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

If you're referencing my actual naming of characters, I can name more. Those were just the three off the top of my head.
But I'm not going to argue anymore with you.

Northstar has "at least been there" for quite a while now. He's been pretty much consistently used in the X-Men for the past decade (at least).

Marvel fails at what they are doing because they CHOOSE NOT TO DO IT RIGHT.
You can argue that all you WANT, but it will remain the way it is.

Sure, they can take the lazy and easy way out by switching around/replacing well known characters. But it's cheap as Hell, and it won't work in the long run.

And, yes, Ms. Marvel is proof that people will give new characters a chance. IF they are done WELL. And effort has been put into the character.

Sweet Jesus. Is it really that hard to believe?

Oh, Tiamatty, I'm not going to argue with you.
I'll get just rage-y, and that would not be good for either of us.

Let's just leave it at agreeing to disagree for now.

Oopsie.
Tiamatty was referring to Icefanatic.
Sorry.
Looks like he has it covered.

Carry on then.

I would disagree with most of the characters you named here being all that popular. They have fans, but not a lot. I mean, it's not like Alpha Flight's last book did well. Or the last volume of New Mutants. Savage Dragon sells less than 10 000 copies per issue. Witchblade is down to the same spot. There aren't large numbers of people asking for a Generation X reunion, and the books those characters appear in don't seem to get any particular bump as a result. X-Man is far from popular. Laura's the most popular comic character you mentioned, and she's literally a clone of Wolverine. TMNT are popular because of the cartoon, not the comics - the comic is vastly different from the cartoon.

iceman does still stand a vastly better chance of being used than Northstar, or any other LGBT character Marvel has. Which reminds me: A common argument is that Marvel should use the characters they have. Does that mean writers should be forced to use certain characters? I'm sure we all agree that writers should use the characters they want to use, not be told which ones they have to use. But that's where things get tricky. Every character is someone's favourite, but few characters are everyone's favourite. There are writers who love Northstar, but there are at least as many who have no strong opinion on him, and aren't really interested in writing him. I would bet there are a lot more writers interested in writing Iceman. So there's a much, much higher likelihood of Iceman being used without any sort of editorial fiat.

I doubt Bendis is going to make it so that Iceman was always aware of his sexuality. It is worth remembering that we only have the first part of the story, and there's still another issue of ANXM, and another issue of UXM, and that it's something that will also continue to be explored after Secret Wars. There's a lot of room here for exploration. I'm confident Bendis will tell an interesting story about it. I generally have a middle-of-the-road view of Bendis. I found his Avengers work to be bland, and his GotG is the same, but I've thoroughly enjoyed his X-Men work. And it's worth remembering that Bendis is by no means going to be the end of the story, either. Other writers will pick up on it. There's a good chance that this will lead to more Iceman-centric stories, simply because it opens up some stories that have to be told, and there will be no shortage of writers who want to tell those stories. Regardless, it's probably worth holding off on some of the rage until we actually see where Bendis is going with the story. It very well may turn out that Iceman is bisexual. It may be that Teen Bobby is "full gay," and Adult Iceman is bisexual. It may be that Teen Bobby is gay, and Adult Iceman is straight. We just don't know, and we won't know, most likely, until UXM #600 at the soonest (since Bendis has said there will be some follow-up there).

Well, I just heard from a diehard Darkstar fan this morning who is devastated. Her relationship with Iceman was the character's only real relationship(he said by Bendis's warped reasoning, that makes her obviously even gayer than Iceman). Their relationship is one he and a lot of Darkstar's fans have been shipping for decades(in his case, since the late '70s, longer than I have even been an Iceman fan). He said he was always thrilled when it was touched on in the comics, and kept hoping to see them back together at some point. He said it literally felt like Bendis had come to his house and killed something that was precious to him, and is swearing to never buy anything by Bendis, or even another Marvel comic, not even one that has Darkstar in it, ever again.

I'm not a diehard Darkstar fan myself, but I do like the character(Champions forever!), and have always enjoyed whenever Marvel did anything that touched on it; and I will be very sad if it is in any way negated and rewritten, never to be revisited again.

tiamatty
Iceman has had only two, four-issue miniseries, published decades apart, and neither sold all that well. If he had an ongoing, which unlike most of the characters I named he has never been considered popular enough to even have(although Marvel has considered giving him one more than once), there is sadly no way it would be selling better than any of the comics whose sales figures you quoted unless it was given a creative dream-team that would bring their own following to the book.

I think you are right in that we all need to perhaps take a step back and see what comes next. For those of us heavily invested in some of Iceman's relationships, if feels like we were just attacked, maybe struck a mortal blow, someplace vital(and after years of trolling on CBR some of us are rather sensitive in this area to begin with); and we are reacting accordingly. Bendis likes to "provoke nerd-rage" and "break the internet", so he clearly went about this in the way most designed to do that. Who knows what his, or even Marvel's, ultimate plans and intentions are.




I didn't have a problem with Ultimate Colossus being made gay, because it was a new character in a new universe, and didn't try to rewrite his history or relationships with characters like Kitty that I had been reading in 616 marvel for years. I even said at the time that if they wanted a gay version of Iceman, that would be the perfect way and time to do it.

I think people can handle, for the most part, different versions of different characters. Ultimate & Cinematic Nick Fury is black, in 616 Marvel and most other iterations he is white. Johnny Storm in the comics is white, and in the previous FF movies, but in the new one he will be black. It may make some people's heads explode trying to follow that, but most fans can handle it.

In the last few years alone, we have had in the comics, 616 Iceman, Teen Iceman, Ice Hulk(a sentient creation of iceman at one point thought to BE Iceman), Ice Master( a future Wizard-like Iceman), Age of Apocalypse Iceman (who became a bitter villain and would have made a great foil for 616 Iceman as an enemy but that sadly never came to pass because no one at Marvel ever bothers to do things like that to help develop Iceman as a character), Ultimate Iceman, and even a somewhat different version in the movies.

I think people would for the most part like and embrace a young, gay version of the character, if it didn't come at the expense of the existing character's history and relationships that a lot of people already like, even love, just as they are.

No offense intended, but if you believe the part I bolded you have been living under a rock drinking Marvel and Bendis Koolaid until it comes out your ears. To be fair, I once did the same thing.

Bendis has openly admitted in interviews to crafting stories designed to "provoke nerdrage" to outage longtime fans and stir up anger, and creating outrage and controversy to "break the internet". Bendis has become very interactive with the troll contingent at CBR, even the ones who have gotten so bad they were even banned even from a place as bad as that, via his tumblr. Trolls who have been labeling Iceman as a closet homosexual for years as an excuse to insult him("he's pathetic", "he's a joke", "he's a loser", he's not even straight enough to be a real man", and a long, long list of others) as a way to troll and attack his fanbase. He has been putting things into the comics in recent years at their request to be used as troll fodder in scans to insult the character and harass his fans and they have openly bragged about getting him to do it and even thanked him for it openly.

Even Bendis and Marvel claiming they didn't want this leaked is a obvious lie to everyone who follows comics. Alonzo claimed it in an interview, Bendis via twitter: "i swear on my dogs, i wanted the issue to come out and just be. no press. no sensational headlines. no leaks. oh, well..." Bendis courts publicity like a shameless lover, and so does current Marvel. This was an obvious leak, else there would not have been just the two pages put on 4chan, the whole issue would have been leaked as is common with legitimate leaks. Marvel and Bendis wanted the leak, but wanted people to still buy the issue.

Even many LGBTQ posters who follow comics, and want more representation, posting on other forums and discussion areas aren't buying that Bendis or Marvel is trying to do anything positive with this; with many calling it "pandering", "insulting", "offensive" and even "dangerous", and have called his stated reasons for why the character might be a closeted homosexual the worst kind of "stereotyping" and "homophobic reasoning"; something Iceman fans have been saying for years about the troll comments on CBR, which Bendis foolishly put some of into the comic itself, making people who don't even follow comics wonder if he is suffering from homophobia by believe those things would mean someone is gay.

This is no different than Brian Wood acting like he was some kind of an advocate for treating women with respect, and setting himself up as some kind of champion of women and female characters; when in reality he was the exact opposite, harassing and treating women like shit until it finally after many years, got dragged out into the open.

Don't believe everything Marvel or Bendis says, they are frequently full of shit.

In one of the UXM Battle of the Atom issues, Bendis wrote Emma making a comment about people on message boards. Cannot recall the exact quote, but I could find it. It is at the very end. Anyway, there is proof that Bendis trollS and stirs shit intentionally.