THAWING OUT... five years later

Reflections on Iceman's first volume, his journey as a gay man, and my journey as a writer

Christopher Corbo had a peculiar item on his Christmas wishlist for boyfriend Mark Orr. Instead of asking for a queer banger album on colored vinyl, or designer slippers, Chris wanted an out of print X-Men comic that today is five years old. He wanted my first Iceman collected edition, Thawing Out. Full transparency: this isn’t some kind of NPR story submission, Mark and Chris are my friends and the latter wanted to read the book that is my highest profile work to date. He gobbled the book up before the last Christmas meal was set on the table, and I asked him what he thought.

“Am I allowed to be honest? Lol”

We had a completely frank conversation about a book that I love but can wholeheartedly admit is not perfect. From a production standpoint, there are three artists for a five issue story arc. From a continuity standpoint, we were deep in the weeds of X-Men lore… time-displaced young versions of existing characters, legacy characters ultra dead af, and a handful of random mutants being touted as “Omega-level.” It was a great time for folks who kept up with every single story, but more than a bit confusing for anyone just walking in.

On top of all that, you have me, a writer who had certainly done multiple long-form projects, but never under the scrutiny of a loyal fan base, angry internet critics, and an editorial team who wanted the book to be just right but also wanted to point out that it was a low priority in a high-stakes creative overhaul. A great comic doesn’t happen from perfect circumstances, it emerges in spite of terrible circumstances. Marvel asked me to do the “Coming Out to the parents” story as the big arc. I had some parameters in place (I couldn’t use Emma Frost at that time, and I couldn’t touch what Bendis did with the character’s initial coming out a year or two prior). I did my best with that first volume, but I will be the first to admit that it’s tonally awkward at times and rough around the edges.

Maybe that’s what actually works about the story, right? When you’re finally testing the waters as your true self, it happens in fits and spurts. I’m thinking about this for a friend who’s coming out as trans, and for friends getting deeper into drag and cosplay, and even friends leaning into their kinky identities or non-traditional relationships. Embracing your identity can have moments of shining bright and true, and also being sent three steps back and contorting to other people’s expectations like that *snap*. I would say those were the most difficult issues of Iceman to write, but I think the two issues after were actually the hardest (I’ll be the first to admit, that Champions reunion could not for the life of me fit/ work). It was tricky writing what I felt was a truthful journey (being beholden to your hag’s feelings, your dad talking like Archie Bunker even though it’s 2017), but I stuck to what I felt was true and I think that’s why the book DID do well in the book market…. so much so that even though volume one is out of print, I still make decent royalties from folks grabbing the digital version on kindle and whatnot.

I’m trying to recall specific things about the release of the book, but like a bad breakup I’ve archived those memories in a vault that’s hard to access. I remember being really disappointed by the timing of the book’s launch… that Marvel would not be able to stack the book market numbers in sorting out the overall series’ success (orders would already be due for the last issue by the book’s release). Thawing Out was coming out AFTER Christmas, meaning no queers could gift it to the Christopher Corbos in their lives. I had come from years of working with Robert Kirkman on all things Walking Dead and Invincible, so I had firsthand knowledge of how the book market worked and how to actually give a title a fighting chance. I admit I was precocious in advocating for myself, so I’m grateful that folks at Marvel actually listened to my complaints instead of telling me to shut the fuck up. With five years’ distance from it all, I understand why Marvel truly had so many other things to worry about. The X-Men weren’t even owned by Disney at that point, so there was no incentive to prop up a risky solo title from the X-books.

None of this is meant to be a dig at Marvel Comics. I’ve already said anything negative about that experience I’ve had to say, and I’m more interested in using this substack to discuss meaningful lessons I’ve learned from making comic books for nearly fifteen years.

So let’s focus on the positive, or interesting tidbits…

• “Bad Romance” I was trying to set up Iceman and Daken like a will-they/ won’t-they couple or like a Damien and Elena a la Vampire Diaries. My first editor on the book said, “every writer thinks the most important story is the love story. You have a more important story to tell.” He and Marvel were right. Bobby Drake being single and fabulous question mark while reconciling why his coming out journey happened a little later in life is way more fascinating than pairing him with the wily son of wolverine. I feel like I hit that stride in the third volume.

• “Third should’ve been first” time + distance have me thinking that maybe the book market folks at Marvel were right… the third volume, “Amazing Friends” should have been a new volume one. I fought HARD to make it a volume 3, as all three books work as a whole story and fans would want all three on the shelf like a collection. Five years later, however, I’d very much rather folks pick up that third volume if they want the peak Iceman story, but people are turned off by the idea of grabbing a random volume 3 and not a volume 1.

• “Big Bads Are Hard” The series was greenlit on the emotional vibe rather than the point a to point b story arc. We didn’t know how many issues we’d have, and I was more focused on Bobby Drake’s emotional journey that we didn’t really know who his rogues gallery would be. Low key? I think we picked Juggernaut as the first arc bad guy because he was on the cover of issue one and not totally tied up in some bigger storyline. We ran into that challenge a lot, finding bad guys powerful enough to keep Iceman on his toes, but not so powerful that it wasn’t just a job for the X-Men.

• “Strictly for my Pitches” I actually found the original pitch document for the Iceman series, because I was trying to analyze what worked about it and how it got me the green light. All I can share with you is that I had a very clear approach to how I wanted to handle the character. If you know where you want your protagonist to go thematically, it makes arranging the conflicts a lot easier, because then the character’s goal just have to be at odds with whoever’s challenging them along the way. Daken made a great antagonist because Bobby wanted to have a tidy life where everyone likes him while he sorts his shit out, and Daken confidently writhes in life’s messiness.

• “Dirty Daken Jokes” There’s a scene where Daken and Bobby are dancing, and Bobby asks “you know what the nice thing about hating you is?” The original retort from Daken was “it makes the sex feel great?” Or something. My editor was like “Yeah we can’t use that joke, it’s too raunchy.” And I was like, “I figured, but I’m glad the other dirty jokes are cool!” And he was like “WHAT OTHER DIRTY JOKES?” Me being the good guy I am, fessed up to two other disgusting sleazeball lines from Daken. Iceman says something about Daken doing a five finger discount to steal clothes, and he says “I only needed three,” and then in the scene where a bunch of ice golems attack Daken, he originally said a line like “I’m not into group play.”

• “Snowflake” There was a moment in the Iceman rollout where internet trolls were calling me a snowflake or some slur. I’d already written issue four before the name-calling happened, so the scene of Bobby flinging a gigantic snowflake at Daken was already mapped out. Much like the f-slur, it felt like a little victory to incidentally and proactively reclaim a nasty term being used against me. Queer people are strong and unique, and that which makes us delicate happens to be our greatest weapon. It’s like bottom shaming… you’re fucking stupid to think that taking a massive dong is anything less than omega-level behavior.

• “The ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” Bobby using that old school emoji encapsulated the entirety of the project for me. An older generation character trying to give off chill vibes and low key succeeding by leaning into the elder millennial of it all. I got that tattooed on my hand to commemorate the entire experience without having any specific corporate branding on me.

  So yeah… FIVE YEARS! What else can I say about it? What else do people want to know??