Bobby/Jean-Paul

The central image in the banner at the top of this blog is a Jim Lee rendition of Iceman, one of the X-Men. From the day I started reading X-Men comics Iceman was my favourite character. Perhaps because I remembered him in part from the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends cartoon.

Like many queer X-Fans I’ve looked at this character with a queer eye and seen a closeted gay man just waiting to come out. It looked like this may finally come true when the only openly gay mutant hero, Northstar, joined the X-Men and soon admitted to a crush on Iceman. There’s a great summary here.

Sadly nothing happened, and then in 2005 Northstar was killed three different times in the same month which didn’t say much for Marvel’s approach to gay superheroes. He’s back now and returning to the X-Men. Could he finally have a chance to win Bobby over and bring him out of that icey closet?

Comic reading

Secret Invasion Thunderbolts – I think this is the final of the current version of the Thunderbolts before they go off to be in Dark Avengers and a new status quo replaces this one. I think Dark Avengers is Thunderbolts but that’s the next book. This trade includes three one-shots spotlighting a few of the characters and the four issues that were involved in the Secret Invasion crossover. Returning Fenris without Skrull involvement seemed an odd choice given the storyline it took place in. I do hope Songbird gets a fair go as she continues to be the true hero among the villains. Bullseye’s involvement doesn’t work well for me, he’s better off as random villain not ongoing character.

And from the library:

Who is Wonder Woman? – Probably the best Wonder Woman comic I’ve ever read. It must be author/artists combos that put me off as this new start story was quite good. It’s interesting how many DC heroes have two sidekicks, and this story explored the connections with Wonder Woman’s two fellow Wonder Women and her evil and male counterparts quite well. The reinvention of the gimmick from the tv-show, secret agent Diana Prince spinning to become Wonder Woman is nostalgic but works.

Outsiders Vol 1 – Somewhat a mix of Exiles and Thunderbolts, with a random selection of DC heroes and minor villains teaming up. I don’t know who most of these character are though and I couldn’t get into it.

Heroes Vol 1 – If fans of the show pick this up and think this is what normal comics are like they are getting a bad first impression. Five page stories don’t give much chance for plot development and a book full of them is a very uneven read. I gave up on reading these on the website and now also in the book. The TV show is enough.

New Comics

Only one thing to buy this week, the second issue of the new Marvel Index. I loved the issues of the 90s series. They gave me an understanding of almost 200 issues of Uncanny X-Men I’d missed by starting reading in the 90s and the chronology stuff was intrigueing.

But I’d missed the first two issues and have never been able to find them. This new series is filling those gaps, summarising the first 100 issues of X-Men. I do have all of these issues on DVD-ROM but 60s comics are hard to read with modern sensabilities. These summaries are a much nicer alternative.

I don’t think I will buy anymore of the series though as it would just be doubling up what I already have, and the chronologies of Spider-Man and Iron Man comics aren’t that interesting to me. There are websites devoted to this stuff (and to which I’ve contributed) which is the cheaper alternative.