Fri. November 6, 2015
X-Man Iceman, a.k.a. Bobby Drake, came out gay on Wednesday in the pages of Uncanny X-Men No. 600.
In All-New X-Men No. 40, released in April, a younger version of the character revealed he's gay.
Writing at Vox.com, Alex Abad-Santos explains that Iceman's coming out "is actually the end of a complicated story, and the end of writer Brian Michael Bendi's run on the X-Men."
"Thanks to the power of time travel, there are now two Beasts, two Cyclopses, two Icemen, two Angels, and one Jean Grey – it makes for weird interactions because the younger versions of these original X-Men are often at odds with their older selves," he wrote.
And so it was with Iceman, whose older self is dating female teammate Kitty Pryde.
In Uncanny X-Men, older Iceman is confronted by his younger self about his sexual orientation.
"[T]he years go by and it gets easier to put that part of yourself away," older Iceman says. "And then you do things to see if maybe you're straight."
In the end, Iceman was simply suppressing his sexuality.
Iceman is not the comic book's first high-profile gay character. In 2012, Northstar married his boyfriend.
(Related: Gay superhero Northstar wedding inspires comic book store ceremony.)
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