'"). Granted I'm biased given who was more or less the star of said story, but I dug issue #11 as it had some cool interplay between dueling cocky hotshots in Nova and Northstar, then the friggin' Hulk coming in to save the day and make them both look stupid; it was a fun little bit of business and more along the lines of what I wanted to see from the book.

Issue #11 was actually the last one featuring Doctor Strange though, as events in his own book took him out of play for a bit and he was replaced in the short term by Thanos for a villains-centric arc and then in the long-term by Doctor Druid.

If Secret Defenders was lighting the sales chart on fire before, I'm sure the addition of career D-lister Doc Druid didn't help the situation. To make matters worse, around issue #15 or so, the rotating cast thing was more or less abandoned and fringe characters Cadaver and Shadowoman were made the core team along with Druid while guest stars like Deadpool, Luke Cage and other were relegated to extended cameos. So whereas before Secret Defenders at least had some sort of unique hook, now it was just another team book, albeit with characters most people didn't care about.

Interestingly enough, the very same year Secret Defenders debuted, DC launched Justice League Task Force with the same "different team for every mission" gimmick and Martian Manhunter in the Doctor Strange role. JLTF always seemed to have a little more heat to me as the line-ups were generally more high profile (the leadoff team was J'onn, the Flash, Aquaman, Nightwing and Gypsy), but like it's Marvel counterpart, it too abandoned its gimmick and became a "Justice League-in-training" book with the inspired writing of Christopher Priest trying to work magic with the fairly uninspired grouping of J'onn, Gypsy, the Ray, Triumph and L-Ron (the book made it to issue #37).

So why didn't Secret Defenders or Justice League Task Force work? Obviously it's an impossible question for me to answer with 100% certainty as I wasn't there, but I have my ideas. My buddy Sean had an interesting post over at Robot 6 where he shared recent comments made by my Marvel superiors (in all ways) Tom Brevoort and Joe Quesada about the nature of "sharing" characters across office lines for stuff like crossovers; this kind of negotiation generally goes pretty smoothly in this day and age from what I've observed, but based on what I've read, the Marvel of 1993-1995 wasn't nearly as cross-polination-happy, as that was the period during which multiple "editors-in-chief" were assigned different groups of books and operated in a vacuum to some degree. I can only imagine that for whoever was in charge of Secret Defenders, the cherry picking of who would fill the book each month that likely would have been fun in other eras had to be something of a chore, hence why we ended up with the somewhat cookie cutter teams of the early arcs and then eventually characters who would belong solely to the title were brought in.

It's a shame that Secret Defenders (and by the same token Justice League Task Force) were launched in time period they were only to crash and burn under the pressures of the industry as it was then, because it really is a cool idea. In 2009, with creators and editors who have encyclopedic knowledge of the most obscure characters and the ability to make them shine as well as a fanbase that thrills to odd pairings like Deadpool and Shang-Chi, Secret Defenders could be a money book both from a dollars and cents perspective as well as from the plain good read side of things.

Maybe there's a writer or editor out there right now who can see past the punchline to the potential and we'll get a retread done right sooner than later, but until then I'll always have my Secret Defenders #11.

Remember the X-Men arcade game?

There are those who would have you believe that Pacman or Mortal Kombat or NFL Blitz or Ms. Pacman is the greatest arcade game of all-time, but these people are crackheads, liars and fools. The one and only true claimant to that prestigious throne is the legendary X-Men arcade game of 1992.

Those who experienced the magic in their youth know what I'm talkin bout (I'd include you kids with your emulators, but seriously, this was something you needed to do live and in color). The truly fortunate knew the X-Men game as that massive construct over in the corner that spread its action across two full-size screens in such a manner that characters went dark if they ran across the middle too fast. You recall getting to one of the six joystick arrays as fast as you could and being sure to have plenty of quarters in tow, lest you lose your spot or have to leave to refill and then come back with only Dazzler available to play as (crammed up in the corner spot where it was nigh impossible to see the action no less). You remember not caring that Sentinels were the same size as you as you dispatched them by the dozen and not asking why the Juggernaut needed some sort of bazooka.

The X-Men arcade game followed Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Dazzler--provided you had at least five friends--as they battled through the streets of (maybe) New York, the Savage Land, multiple high tech bases and elsewhere trying to save Professor X and Kitty Pryde, who had been kidnapped by Magneto. In addition to being able to punch, slash and kick, each character got a special mutant power that you stored and saved for the bosses (or when you were fighting too many lizard dudes and got frustrated). Of course since Wolverine just being able to pop his claws wouldn't be too visually impressive and you didn't want Colossus to be flesh-toned the bulk of the game, Wolvie got "adamantium laser claws" that shot big ass beams while Pete flexed his metal muscles to release a huge energy spark and yell like a constipated grizzly bear.

It was awesome.

Another thing that was awesome was the graphics. It was 1992 and we had just barely gotten our minds wrapped around Super Nintendo, so even for an arcade game, X-Men had and incredibly slick, vibrant look plus wicked G.I. Joe-quality animation sequences. But as killer as the graphics were, the sound was even better, as the boom of this game echoed through the arcade, which rocked since it was ridiculously quotable, whether the Blob was insisting "Nothing stops...the Blob!" or Wendigo was screeching his name time and again as you beat the white fur off him.

I've got two very vivid memories of the X-Men arcade game. The first occured one summer somewhere in the neighborhood of 1993 when I was like 11 and at Camp Frank A. Day. At the end of every July, we would take a trip to the Riverside amusement park (today Six Flags New England) for a day of rides, games and bad food. However, what I would get most excited about, being averse to heights and shitty at getting rings around milk bottles, would be holing up in the big ass arcade and stretching out the $15 they'd give us for the day at the X-Men arcade game. This particular year, I had to have been at the game for hours, alternating characters as I ran to get quarters, but teaming with the same group of seven or eight kids to get all the way to the end. It took us hours, and we barely noticed that a massive thunderstorm had formed around the park, shutting most everything down (that we were in an open air structure and failed to note the massive quantities of rain and huge lightning crashes I like to think speaks to our dedication and nothing else). I was mindful of the time and that I was going to miss the bus back to camp if we didn't clear Asteroid M pretty soon, but as we were on the precipice, the storm surged and knocked out the power of every machine in the arcade. When it rebooted, there we were, crestfallen and back at the opening screen.

I believe it was the next year that my family took a vacation to Disney World and nestled in the tiny game room of our Polynesian-themed resort hotel I located a more modest version of the X-Men arcade game with only one screen and four players. It was rare that there was anybody else around the game outside of occasionally my little sister, so for the most part, I wound up playing the game myself, which I had never really done before. On the smaller screen and able to select your player as opposed to the characters being married to a particular location, I developed a new appreciation for Cyclops, who I had previously stayed away from by virtue of him being the upper left-hand corner guy. His optic blasts were way easier to control than just about any other mutant power and the guy had a mean jumping spin kick for a lanky white dude. All on my own I never made it to far into the deep levels, but I did rack up killer high scores as Cyclops that got erased each night when the place shut down.

It wasn't until college that I made the miraculous discovery that the X-Men arcade game was actually based on an aborted 1989 animated pilot called Pryde of the X-Men. Neelless to say I hopped right on eBay and made that sucker mine; it has been a prized possession for several years now. A whole other post would be required to expound on the virtues of Australian Wolverine calling Toad a "bloody dingo" and creepy child molester Nightcrawler hitting on Kitty Pryde, but some day soon I will find the strength.

Bottom line: my wedding is coming up in about a month and a half and if you can find one of those coin-op suckers, it would not be an inappropriate gift.

Remember the Ultraverse?

In 1993, Malibu Comics launched a new super hero line called the Ultraverse. This wasn't an uncommon practice at the time, as it came on the heels of Image and Valiant's success and occured around the same period that other upstart spandex imprints like Milestone, Comics Greatest World, Defiant (which I remember way more vividly than I think I should) and more were sprouting like weeds.

I was 11.

I've got an inherent fondness for the Ultraverse that really isn't reflected in the body of actual work I own from its brief history. In total, I think I've got maybe two issues of Prototpye, an issue of Prime and an issue of Mantra in addition to both of the bookends to the Break-Thru crossover, the Ultraverse Origins primer/secret files one-shot (with a Joe Quesada cover), and the Ultraforce/Avengers two-issue mini that basically ended Ultaverse v1.

However, I can name just about every character from the Ultraverse, distinctly recall what they looked like and give you a pretty decent overview of the big events. I used to love drawing Prototype and the Night Man, and the one and only time I tried to enter Wizard's Homemade Heroes custom action figure building contest, I got three quarters of the way through turning an old Thundercats toy into a bootleg Solitaire. Solitaire!

So what was the inherent appeal that with less than 10 actual physical comics in my possession I dug the Ultraverse so much?

Well, in retrospect, I attribute a big chunk of it to the fact that the Ultraverse had no high concept, it was just some very talented creators trying to do good super hero comics. Look, I dig ambitious themes and whatnot as much as the next guy, but I also want to hurl every time I hear about a new team book that is going to be "different than the rest because these guys are pro-active!" Dude, every new team book is pro-active for the first five issues and then becomes like very other team because writing about characters going out and actively looking for villains is tough.

But that's a tangent and a rant.

My point is, sometimes it's nice to just see comic book folks just trying to do good work with the basics as opposed to overdosing on pretense. At a time when you had multiple super hero universes that were supposed to be set in the "real world," or where all the characters were multicultural, or where there had to be a mystic tie-in to everything, it was refreshing to see a non-Marvel/DC set of super heroes who were just that: a set of super heroes. I look at something like CrossGen and appreciate the goals, but wonder if they didn't also get a bit too cute for their own good; the Ultraverse never felt like that.

Not only did the Ultraverse not shun the general idea of just doing super hero comics, in some cases it outright borrowed from the classic tropes but put neat twists on them that set what they were doing apart. There was definitely an element of the original Captain Marvel in Prime, but Kevin Green's teenage inexperience and often warped idealism led down some interesting paths that the Big Red Cheese never really explored. Likewise, Prototype was a fresh take on Iron Man where the armored hero was a hotshot kid who didn't realize he was getting played by the corporate types as opposed to the boss wearing the suit. Hardcase was Wonder Man but as the most successful hero in the world. Sludge owed something to Swamp Thing/Man-Thing, Freex was part X-Men or Doom Patrol, etc., but none of these characters were strict carbon copies.

And I can't really think of anything else quite like the original iteration of Mantra.

It was also cool that the Ultraverse branched out beyond Super Hero 101 with stuff like Sludge, or a detective book like Firearm, or a straight up horror comic like Rune.

The roster of talented creators who worked there didn't hurt either. Steve Gerber, Gerard Jones and Steve Englehart were among the founding fathers of the imprint. James Robinson had a significant role. Up-and-coming artists like Terry Dodson, Darick Robertson and Paul Pelletier were honing their craft. And as the movement gained steam, legendary creators like George Perez and Barry Windsor-Smith signed on to be a part of it.

Break-Thru was actually the beginning of my love affair with the art of George Perez, as I had never seen his work before and was, of course, blown away. What with it being 1993 and the height of Image and all, I had truly never seen anything quite like George Perez before.

I have to also give the Ultraverse a lot of credit for being extremely new reader-friendly. I started with Break-Thru, which featured every single character in the fledgling universe (which was still a couple dozen) and by the end of issue one, I totally felt like I had at least a decent grasp on who each of them were and why I should care. A nice job was done taking snapshots of every corner of the world being created and bringing the different players on stage just long enough to let you know their deal without derailing the story. The very next month, there was some sort of "Origins Month" deal which included the one-shot I mentioned. In fact, they may have done too good a job being new reader-friendly, because I felt so immediately acquainted with the characters that I didn't feel any particular urgency to go out and get the individual titles as I was getting enough out of the samplers and was content to wait it out for the next line-wide event.

But of course this was the mid-90's, and longevity was not a gift many companies outside the big boys were gifted with.

By 1994, Marvel had purchased the Ultraverse, and by 1995 or so, it was no more, as there was only so much cash to go around in a rapidly bursting industry and keeping the X-Men and Spider-Man afloat had to be a higher priority than making sure Prime and Ultraforce stayed in circulation.

So the Ultraverse had a brief but potent impact on comics and on me as a reader. I do regret a little that I never made more of an effort to get into those books full-on, but on the other hand, it probably saved me from a good chunk of disappointment as well. Maybe next convention it's time for me to conduct an overdue expedition to fill-in the gaps in my Prototype collection between and around the two issues I actually own once and for all.