Bendis makes Teen-Iceman gay in All-New X-Men

The only people I read this as some great thing are those who have been banned from CBR at their révolution site. And some on CBR itself. Even those on my site think this was handled horribly.

I was worried for you Ice when I saw the leaked pages. I did buy the issue too since the part of Utopians was suppose to be a bigger shocker.

Problem with the reveal for the Utopians, is no one cares!

The Iceman thing - people care allot about.

Do NOT give Bendis ANY credit.

GRRRRRHATE.

I have the HUGEST hate-on for that writer.
For Remender, too!
And DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON WHAT HICKMAN HAS DONE TO NAMOR.

There are a few things Marvel is doing that I like.
I actually like the Inhumans, plzdon'tkillme. But I love Medusa.
But they are messing up way more than not.

I like some of the things Marvel is doing, too(though I'm not reading the current Inhumans series, I have several of their former runs, I like the characters), and DC for that matter.

But it is akin to liking someone for planting a few trees while watching them burn down forests.

At some point you finally just reach a tipping point, especially when it comes to favorite characters. When I have had enough of something I generally just walk away and almost never go back, as I finally did with CBR.

Marvel and Bendis do not live in a bubble of ignorance. They know this is a pet theory that is advocated mostly by internet trolls. They know it has been used to troll, harass and cyber-bully Iceman fans for years, mostly on CBR, to the point it took a forum reboot and massive bannings to even bring it under some degree of control; and if that is the crowd they are going to play to, under a paper-thin guise of advancing diversity that almost anyone with knowledge of how Marvel and Bendis actually do things and the history involved here can see right through, then I am a fool for continuing to give them my money. The idea that some mainstream media outlets were treating Bendis' tweet "i swear on my dogs, i wanted the issue to come out and just be. no press. no sensational headlines. no leaks. oh, well..." as truthful was sad. This is the same guy who writes stories to inspire, as he calls it, "nerd-rage" and who tries to "break the internet" with controversy. He gives Marvel shortterm gains and long-term losses they are too blind to even see or just don't care about.

Comics are $4 an issue now for a regular comic, and in just a few years comics are going to be $5 each for a regular, 20 pages or less monthly comic(Take out the recap page and the last issue of Uncanny X-Men had only 18 pages of actual story/art. That's ridiculous!). And for what? Trolling and stunts, massive retcons and reboots? Longtime fans treated like shit to try and attract new readers that rarely materialize and even more rarely stick around? Playing to internet trolls that mostly go off scans and rarely even buy actual comics? And the rest of us? Loyal and dedicated perhaps to the point of foolishness, we keep shelling out more and more money for comics with less and less pages, to offset the declining readerships for stories we like less and less and characters that become unrecognizable as their former selves? At what point do we say enough?

If this is how Marvel does things, if this is how Marvel rewards loyal fans for decades, with yet another cheap stunt, done to appeal to internet trolls that are sadly becoming all that is left of their declining comic-reading fanbase(sadly for Marvel, many of those trolls they keep playing to don't actually buy their comics), then I think I'm done. I know I at least should be.



Yeah, I don't expect him to go there either. I think the only thing he hoped to accomplish was "nerd-rage" and "breaking the internet"; instead he's getting labeled as a hack as a writer, and some of what he wrote as bigoted, ignorant and even dangerous. That is what happens when you write something to appeal to internet trolls...

Yes, you do make sense cc008. I read that debate you had - its tough at that other forum.

A couple of things to note.
Tyke almost died and Cyke started to fade. That is the one thing that Bendis and co will cling to to say the characters are the same and there for what is a trait of one is a trait of the other.

Cosmic Angel - if Angel now has cosmic light oriented wings then adult Angel will too but as far as I know, adult Angel has feathers.

It's conflicting for that timeline/universe.

They are just two different people with different experiences and beliefs. It's not universal with them.

I don't know that it was that much of an invasion finding it out, as it seemed little more than a surface thought of the kind we have seen Xavier and a number of others pick up on without even intending to, especially while in telepathic communication. I would imagine thoughts near the surface, especially thoughts we may be about to say or are close to saying would be rather easy to pick up on. Saying "hot" while thinking "not" would be a prime example.

To me, you are making perfect sense. You have plenty of cases of identical twin siblings with identical biology, identical upbringing and identical genetics; and yet one is gay and one is straight or they are of some other variation sexually. There really is no evidence of a so-called "gay gene", there are genes that are found in some people that seem to make them predisposed to be more likely to be gay, but not remotely, definitively so. Obviously development and environment plays some factor.

Whatever his intent, Bendis has clearly bitten off something he is not remotely qualified as a writer to chew, and something that is not even likely to even be accepted by a lot of longtime fans. Bendis: There's no such thing as Chaos Magic! Fans: Yes there is!

Just because a writer or Marvel says something doesn't make it something that fans accept as negating how they have seen things for decades. Look how long Marvel and their writers have been labeling Hank Pym as a wife-beater, yet the fan reaction? Nope, retcon, he hit her once, by accident. They've been trying to label him as a wife-beater for about three decades for storyline purposes and it's never stuck because it's not how most fans see the character.

Most people are saying Bendis is a hack who doesn't know his characters and loves to court sensationalism and controversy, they have said it before this and are saying it even more loudly now. It's not remotely how most comic fans see the character, most X-Men fans or most Iceman fans. People are not buying this as a revelation, but as a transformation and an eradication(to be blunt, teen Bobby upon "coming out" immediately started talking to Jean like she was his, to hopefully use a phrase without offense, "fag hag". It was preposterous.)

I think the problem is trying to make sense of something that makes no sense. Bendis is taking something that was only ever intended as a joke, often in poor taste, and troll-bait; and trying to make something real out of it with predictable results.

So there is an article on Comic Alliance where the guy who wrote it says Marvel HAS to now "out" Adult Iceman or gay teens will read the comic and think there is a cure for being gay and maybe end up killing themselves. And also that if they don't make Adult Iceman gay, teen Iceman might then disappear from the books and then ALL LGBTQ characters will disappear from comics entirely. I'm not joking.

He stopped short of saying Galactus would then show up and eat our planet, but only barely. As one fan put it, they could see why someone might want to kill themselves after reading something Bendis wrote, but not because he made them think being gay could, or even should, be somehow cured.

I hope this stupidity isn't allowed to continue simply out of a mistaken belief that Bendis's bad writing will cause innocent kids to kill themselves. Uggh.

I checked out a few various message boards, a handful of mostly just trolls here and there for it, but most fans totally against it and calling Bendis a hack(I have literally lost count of how many people I have seen use that one word to describe him). That's the danger of thinking CBR somehow represents the majority, or even that the very vocal internet-troll minority faction even represents the majority of all the posters there. The attitudes and opinions loudly expressed in that place are the opposite of the majority in so many ways it is ridiculous. Even a lot of the people who post there can't stand it. And yet Marvel inexplicably continues to cater to the troll element there to the detriment of both their characters and their fans.

I have been impressed with the amount of scans I have seen people posting all over the internet of Iceman's past relationships, with obvious real attraction and lust and love and other emotions and relationship issues at play. Because that's how they were all written at the time. Judy Harmon, Zelda Kurtzberg, Polaris(Lorna Dane), Darkstar(Laynia_Petrovna), Teressa "Terri" Sue Bottoms, Cloud(with the form and some memories belonging to Carol Faber), Mirage(daughter of Oblivion), Infectia (Josephine), Lev, Opal Tanaka, Firestar(Angelica Jones) Mystique(Raven Darkholme) and Shadowcat(Kitty Pryde) and that's not counting Rogue from the X-Men Movies(and Ultimate Universe) that STILL has a huge ship/following, or his near relationship with Emma Frost that Marvel stupidly stopped against the writer's wishes before it even got started good. Much like Doctor Who fans have their favorite "companions", Iceman fans traditionally have favorite ex-girlfriends, and love when those relationships get revisited or rekindled again in some way. It is a large part of the character's appeal, I even took note of it in the brief bio I wrote for his appreciation thread here.

I have read all of those issues, followed him through the ups and downs of all of that for decades as the stories were published and even went back and bought(in some form) the back issues published before I was born, and to see all that just permanently swept away... As Writer Majorie Liu delicately put it, while she would support Marvel if they did decide to make the character gay(and you pretty much have to say that in this sensitive climate or risk being mistakenly called a bigot), that he was created as straight, written as straight for fifty years, she sees him as straight and wrote him as straight.

That's the problem with retcons. You don't get to go back and rewrite fifty years of past issues, you just have to say black is now white, up is now down, and hope people will just accept it. Except reading any of those issues and stories and imaging Iceman as secretly gay the whole time just doesn't ring even remotely true. Even the trolls only get to their belief by glossing over vast chunks of the character's history to focus on out of context minutia, much like the story of the three blind men touching different parts of an elephant and each describing it as a different animal.


Bendis has already stated he is not done with this story(I'm sure he meant that as some sort of promise of a good thing but many have taken it as a threat), and will apparently be continuing it in some way himself post-Secret Wars. I felt so bad for Peter Milligan when he had to try and find some explanation, as best he could in the Doop mini-series, for why Kitty just broke up with Bobby out of nowhere at the end of Battle of the Atom on Bendis's orders. No one should have to clean up Bendis's messes.

I agree with you totally. He seems to leave mostly forgettable stories and damaged characters in his wake, increasingly crafting his stories with the intent of, to use his own words, provoking "nerd-rage" and "breaking the internet". He should, if Marvel had any sense, be fired. I've certainly seen some fans now calling for it.