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
Bendis' 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.)