Tag Archives: Rictor

Review: Iceman #11

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ICEMAN #11 1Sina Grace ends his run on Iceman with a strong standalone story where Bobby overcomes his neuroses, freakouts about his past and possibly leading his own X-Men team, and a trigger happy team-up buddy in Rictor to help his parents’ neighbor, Mr. Poklemba, come to terms with being a mutant. Robert Gill and Rachelle Rosenberg handle the art duties for the main story while Grace does his first Marvel interiors with flashbacks of Bobby’s life as a young boy and X-Man as he comes to terms with being both a mutant and gay. Grace looks at how religion can (Catholicism in Bobby’s case.) influence one’s coming out as queer in a negative way and provides a fuller look at

Even if Iceman #11 deals with some heavy subject matter, like a priest repudiating young Bobby Drake’s status as a mutant and his parents discussing if they did something wrong with him to be one, Grace and Gill don’t abandon the comedy and dad jokes. After a one page cold open of Bobby’s ideal life, they cut to an extremely awkward pho “date” featuring him and Rictor where they talk about their exes way too much Also, lunch dates are the unsexiest of all dates.

One of my qualms with Iceman as a series has been Bobby’s  lack of interactions with other queer superhero  in a non-hostile way (*cough* Daken), and Grace and Gill remedy this in Iceman #11. Bobby and Rictor banter about how Iceman’s neurotic jokes might be a little bit of a turn-off and then they get to go on a mission together and talk the mutantphobic, telekinetic mutant Mr. Poklemba off the ledge. Rictor sees this team-up as a straight-up neutralizing a violent mutant adventure of the week while it’s more personal for Bobby. Either way, Rosenberg’s scarlet palette coming from a house is never a good sign.

NotAMutant

Sina Grace, Robert Gill, and Rachelle Rosenberg hit the right sweet spot between action spectacle and character introspection in Iceman #11. There’s a sort of silly scene where Rictor is getting tired of Bobby musing over how to reach out to Mr. Poklemba and is about to just knock the new mutant out, and Gill draws a montage of Bobby offering him an ice flower and wearing an ice helmet and wielding an ice sword until he finally ices down, introduces himself as Bobby and Madeline’s kid, and generally interacts with Poklemba on a human level.

Mr. Poklemba is pretty terrible with a house that is the opposite of clean, press clippings about all the bad things the X-Men have done, and has a religious hatred towards mutants, but Bobby doesn’t attack him and tries to help him through a heart to heart conversation. These scenes exhibit his growth as a character, and why he would make a great X-Men team leader because he chooses empathy over brute force and uses his abilities to defuse situations and not ramp them up. For example,  because he has the ability to manipulate the temperature of water molecules, he tells Mr. Poklemba to lower his body temperature so that the rage fueling his ability subsides. He is calm and a helping hand (And has a great ass, I had to.) in the middle of a storm and helps Poklemba  realize that maybe being a mutant isn’t as bad as he thought. Just because you have powers doesn’t mean you have to be a superhero or terrorist.

Iceman #11 has insightful flashbacks where Sina Grace shows his skill as an artist and riffs off the style of Jack Kirby, (possibly) Steve Ditko for the sad young Bobby at home scenes, Jim Lee, and even Stuart Immonen plus a plot featuring a one two-punch of cool ice/earthquake powers and human empathy. The series as a whole has been up and down, but Grace, Robert Gill, and Rachelle Rosenberg end it on a positive note with Bobby starting to realize his potential as both an X-Man and a single, gay man.

Story: Sina Grace Art: Robert Gill, Sina Grace Cover: Kevin Wada
Color: Rachelle Rosenberg Letterer: VC’s Joe Sabino
Graphic Designers: Jay Bowen, Anthony Gambino
Group Editor: Mark Paniccia Editor: Chris Robinson Consulting Editor: Darren Shan
Story: 8.2 Art: 8.6 Overall: 8.4 Recommendation: Buy

Marvel Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

X-Factor Become Union Busters

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Originally Posted at Crooks and Liars

In issue 225 of the Marvel comics series X-Factor, writer Peter David portrays the team of super-powered mutants as scabs who help a contractor in his attempt at union busting. While the anti-union segment isn’t a key part of the issue’s story, it is the lead in:

Jamie Madrox, X-Factor leader: We’re not proud of every job we take. Not all of them allow us to seize the moral high ground. In fact…a lot of them don’t. Sometimes you just need to pay the bills.

Contractor: Look…this place has been condemned! I have a contract with the city to tear it down.

Union member: And a contract with our union to do the job!

Contractor: But I don’t need all of you! If you’d just accept the offer for half of —

Union member: No deal!

Contractor: You’re just trying to strong-arm–

Union member: We’re just trying to get what we’re due!

Contractor: Look…you’re forcing me to–

Union member: To what? Hire scabs? Good luck with that. And what’ll you use to take it down? Explosives? Wrecking ball? You can’t do that without union talent.

Contractor: Actually, it turns out I can. Okay. Do it.

The next sequence shows X-Factor member Rictor uses his earthquake-making powers to bring down the building that needed demolition. This portion of the story is written specifically to show that Rictor, who had lost his powers for years, had regained them and to re-establish how powerful he is. In terms of the story, it’s an important moment, and the labor segment of it seems like little more than an aside.

As written, these few pages make it look like either we have two sides of a dispute that are just in a disagreement or that the labor union members are greedy and want to get more from the contractor than he can afford. But there are numerous problems here. The first is it’s clear that there is a contract in place and that union members are the only ones willing to live up to their half of the contract. Second is the idea that the contractor is willing to not only hire scabs, but to hire them despite no evidence that they have the ability to do the job and are, in fact, quite possibly very dangerous:

Madrox: Rictor swore that he could use his earthquake powers to emulate the actions of a controlled implosiong. I was a little worried since he’s only recently reacquired his powers.

Rictor’s boss isn’t even sure he can do the highly dangerous job, but the “hero” is willing to take the job for the money, regardless of the consequences for the safety of the people involved or the livelihood of the workers.

Some might argue that this might be too much to read into a comic book, but it’s obvious that younger readers often form their opinions about new concepts, such as unions, from the popular culture they consume. This casual anti-unionism from David and Marvel is particularly disappointing because David is usually a very progressive writer and Marvel comics are known for their themes, particularly in their mutant comic books, that promote equality and fairness.