quintessentialgaymutant
quintessentialgaymutant
Mutant And Proud
4K posts
The name is Michael. He/Him. Indo-Canadian. I reblog things from the various fandoms I'm in. I’m very gay. #1 Bobby Drake stan.
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quintessentialgaymutant · 4 days ago
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ClaudeShez modern AU where it doesn't take fratricide for Claude to get drunk
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quintessentialgaymutant · 7 days ago
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Bobby Drake is the inimitable Iceman, a gay hero gifted w/ the mutant power to generate, manipulate & even transform into ice, at will; one of the five original students of Professor Charles Xavier's mutant student body, he got his start as a young hero in his teens; and though he's aided many other teams of heroes to fight evil & save the day (ie the Defenders, Champions and Fantastic Four), his first & closest cause is fighting the oppression of mutants, alongside the X-Men (+ adjacent teams like X-Factor & the Marauders of Krakoa)!
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quintessentialgaymutant · 10 days ago
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Day 12 is one of my favorite drawings so far and it’s of Iceman (Bobby Drake)!
Previous | Next
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quintessentialgaymutant · 15 days ago
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Bobby Drake Being a Sexy Gay Icon in the 80s
Just to brighten your day here are a bunch of half (or more) naked Bobbys:
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We stan a gay legend
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quintessentialgaymutant · 16 days ago
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beep beep gay coming through
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quintessentialgaymutant · 17 days ago
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quintessentialgaymutant · 21 days ago
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So… about the saizo and laslow supports
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quintessentialgaymutant · 22 days ago
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Bobby Drake - Iceman
Happy Pride everyone! kicking it off with something bold, tis the season
Sparkle on, don't forget to be yourself etc
Twitter
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quintessentialgaymutant · 27 days ago
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Bobby drake wallpaper I made.
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quintessentialgaymutant · 30 days ago
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the chanel boots!!!
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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Iceman's Queer History and Analysis Part 3- How Queer Fan Letters Fundamentally Impacted Bobby's Writing
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Fan letters, what would we do without them? This post will chronicle how fan letters sent to the X-Men Office at Marvel way back in the early 90s shaped and defined Bobby’s writing during that era and beyond.
Between the strong queer readings of Bobby in his first mini series and his New Defenders arc, fans really began theorizing about Bobby. Could he really be closeted? What would happen if that were true and he were to come out? 
Needless to say, many queer fans saw their experiences in Bobby. His need to conform to norms around what it meant to be a man, his conflicting feelings on Cloud and his disapproving, conservative parents all painted a picture that looked familiar to many queer readers.
As stated earlier, queer readers didn’t have explicit representation or visibility in mainstream comics. Mainstream media as a whole was extremely hostile towards queer folks, and gay men in particular were heavily villainized during this time, due to the burgeoning AIDs epidemic.
Merskin (1998) and other social scholars describe a specific form of erasure known as symbolic annihilation. Symbolic annihilation is when marginalized voices are systematically excluded and not integrated or celebrated within mainstream media and culture.
This could look like growing up in a culture that barely celebrates queerness or shows it; a culture where queer children grow up only seeing heterosexuality as the idealized default, and queerness as a secondary class. We still very much live in a world where this is the reality queer people have to navigate, and the media plays a pivotal role in reproducing this hierarchy.
One way in which queer people respond to and adapt to symbolic annihilation is by “queering” popular culture. Warren (2022) describes this as an inherent resistance towards the dominant discourses of culture, in which queer readings of largely heteronormative characters and situations are recognized. 
Regardless of its content or form, media fundamentally exists to be interpreted by the audience. If meaning is to be created from the information presented in stories, images, and representations, it is audiences who must perform the work of interpretation (Warren, 2022). 
By reading queerness within heteronormative situations and characters, fans cultivate additional layers of meaning to existing texts by not only creating new narratives (and understandings), but occasionally by influencing the creatives who are responsible for the content itself (Collier et al., 2009). 
Ultimately, it can be reasonably conjectured that theorizing and creating queer interpretations of heteronormative texts are natural responses to a cultural context where queer lives are erased or left in the periphery. This is what happened with Bobby in the 80s; more than a few queer fans saw their experiences in his narratives and themes and interpreted the possibility of queerness in his character conflicts. 
Shortly after the 90s era of comics began, a new slew of writers came in and replaced the likes of Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. These were Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell. Before analyzing the texts that these creatives wrote pertaining to Bobby, it is important to give queer fans recognition.
First, these writers were very aware of the queer readings, Fabian Nicieza himself confirmed this in 2018: 
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As stated above by Fabian Nicieza; these queer readings were so prevalent that the writers themselves caught wind of what Bobby meant to queer fans and actively had discussions about outing him, but it was just not the right time. Another important note was the modality in which these requests and theories were communicated: fan letters.
Before the age of the internet, this was the main way audiences could contact creators. If you were really lucky, your letter would get printed and responded to at the end of an issue! Fabian here confirms that many fans wrote in asking about Bobby being gay.
Scott Lobdell, was the other main 90s era writer, and he was Bobby’s major writer during the 90s. He wrote some of the most impactful and resonant Bobby storylines that defined the public perception of the character. I messaged him a few years back asking about these fan letters.
He told me he was not directly part of the discussions Fabian mentioned above, but he did see the fan letters and they actually prompted a lot of Bobby’s storylines during this pivotal era:
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Scott’s writing and his various comments around Bobby as a metaphor for the struggle gay people face will be the subject of the next post. And there will be a lot covered there, but the purpose of this post was to showcase the marriage between fan letters about Bobby being read as gay and the text itself. 
Suffice to say, Bobby wouldn’t have had the major stories going forward next if it were not for queer fans reading him as a closeted gay man and sending letters to the writers about it.
Those letters then impacted the trajectory of the writing, as Lobdell used those readings to write Bobby with intentional parallels to the closeted gay experience, as a powerful metaphor; this would be expanded on and written with more direct queer intentionality by subsequent writers. 
To me, this is deeply significant. There is no other character in history who has been that defined and influenced by queer fan readings. His various themes around not reaching his potential and repressing what he truly feels inside in order to conform to society’s scripts around normalcy really started in a significant way here, in the 90s era. And as Lobdell says: much of this was prompted by the letters queer fans sent, corroborating Nicieza’s statement as well.
Eventually, all of Bobby’s biggest writers from Lobdell to Austen to Carey to Liu all play into the fan readings to varying degrees: from metaphor to intentional subtext, but it all started here.
I will leave you with this Vito Russo quote, from his seminal work The Celluloid Closet (1987): 
It was gay sensibility that, for example, often enabled some lesbians and gay men to see at very early ages–even before they knew the words for what they were–something on the screen that they knew related to their lives in some way, without being able to put a finger on it. 
Often it was the simple recognition of difference, the sudden understanding that something was altered or not what it should be, perhaps the role reversal of a Dietrich or a Garbo evoking a hidden truth about the nature of sexuality in general. 
Or it may have been the tone in James Dean’s voice as he zipped up the jacket of the dead Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause and muttered, ‘Poor kid… he was always cold.’ 
It was the sense of longing that existed in such scenes, the unspoken, forbidden feelings that were always present, always denied.
It said, ‘This has something to do with your life,’ and it was a voice that could not be ignored, even though the pieces did not fall into place until years later.
Also here are some fan letters that got printed, the first is mine and the second is my best friend’s! We actually met because of Iceman in 2017, and have been close friends since. These were written to Sina Grace, the writer of Bobby’s first solo ongoing series
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Last is one of the most impactful fan letters, a woman writes in about her gay brother, who sadly passed away from leukemia. This letter has been well known and circulated amongst the fandom for decades, as it truly crystalizes what these characters have meant to marginalized fans, way back then and still to this day.
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If the above is hard to read, here is a relevant excerpt:
For reasons I can't remember, he told me that his sexual orientation was one of the reasons why he has always liked the X-Men - because they were mutants, hated and feared by society for just being what they were. I asked him which characters were gay, thinking after he was gone, I'd learn about my brother through them. He said he didn't know of any gay characters in the X-Men. It didn't matter to him, he said. I could see why. He was the blue-furred Beast that people glared at. He was Rogue, afraid to touch other people. He even told me he was the Iceman, bragging to his friends about women that he lusted after, but really insecure deep down inside.
Now that he's gone, I have his comic books. I don't know enough about comics to know if there are homosexual characters or stories about homosexuality out there, so I can't tell how rare I think your work is. I do know that I've seen in the few of your issues that I've read that you've had courage enough to stand up for gay rights, at a time when no amount of political correctness would compel you to do so. I've seen your sympathy for AIDS victims with your Legacy Virus stories. I've seen letters from gay people expressing how important your book is to them.
References
Collier, N. R., Lumadue, C. A., & Wooten, H. R. (2009). Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess: Reception of the texts by a sample of lesbian fans and web site users. Journal of Homosexuality, 56(5), 575-609.
Merskin D (1998). Sending up signals: A survey of Native American media use and representation in the mass media. Howard Journal of Communications, 9, 333–345.
Russo, V. (1987). The celluloid closet: Homosexuality in the movies (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Warren, J.K. (2022). Queering the Looking-Glass Self: Media and Identity in Queer Fandom. Retrieved from: https://scholars.csus.edu/esploro/outputs/graduate/Queering-the-Looking-Glass-Self-Media-and/99257922963401671/filesAndLinks?index=0
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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More old art. I was partial to the blue team but I knew the gold team had the heavy hitters.
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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Iceman Queer History and Analysis Part 2- The New Defenders
The Defenders have historically been an underlooked team, usually filled in by B or C list Marvel heroes that often did not fit in other books. Upon Claremont’s triumphant relaunch of the Uncanny X-Men titles, many of the Silver Age pieces of the X-Men books were either written out or retconned into something that allowed for more depth. Famous examples include Magneto being a holocaust survivor as opposed to the moustache twirling villain he was; Jean Grey being the most powerful of the X-Men, and Scott Summers' origin being masterfully concocted by the dreaded Mr. Sinister.
Bobby, Hank and Warren were largely written out of the X-Men titles during this time, and often floundered in secondary, underlooked teams like The Defenders, and The Champions before that. J.M Dematteis was the main writer of The Defenders for a long time, and was transitioning out of the book in the mids 80s, around the same time he was writing the Iceman mini series analyzed in the last post.
Replacing Dematteis is a writer by the name of Peter B Gillis, who similarly to the book itself, to me, feels like an underlooked writer at Marvel to this day. He was incredibly ahead of his time and his contributions to queer visibility during a time when queerness was null and invisible in mainstream comics, often goes underappreciated. 
Upon his takeover, the book was rebranded into The New Defenders, and he was given a fresh cast of characters, which included Beast, Angel, Iceman Valkyrie, Moondragon and Cloud, amongst others. It should be noted that the last 4 characters are now canon queer characters and I believe it’s safe to say that Gillis’ work paved the way for that development. 
The central, connective piece of queerness amongst the cast is a character by the name of Cloud. Cloud, initially in Dematteis’ run, was a new character he had just introduced to the book, before he left the title. He has stated that he never got to do much with her but it was Gillis who developed her true origins and character conflict, soon after he took over the book from Dematteis (Graymalkin Lane, 2022). 
An important piece of queer comics trivia: Cloud’s story was inspired by a real life trans woman who was friends with Peter B Gillis, and he used that perspective to explore sexuality in the book, using a science fiction angle, and apparently he had to fight editorial quite hard to do this (Hedge Coke, 2018).
Using science fiction to explore queerness is rather well documented in comics, a lot of queer depictions of love or gender fluidity often involve aliens, shapeshifters, deities or gods. Characters like Xavin, Mystique, Morph, Loki, etc all have some roots with this schema. This approach allows writers to explore queer themes rather explicitly, while hiding under the veil of fantasy, in order to separate reality and fiction, and not alienate homophobic audiences. 
Marvel's beloved and first ever gay relationship of Wiccan and Hulkling was initially conceptualized with Hulkling being a shapeshifting alien who would have a similar narrative that Cloud had; he would question his gender identity due to his feelings for Wiccan. The gay writer who created Hulkling and Wiccan: Alan Heinberg, thought this was the only way he could convey a gay couple, that the editors and audiences would never accept an actual gay couple, fortunately he was incorrect (The Gay Times, 2011). Early stories like The New Defenders, likely paved the way for a cultural shift that allowed queer stories to go from plausibly deniable fantasy fiction queer, to explicitly queer.
The fantasy/science fiction approach may seem a bit regressive but this was the best many writers could do, especially in the 80s, when simply being openly queer could get you put in jail, lynched or disowned. 
Thus, viewing these choices with a modern lens, while useful, may undermine realities of the time these stories took place; realities that set the foundation for the progress we have today. 
The fact that this story and character were inspired by a real trans woman, and used to explore non normative (queer) sexual desires is an important piece of queer comics history, and set the stage for the canon representation and exploration of Iceman and Moondragon as queer characters down the line. With that aside, let’s dive into Cloud’s conflict, expression of gender, and how that relates to Bobby and contributed to his queer readings. 
Under Dematteis' pen, Cloud was little more than a beautiful young girl, wearing little to no clothing, with a seemingly tragic past. A point that stuck was Cloud’s immediate telepathic rapport with Moondragon, a woman known as a supervillain and adversary of the Avengers. Cloud could see that Moondragon was so much more than that and broke the proverbial ice with her in ways no one else on the team was willing to do.
Under Gillis’ pen, Cloud eventually fell in love with Moondragon, depicting one of the earliest portrayals of a same sex love confession.
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Moondragon did not seem to be disturbed by this as she grew up in an advanced civilization, however, Cloud felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with the feelings of loving a woman as a woman herself, so she uses her powers to transform into a beautiful man, who would be as equally naked most of the time. 
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Cloud felt a sense of self in both gendered forms, and would switch between them on whim, stating that their internal being was static regardless of how they presented themselves, and most of the team embraced Cloud regardless. Cloud still struggled with their feelings though, they loved Moondragon, and still held some internalized belief that there was something to be ashamed of in loving her, and switching genders.
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Thus, Gillis explores queer feelings of identity, love and desire, as he explicitly stated he wanted to do, using Cloud and their powers. 
Bobby is immediately extremely conflicted and rejects Cloud’s switching of genders and gets visibility uncomfortable whenever Cloud switches to a man.
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What’s interesting about Bobby’s reaction is this is also the point where he starts catching feelings for Cloud. When Cloud was a nearly naked, hot blonde woman constantly around him, he paid Cloud little to no attention, beyond teasing Cloud for the constant sunbathing. But now, after the fact of knowing that Cloud can also turn into a gorgeous man, he has developed a romantic interest in Cloud. 
This paints the picture of a complicated man who is very much wrestling with queer desire. Bobby likes Cloud but he is also deeply uncomfortable, both with Cloud and his feelings for them, specifically because Cloud switches gender, and only after it is revealed that Cloud can do this. He is nervous when she becomes a boy. Not disgusted, nervous. Yet, he only develops feelings for her after the fact. 
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The scene above is quite daunting as Cloud breaks down, their inner conflict of desire and gender expression is causing them a lot of emotional distress, Bobby hears Cloud screaming and goes in to their room to comfort them. Cloud changes into their male form to prove their point and he immediately jumps away. As he leaves he calls himself a hypocrite.
And thus, the parallel is made; as Bobby has feelings for someone in ways that goes against his enforced gendered scripts outlined in the previous post, and a character whose entire existence is a challenge due to preconceived gendered scripts. 
Cloud feels like they can’t be loved or helped due to their conflict with gender and feelings for Moondragon, and Bobby feels like a hypocrite because of his inability to accept Cloud, despite his own conflicting feelings that also go against prescribed gender scripts. Cloud hates themself and Bobby hates that he loves someone who could also be a man:
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The resolution to Bobby’s conflict in this story comes with some acceptance of what Cloud is and his complicated desire for them. Once Cloud’s origins are revealed and they leave for the cosmos, they paint a picture of Bobby and both forms of Cloud.
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Bobby doesn’t object this time.
This is illustrated again, when a possessed Moondragon uses both versions of Cloud’s human vessels to torture Bobby, he manages to save them, but the fact that Moondragon used both instead of the default female form, is quite telling.
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Ultimately, as Gillis himself stated, this run was meant to depict non normative and complicated ideas around sexuality. His exact quote, along with his motivation for writing Cloud stemming from his trans friend, can be seen here: 
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This exploration of non normative sexuality, and Bobby being at the centre of it, specifically after the fact that Cloud was revealed to also have an attractive male form, is something that resonated with queer readers deeply at the time. 
Even Mike Carey himself confirmed that he saw Bobby as queer due to this Cloud storyline, and leaned into that in his writing, which is what prompted another shapechanger: Mystique being a tormenting love interest for Bobby. She threatens to show up “in a different body” to catch him off guard in the "Manifest Destiny" storyline, hinting at his complicated feelings around queer desire. 
In the end, this was a big deal, to have a story like this with 3 different characters connected and woven in, in their own ways. It fed deeper into the theory that Bobby could be closeted: he has complicated feelings for a character meant to embody divergent narratives of sexuality and gender, in addition to his previous characterization showcasing his need to default to normalized scripts around gender and sexuality. He is challenged with this and this won’t be the last time his discomfort over this challenge comes up.
Queer fans again, saw their experiences in him. They saw a man with conflicting feelings on sexuality, and societal expectations. They saw a man who desperately wanted to be normal and often was suffocated and folded into scripts that didn’t actually fit him. They saw a man accepting that he might have feelings for someone who might be a man, and only after it was revealed that they could be a man. 
So they took to sending fan mail to address this. Is Bobby closeted? Could he be? The impacts of these fan letters will be in the next essay!
Peter B Gillis passed away in 2024, but the impacts of his work live on. He challenged the status quo during a time when it was incomprehensible to do so. We’ll never know if he actually intended Bobby to be queer, but nontheless, the reading queer fans had was only cemented after this seminal run of The New Defenders. 
References
Graymalkin Lane. (2022). The New Defenders interview with J.M Dematteis. Retrieved from: https://redcircle.com/shows/cc9f4c23-aacd-41ff-bf92-3c09b082391d/episodes/4156916e-0e89-43c1-98d6-cd21a1cea6fd
Hedge Coke (2018). A Conversation with Peter Gillis. Retrieved from: https://travishedgecoke.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-peter-b-gillis
The Gay Times. (2011). Alan Heinberg- The Gay Times Interview. Retrieved from: https://comicviews.livejournal.com/12843.html
Additional info:
Mike Carey’s comment:
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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controversial opinion, and my apologies: but am i the only one who hated how woobified akihiro was in x-factor?
now look: i'm all for characters who have a complicated backstory and terrible trauma that's haunted them for their entire lives to heal, and have their little silly moments at times.
but for some reason, this version of akihiro just doesn't sit right with me.
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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bobbys such a fun character bc hes like. comedic relief team baby and if you dont really read like his solos or comics where hes the focus the impression you get of him is sort of off-brand spider man silly guy jokester but then you scratch the surface a little and hes just this human-shaped neurotic bundle of repression and anxiety who would rather die than deal with any of his feelings ever. the man repressed his own omega level mutation for so long that he exploded and started a new ice age. and thats before we even talk about the gay thing
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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Iceman Queer History and Analysis Part 1- The 80s
Iceman aka Bobby Drake from Marvel’s pioneer X-Men series is a canon gay character with a rich history of queerness that illuminates the long impact queer fans have had in fandom spaces and as people within the medium itself, that have always been here. We all know about some important tentpole moments in queer comics history such as Northstar’s landmark coming out, or Mystique and Destiny’s coded romantic relationship in the impactful Claremont era of X-Books. 
I wanted to take some time to really go over Bobby’s history with queer themes, how they came to be, how writers began queer coding him intentionally and how that consistency led to him eventually being canonized as a gay character in 2015. 
Bobby is a unique part of queer comics history because he is the only legacy character to be so fundamentally influenced by queer fan readings and intentional subtext which paved the way for his eventual canonicity. This began as early as the early-mid 80s.
Many queer coded characters throughout comics history are coded in the way of relationships (Kitty/Rachel, Mystique/Destiny, Storm/Yukio, Tim Drake/Conner Kent, etc), but Bobby is the only one whose core character conflict was heavily influenced by queer themes around identity. I am going to be taking some time to go over the evolution of those themes, to showcase that we have always been here and that Bobby’s dynamic with queerness is uniquely shaped by queer fans and creators who engaged with them. 
I also wanted to archive a lot of the research and analysis around his queer coding, so it could be more accessible to queer fans, as much of the creator comments and fan analysis are located in long podcasts or forgotten forum posts. Although this series of essays around his various eras of queer coding and fan readings serve as a strong counterargument to many of the typical, often homophobic remarks against the character being gay, the purpose of this is to illuminate history, analyze text and enthusiastically engage with queer fans.
To that end, the starting point is his first mini series, written by J.M DeMatteis. This was released in 1984, and was coming out nearly concurrently to The New Defenders, written by Peter B Gillis. The latter series will be highlighted in my next entry, but the two releasing around the same time is relevant as the two series resonated with queer fans, which impacted Bobby’s reception at the time. 
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Queerness was not allowed in mainstream comics (or any mainstream medium, really) during the 80s. We were invisible and the most we could rely on in mainstream cape comics was subtext (Northstar, Mystique), or fan readings/theories on characters who may or may not be gay. This was during the early oughts of the AIDs epidemic and gays were reviled and disdained in the public eye. Nevertheless, queer people existed and they saw themselves where they could. 
The core narrative theme in DeMatteis’ take on Iceman was on family. He reintroduced readers to Bobby’s parents: Madelyne and William Drake, and they were not terribly happy with Bobby’s choices in life. Bobby’s father in particular represents a masculine figure who vocally disapproved of Bobby’s life choices, and his mother meekly agreed, and often guilted Bobby to listen to his father, “or else.” This sets a precedent in which not only is William a strong, masculine father figure in Bobby’s life, but he also instills anxiety in Bobby’s mother, which puts Bobby, their son, squarely in the middle of their dysfunctional dynamic.
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Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess (2020) present the idea of gender scripts; which are expectations around normalcy that men and women are divided into, and going outside of them is not deemed as desirable or acceptable. They are fundamentally rigid, and are products of a heterosexist culture; aka a culture where heterosexuality is the idealized default and boys and girls must live up to this idealized default. This is achieved by presenting and performing as typically masculine (for boys) or feminine (for girls), having desires be fixed on the opposite gender, and eventually starting a family with them.
Bobby has internalized these scripts and his tension with them is what resonated with queer fans at the time, and it is here, alongside The New Defenders, where Bobby’s queer reading by queer fans truly began. 
He was supposed to be an accountant. He was supposed to marry a normal girl, and live in a normal neighbourhood, with his gender appropriate white collar job. Instead, he is a mutant freak, running around in a speedo and boots. He dresses up funny, has weird friends. And is otherwise a disappointment. An anomaly. He knows this and it eats away at his inner self.
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Once Bobby does rebel against his father, he is met with deep rejection, aggression and is emotionally manipulated. The implicit message is that his family will abandon him if he does not conform to their ideas of normal. If he fails in following their prescribed script. 
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There is another character in this series named Marge. She is the perfect ideal for Bobby, a pretty, feminine, normal girl who lives next door. She follows the script to a tee. Bobby immediately fawns all over her and projects his idealized version of normalcy onto her. 
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What he doesn’t know…in classic comic book fashion…Marge is actually a deity, the daughter of the god of Oblivion; the omnipotent being who resides in a limbo-like realm, between life and death. She reads Bobby’s mind and presents him with everything he has supposedly wanted. A normal house. A normal family. A normal girlfriend. But it feels wrong.
He knows it’s a lie and the cost to maintain the illusion is too great. He rejects it and has to fight the deity Oblivion itself to be free from Marge’s realm. She wanted to stay in this realm with Bobby to be away from her own constraints and is angered at his refusal to be “normal” with her.
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He succeeds and the message of the story at the end is that Bobby’s parents may be more than meets the eye and maybe he shouldn’t judge them too harshly. This is far from the last time we see the Drakes, and we will learn that they do not really change their ways in the long run, and Bobby’s core conflict in this book only develops deeper into his psyche. 
But there we have it, Bobby’s first mini series, a book about normalcy and the constraining expectations around it; especially in ways that run parallel to heteronormative gender scripts that all of us have found ourselves at the centre of.
This resonated with queer fans, and was part of the popular fan theory amongst our community back then, that Bobby might also be repressing a lot, and part of his need to please his parents may manifest in the internalized ideals of normalcy that follow gender scripts to a tee. The conflict of his character is that this isn’t who he is, and in combination with codedness being our only visibility, and his character conflict in The New Defenders, it is no surprise that queer fans in the 80s saw a piece of themselves in Bobby. 
This era is what I call the queer fan reading era of the 80s. J.M DeMatteis has confirmed recently that he did not actually intend to write Bobby as closeted in this series, but that the reading makes sense with his writing (Graymalkin Lane, 2022). That is not the relevant point for the purpose of this analysis though, it is the fact that this is where the queer readings began, and fed into the actual, intentional queer subtext that fundamentally influenced the character in the 90s onwards. Look forward to my analysis on those eras as well, but they would not exist without this series connecting with queer fans all the way back in the 80s.
References
DeMatteis, J.M. Iceman, 1984
Graymalkin Lane. (2022). The New Defenders interview with J.M. DeMatteis! With Sara Century and Connor Goldsmith! Retrieved from: https://redcircle.com/shows/graymalkin-lane-the-podcast/ep/4156916e-0e89-43c1-98d6-cd21a1cea6fd
Keenan, H. Lil M. Hot Mess. (2020). "Drag Pedagogy: The Playful Practice of Queer Imagination in Early Childhood." Curriculum Inquiry, vol. 50, no. 5, pp. 440-461.
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quintessentialgaymutant · 1 month ago
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my special guy
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