Oh, Marvel Iceman.
I was worried for a minute.
Meanwhile I was thinking âHow would they even KNOW? Did they find a 5,000-year-old love letter in his pocket?â
The Iceman Cometh Out?
The circumstances surrounding the characterâs coming out are unique, to say the least. Readers discover that the past, teenaged Bobby Drake, who has been transported to the future along with the original X-Men to help solve a crisis, is gay. Meanwhile, the present-day Iceman â who is still very much around â has had relationships with multiple women in the past. Apparently, that was an act
Outed by a time-travelling version of yourself? Thatâs just cold.
Wait, I thought everyone already knew âŚ
I see what you did there.
Outed by a past version of yourself? Thatâs stupid.
Outed by a future version of yourself? Thatâs just mean.
This was literally my first thought as well.
Cool and weird at the same time.
Readers discover that the past, teenaged Bobby Drake, who has been
transported to the future along with the original X-Men to help solve a
crisis, is gay. Meanwhile, the present-day Iceman â who is still very
much around â has had relationships with multiple women in the past.
Now we know where all the soap opera writers got jobs.
This seems like a good example of an editorial decision that just doesnât make character sense. Itâs not an usual event, even for a coming out (see Rawhide Kid: Slapping Leather⌠or donât, it was terrible).
But what message is a heterosexual present-day Iceman arising from a homosexual past Bobby Drake supposed to convey? That homosexuality is a choice that, had circumstances gone differently, would never have been made? That itâs a phase one can grow out of?
I would say it sends a very regressive message if I thought for a second anyone editing at Marvel actually pays attention to the messages they put out there. (After all this is the gang that had Spider-Man make a deal with the Devil to un-marry his wife. Why the Devil? Because Loki was unavailable at the time.)
What about using time travel to allow a character to deliver an âit gets betterâ message to themselves?
Is it gay to have sex with an alternate timeline version of yourself?
Did you mis read that? It seems to what theyâre saying is ice man is gay but deeply closeted. He gets outed to his present day friends when they discover his secret via a time travelling past version of the character. No gay people turning into straight people. Just a convoluted outing. Probably intended to open the door to retconning the straight beard relationships away.
If thereâs a message itâs probably along the lines of âliving a sad , isolated, closeted life is unnecessary and not good for youâ
No they didnât. It gets complicated because of comics.
Gay Iceman is from the X-Men team from the past, who were pulled into the future because the âclassicâ X-Men team has long since broken up but people still want to read them. Past-Jean Grey confronts him about being in the closet because she can read minds and knows he is, during the conversation Past-Iceman says he thought he was just confused because Future-Iceman isnât gay, and Jean Grey responds that yeah, Future-Iceman is straight.
It isnât a case of Future-Iceman still being in the closet. He is explicitly stated to be straight by the same mindreader who outs Past-Iceman. Itâs a case of a writer wanting to make changes to a character and either he or editorial restricted the change to the version of him from the past because they didnât want it to affect the established Iceman, but without thinking through what their âstatus-quo clauseâ really says or implies about sexuality.
This is getting dumb.
I think that fails under the âsoon of Onanâ clause, but check with your local cross-time Rabbi.
Where is @popobawa4u? We need him<-~->her to explain how we canât really know anything at all about this stuff.
But Doctor, I am the Cross-time Rabbi!