Marvel Comics Is Bringing Its Openly Gay Iceman Back to His Own Solo Comic Book Series
LGBT fans were excited to learn that Iceman, Marvel’s frosty X-Man, was coming out as gay back in 2015. But despite him kicking some bigoted butt in the first issue, his standalone 2017 series was cancelled less than a dozen issues later. Well fear not, frost fans, because we’re going to see Iceman return on Sept. 12, 2018, back to a standalone series, and gay writer Sina Grace (who wrote the prior Iceman standalone) will be in charge of writing the new issues, too.
According to Marvel.com, the new Iceman standalone series will focus on hero Bobby Drake preventing a mutant massacre by hunting down whoever is brutally slaying a group of underground mutants known as the Morlocks. Iceman will be joined by Bishop, an energy absorbing X-Man from the future with a cybernetic arm.
“I’m amazed that the series connected with an audience so much that we defied odds and got another arc,” Grace says of the gay comics series.
Grace says that after the first Iceman standalone series was cancelled he continued to get direct messages from fans on social media and his workplace e-mail telling him how much of a personal impact the comic had on them.
“When the letters kept coming after the final issue … that was when I had to ask, “Is this the impact other superhero books have on their readers?”
Grace revealed that X-Women Kitty Pride and Jubilee will make an appearance in the new comic and that Iceman will continue to unlock new powers, especially since he became more comfortable with his sexuality following the first standalone series.
When the first Iceman series was cancelled, Grace explained in a handwritten letter posted on Twitter that “at the end of the day, solo X-titles are a hard sell for retailers.”
