Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83) | Chapter 15: The New Defenders Part 1 (1983-84) | Chapter 16: The New Defenders Part 2 (1984-85) | Chapter 17: The End of the New Defenders (1985-86) | Chapter 18: X-Factor Part 1 (1986)

From here forward, Iceman’s appearances are mostly collected in Marvel’s X-Men Omnibus series, so I’ll be taking them one hardback book at a time.

We kick off this section with “Mutant Massacre,” the first major X-Men crossover. The story was such a commercial success that it spawned an annual crossover tradition in the X-Men office. The overall thrust of the story is that a group of mutants called the Marauders begin hunting down the mutant Morlocks who live in the sewers under New York and slaughter them by the hundreds before the X-Men can intervene. We eventually learn that they were hired to do so by Mr. Sinister, who had caught wind that many of the Morlocks were the product of genetic engineering by someone using his technology, and we eventually learn that that person was the Dark Beast from the Age of Apocalypse. We also eventually learn that Gambit was secretly one of these Marauders but he left once he saw the massacre get started.

But none of that really matters, because the story is structured to keep the X-Men and X-Factor threads completely separate, since the two teams are not supposed to be in contact with each other. So X-Factor, including Iceman, simply bumble into the massacre while trying to rescue Rusty and Artie, who they know are in the tunnels, and do their best to rescue a relative handful of mutants.

The Mutant Massacre is also notable as a turning point where the “grim-n-gritty” trend of the mid-80s really overwhelms the overall direction of the X-Men’s story. Claremont had slowly been dragging Uncanny X-Men in this direction by revisiting the “Days of Future Past” story foretelling the Sentinel conquest of America. But this is a whole other level. Dozens of characters are killed and mutilated on-panel. Fan-favorite characters are written out of the books entirely. What was left of the fun, camp tone of the X-Men is all but dead for years from this point on.

 

X-Factor #10-11, Power Pack #27, Thor #373-374 (November-December 1986)
Writers: Louise Simonson, Walt Simonson
Pencilers: Walt Simonson, Jon Bogdanove, Sal Buscema

X-Factor’s attempt to help the Morlocks is hampered by the fact that they recognize them as mutant hunters from their own advertisements, so no one trusts them. But the team splits up to bring home the wounded and go after the Marauders.

Meanwhile, Trish Tilby reports that Angel is X-Factor’s financial backer. Candy Southern swings by the office to see how Angel is going to manage that, and ends up catching him comforting Jean over Scott’s betrayal, in a scene she perhaps overreacts to. Oddly, she mentions that she’s overlooked his affairs before, but this minor scene with Jean is her limit. Maybe their open arrangement was gender-specific?

Bobby gets blinded in his fight with Prism, which sidelines him for most of the story. X-Factor ultimately manage to save Rusty, Artie, Leech, Caliban, Ape, Tar-Baby (It’s a bad character name, and he’s eventually killed in Weapon X #5, and let’s hope if he’s resurrected on Krakoa, he gets a new mutant name), and Beautiful Dreamer. They also convince another subgroup of mutants to follow them out of the tunnels, but when they learn that they’re the mutant hunters from TV, they sneak out of X-Factor’s base and all of them get murdered by a gang and police officers, except for Masque. Not a great showing all told.

Meanwhile, Apocalypse rescues Plague, and announces a plan to turn her into his horseman Pestilence, then picks up a paralyzed Vietnam War vet that he plans to make into his horseman War. Thus begins Apocalypse’s regular MO of travelling the world and giving mutants makeovers.

And Angel has his wings broken by the Marauders when he attempts to fight them alone. He gets rescued by Thor, who heard from some passing frogs that there was trouble in the sewers (this tied into a then-recent Thor story where Loki turned him into a frog). But the real reason why Thor and X-Factor are interacting so much in this era is simply that the books were written by the wife and husband team of Louise and Walt Simonson.

Lord knows why Marvel thought it was ok to have the story crossover into their children’s book Power Pack, but the Power kids did have a preexisting relationship with Leech and a few of the other Morlocks. Still, one wonders what the kiddie readers must’ve thought of the multiple corpses and murders lovingly drawn into the issue. Bogdanove does his best to keep it light with his usually delightful cartooning, but the chapter is a pretty bizarre tonal clash. This is the first time Bobby meets Julie Power (Lightspeed), who eventually comes out as bisexual when she grows up and is a regular character in Avengers Academy and Runaways.

 

 

X-Factor #12 (January 1987)
Writers: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Marc Silvestri

While Cyclops and Marvel Girl take care of Angel in the hospital, Beast and Iceman meet Boom-Boom and bring her into X-Factor. Boom-Boom is immediately smitten with Bobby (and boy, is that a pairing I’d like to see more of), but he mostly wants to wring her neck.

X-Factor HQ is bursting at the seams with all the Morlocks the team has taken in. Beast tries to make them feel at home by cooking breakfast for them naked.

Boom-Boom debuted in Secret Wars II #5, where she tried to join the X-Men’s school, but was frightened away when the X-Men attacked her friend, the Beyonder. That story established that she was a 13-year-old runaway fleeing a father who physically abused her when he found out she was a mutant. She’s since fallen in with the Vanisher, who’s using her to commit petty crimes in exchange for a room she shares with three other girls. She wants out, so she calls X-Factor on him.

Boom-Boom instantly sees through Beast and Iceman’s X-Factor disguises because she’s not a moron, unlike literally everyone else in this book. Look, I know I harp on how stupid the core concept of X-Factor is a lot, but it’s a really, really stupid concept that even the characters in the book are constantly complaining is stupid. Simonson eventually gets to drop the idiotic X-Factor/X-Terminators mutant hunters/savior-terrorists bit, but only after it wafts over the book for more than two years.

Bobby, still deeply in the closet, has little sympathy for a victim of child abuse.

Meanwhile in subplots, Apocalypse recruits Autumn Rolfson to be his Famine. She’s a teenager here, but will be the mother of Apocalypse’s teenage son Genocide in Uncanny X-Force in 2010, so the math suggests…

And Jean Grey’s sister Sara and her family disappear after Sara speaks out for mutant rights on TV. This long subplot barely gets addressed during the rest of the book and is finally resolved when we’re told that she was murdered by the Phalanx in X-Men Vol 2 #37.

 

Mephisto Vs. #2 (May 1987)
Writer: Al Milgrom
Penciler: John Buscema

Mephisto Vs was a four-part miniseries where in each issue, he fights a different superhero team, in an effort to capture the soul of one of the members, while “trading up” the souls. In this issue, he fights X-Factor, trading up the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman for Marvel Girl.

Iceman’s main contribution to this issue is reminding Mephisto that the queer mutant villain Pyro exists.

Mephisto tries to tempt Bobby by saying he could “make men not fear mutants” anymore, but Bobby refuses, saying the cost (one of their souls) is too much.

In between the pages of this story, Angel, who’s had his wings healed by Mephisto, flies off and appears in the lead story of Marvel Fanfare #40. It’s a cute but completely inconsequential story that he’s mostly unconscious through. By the end, Mephisto reverses his spell and Angel is back in the hospital with gangrened wings.

In the remaining chapters, Mephisto trades Jean Grey’s soul for Rogue’s soul while fighting the X-Men (but he makes the X-Men forget that Jean Grey is alive at the end), and then trades up for Thor’s soul while fighting the Avengers. It turns out the whole thing was a sham to trick Hela into reversing a spell that made Thor unkillable, so that she would become preoccupied with Thor and he could eventually get the upper hand over her. It’s a pretty obscure story.

 

X-Factor #13-15 (February-April 1987)
Writers: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Walt Simonson

Cyclops goes to Alaska to find his wife, but discovers that nearly all evidence of her life in Alaska has completely disappeared, and a redhead’s body is found in the river. He battles a recently returned MasterMold, and buries the redhead he believes to be Madelyne. (The real Madelyne turns up alive in Uncanny X-Men #206 and #215.)

Mastermold’s memory is corrupted but he’s suddenly preoccupied with “The Twelve” – a group of mutants who were supposedly meant to rise to become world leaders. We eventually learn in Uncanny X-Men #-1 that Mastermold was given this programming by a time-travelling Madame Sanctity, who was trying to get the Sentinels to kill the mutants Apocalypse needed to rise to power in “Apocalypse: The Twelve.” That story reveals Iceman is one of The Twelve, so that’s the main relevance to Iceman of these issues.

When Angel refuses to allow doctors to amputate his gangrened wings, someone has him declared incompetent and the procedure is forced on him. We’ll eventually learn it was Cameron Hodge. After Angel wakes, he appears to commit suicide by flying in his private plane and detonating it over the ocean (one may wonder why his plane had a self-destruct button…). As we’ll eventually learn, he was actually rescued by Apocalypse.

The Morlocks, having had enough of X-Factor, return to the sewers.

Iceman doesn’t appear in #13, and barely appears in #14-15. In #15, he suddenly disappears while talking to Beast. He’s off to appear in:

 

Thor #377-379 (January-March 1987)
Writers: Walt Simonson
Penciller: John Buscema

Loki kidnaps Iceman to use him to power a big machine that will bring the cold back to Jotunheim, home of the Frost Giants, who’ve been suffering without their normal cold weather. But Bobby overpowers the machines, which causes the Frost Giants to go mad and attack Loki. Thor kind of stumbles into the wreckage of the Frost Giants’ attack on Loki’s Castle, rescues Iceman, and takes him back to X-Factor.

Although this is the most attention Bobby’s had in months, it’s still not really an Iceman story, and he barely does anything in it. And yet, it turns out to be consequential for Iceman’s ongoing arc. This story kicks off a subplot of Iceman’s powers flaring dangerously out of control, which continues through the rest of X-Factor and into Uncanny X-Men before being quietly dropped.

This is the first time Iceman meet the queer villain Loki, although he has met Thor before in X-Men: First Class Vol 1 #5 and X-Men Vol 1 #9. Of course, Loki immediately puts him in bondage.

 

X-Factor #16 (May 1987)
Writers: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Walt Simonson

Iceman doesn’t appear in this issue, which is mostly a Rusty and Skids story. Rusty feels pangs of guilt when he finds out that the sex worker he burned back in issue #1 is now in a hospital in New York seeing a specialist to reconstruct her severely burned skin. He makes a deal with Masque to have him heal her, but when she learns that in return Rusty has to allow Masque to deform him, she demands that Masque undo the deal. She’s left even more deformed, but feels happy, because she feels that she’s found her true calling: proselytizing to the Morlocks about Christianity.

In the other subplots, we learn that Skids fled an abusive father who murdered her mother, Skids learns to control her force field, Rusty gets more confidence about controlling his flame powers, and they start a relationship. We’re also told that Erg is now the leader of the Morlocks, though he doesn’t appear.

This issue really isn’t great as far as how it deals with sexuality. The poor sex worker (Emma LaPorte) has decided she deserved to be mutilated because being a sex worker led her off God’s path. LaPorte never appears again… presumably she was killed in one of the subsequent Morlock massacres, but it’s possible she eventually left the tunnels.

 

X-Factor #17 (June 1987)
Writers: Louise Simonson
Penciller: Walt Simonson

X-Factor stop The Right, a new anti-mutant group, from using teen mutant Rictor to destroy San Francisco, in order to whip up even more anti-mutant sentiment.

A lot happens in this issue. Deep breath.

Thor finally brings Iceman back. Look at how he’s holding Thor in that opening splash. Iceman is suddenly suffering the effects of Loki’s machines, which are rendering him too cold and flaring his powers out of control. Rusty is able to thaw him out by rubbing his fire hands around him.

Bobby has also arrived home just in time for Angel’s funeral – of course, he’s only just finding out about his supposed suicide now. He’s very much on edge through this story and almost accidentally freezes Trish Tilby when she tries to interview X-Factor at the funeral. Leech stops him just in time.

The anti-mutant protests and vandalism at Warren’s funeral would have had contemporary resonance with protests at queer pride events and funerals of people who died of HIV.

Cyclops is upset that the X-Men haven’t come to Warren’s funeral, which begs the question: Were they invited? Has anyone spoken to the X-Men at all? Indeed, if they had, they might’ve gotten the Morlock Healer, who was staying with the X-Men, to heal Angel… Did Scott think to invite Alex and Lorna even? Or the Champions? I know these are all questions that break the book’s stupid, stupid premise, but…

Cameron Hodge is turning into much more of a moustache-twirling villain, giving an anti-mutant speech to Tilby, which is somehow recorded even though in the previous panel the cameraman says Iceman’s ruined the camera… for that matter, how has Tilby not recognized Bobby Drake, who was a public figure in New Defenders? Hodge turns down a request from the Governor of California for X-Factor to stop the X-Terminators from destroying San Francisco with a mutant named Rictor. Bobby overhears and insists that the team go stop Rictor themselves, openly as a team of mutants, to counter Hodge’s anti-mutant campaigning.

Bobby is particularly incensed to find out that the villains are anti-mutant group of humans called The Right. After saving teenage mutant Rictor and San Francisco, he delivers a powerful monologue that gets picked up and broadcast on the news angrily calling for mutant tolerance.

After a few decades of hints in stories, Julio Esteban Rictor came out as bisexual in X-Factor Vol 3 #45 (2009), in a scene that featured the first male/male kiss in a Marvel comic.

It’s hard to ignore that the anti-mutant bigots are called The Right — a clear swipe at the bigoted right-wing of American politics — and that their plan is to destroy San Francisco, the gay capital of America.

In the subplots, Cyclops is now going mad over the number of people who have died on his watch – Phoenix, Maddie, Angel (and unmentioned, his son). Boom Boom is being a brat and Iceman chases her into a closet where a girl named Ariel teleports her away to appear in the Fallen Angels miniseries. Caliban is made an official member of X-Factor/X-Terminators. And the kids start to suspect Hodge is evil when they overhear a phone conversation with The Right.

And, Apocalypse has found his fourth horseman, Death. As we eventually find out, this is Angel, who he saved at the last moment from the exploding plane. Apocalypse has always had a queer fascination with Angel. It’s never been at all clear why he thinks Angel is one of the strong who will survive – after all, his power is just having wings and flapping around. He’d already been beaten near to death and was about to commit suicide. And yet, Apocalypse always describes him in flowery language, like here, where he says, “in his heart smolders a dark anger!”

 

X-Factor Annual #2 (1987)
Writer: Jo Duffy
Artist: Tom Grindberg

X-Factor stop Maximus the Mad from using Franklin Richards to spread his madness to all the Inhumans, and break his hold on Quicksilver in the process. And Jean starts to forgive Cyclops for falling in love with Phoenix.

This issue largely wraps up a West Coast Avengers plot which had Quicksilver suddenly going mad after his wife Crystal cheated on him and abandoned their daughter in the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch miniseries. It’s strongly implied here that Crystal’s behavior was also influenced by Maximus. Quicksilver betrayed the team in West Coast Avengers Annual #1, where they were forced to fight Freedom Force, and again in West Coast Avengers #33-36, which are referenced in this issue. Lord knows what West Coast Avengers readers thought of having that plot resolved in a completely different, unrelated book.

Jo Duffy – who is only the second woman to write a full-length story in an X-Book – tries mightily to make this relevant to X-Factor by drawing parallels between Crystal and Quicksilver’s relationship and Scott and Jean’s, and to point out that the Inhumans now live in the Blue Area of the Moon, where Phoenix died, but honestly, it’s just X-Factor walking through a WCA story. I do appreciate that Duffy manages to squeeze in a whole page of the characters complaining about the whole premise of X-Factor, though.

Iceman’s main contribution to the plot is to complain that he’s afraid to use his powers under his current circumstances, so he’s not much help in the fight.

The Inhumans and X-Factor all act as if they don’t know each other, despite the fact that Medusa was an X-Man in X-Men: First Class #15, and both teams met each other in X-Men: The Hidden Years #16. Cyclops also met the royal family in Uncanny X-Men: First Class #1-2. Of course, those stories won’t be published for 10-20 years…

The official chronologies put this issue between the pages of issue #18, which is unfortunate, as that issue largely retreads Scott and Jean’s fight that they seemed to have resolved here.

Where to find these stories: They X-Factor, Thor, and Power Pack issues are all collected in the X-Men: Mutant Massacre Omnibus, which is getting a new printing later this year. The Mephisto Vs. issue isn’t in there, but it is available on Marvel Unlimited. Unfortunately, MU is missing a X-Factor #12, and #14-17, but they’ll hopefully go online when the new printing comes out. Some of the Thor issues on MU have wonky “modern” recoloring from an old reprint, but the issues seem to be chosen at random.

 

Meanwhile in the X-Books:

• In Uncanny X-Men: The X-Men fight Mojo and welcome Psylocke and Longshot to the team (Annual #10, New Mutants Annual #2); their half of the Mutant Massacre (#210-213), leaves Kitty and Nightcrawler out of commission;  Dazzler joins (#214); Storm fights Stonewall, Super Sabre, and Crimson Commando (#215-216); Wolverine and Dazzler have a spy mission (#228 — published out of order); Dazzler fights Juggernaut (#217-218); Polaris is taken by the Marauders and Havok joins (#219); they seek Dr. Doom’s help to cure Kitty, causing conflict with his arch rivals (X-Men vs. The Fantastic Four #1-4); the Avengers make Magneto finish his trial for his crimes and he’s astonishingly acquitted (X-Men vs. The Avengers #1-4); and the X-Men fight Horde (Annual #11).
• In New Mutants: The kids tend to the wounded from the massacre (#46); flee Magus and get caught in the far future (#47-49); fight transmode virus infected demons in Limbo (#50); they visit Professor X in space, and Storm and Magneto join the Hellfire Club (#51); they fight the Impossible Man (Annual #3); Illyana takes Magneto to Limbo (#52); Sunspot and Warlock join a bunch of other cast-off characters for a dimension-hopping adventure (Fallen Angels #1-8); and a final New Mutants-Hellions battle rounds out Claremont’s run on the second title (#53-54)
• Daredevil fights Sabertooth in the margins of the massacre in Daredevil #238.
• X-Men & Spider-Man #2 brings the miniseries up to the 1980s, as they chase the Marauders in the Morlock Tunnels
• Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1 and Web of Spider-Man #29 has the two heroes have an adventure behind the Berlin Wall and then in Manhattan
• Firestar’s backstory is illustrated in Firestar #1-4

Next Week: The dark turn continues as we head toward the “Fall of the Mutants.”