The [ICEMAN] Appreciation Thread!

The other writer was Joe Kelly.

In interviews right after they took over the X-Books, Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle both talked about having big plans for Iceman, but nothing ever came of it.

Of course their run was short(about a year) before conflicts with editorial wanting to plot and plan everything and leave Kelly and Seagle to just script from that drove them from the books.

I know they intended to restore Jean as Phoenix and give her a baby with Cyclops, so maybe they intended to do something with the Dragon stuff with Bobby as well. Regardless, editorial would not allow that to go forward until around 2001.

It's funny you mentioned a novel. I was talking a bit with someone about the X-Men/Marvel prose novels from the 90's a few weeks back. I still remember the shock of seeing the first X-Men novel in a supermarket, with the cover proclaiming it was the first in a trilogy. The X-Men TAS cartoon had recently gotten me back into comics and X-Men, and I was fast becoming a major Iceman fan but the comics weren't giving me enough focus on Iceman to satisfy me.

I couldn't believe that the 'Mutant Empire' trilogy actually gave Iceman his own story-line, if memory serves the only character to get that. Suddenly the novels were a big part of my growing Iceman fandom. It was amazing how much focus Iceman got in some of those books. I still remember him playing pool with Gambit in the Spider-Man/X-Men Time's Arrow trilogy. I often got more of the moments I wanted from the comics from the novels instead.

Bob Harras basically nixed Iceman becoming the Dragon as part of his purge of the X-Line having, in his opinion, too many elements that were magical/mystical/cosmic/alien. Lots of characters that fit that bill were abruptly dumped from X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Excalibur... Rachel Summers, who bore the powers, uniform and codename of Phoenix at the time was exiled into the timestream; Jean's connection the Phoenix was then heavily minimized; and Bobby's road to becoming the Dragon was all but stopped.

Harras kept that block on Iceman becoming the Dragon in effect starting in 1991 during his time as editor of the X-Line, continuing through his time as EIC of Marvel, and not ending until he left Marvel in 2000.

Loving the convo as well.

Joe Madureira? I think you mean Joe Quesada?


I was not a fan of Joe Mad's art at first but he won me over. Probably because I got more into Anime/Manga and became more receptive to its influences on his style. He did some good stuff with Iceman.

I have one of Marjorie Liu's paranormal romances. Eye of Heaven.