Get A Load Of Those Tattoos!: Reviewing ‘Astonishing Iceman’ #3

Orchis isn’t playing around. Iceman and others might suffer the consequences of his actions. Enter Captain America (of the railways)!

That’s right. Aaron Fischer, the rail-themed Captain America Corps member, comes face to face with the X-Men’s iciest member. Astonishing Iceman #3 continues Bobby Drakes’ heroic attempts to resist the Fall Of X, in another tale from Steve Orlando, Vincenzo Carratù, Javier Tartaglia, and Travis Lanham.

Being an Iceman-goes-superhero book, there is plenty of action found on these pages. Carratù has such a natural style for these types of affairs. Somewhere in that space that is nicely between really whimsical, and animated, and grounded, and realistic. Depth and weight are everywhere, but a lightness permeates it all allowing it to be slick, smooth, and fun. Kinetic energy is felt on every page as the characters genuinely glide through motion and panels.

Panel choices make things hit even harder, keeping visuals creative and the flow of the story becomes even more intriguing. Pairing that with Tartaglia’s colors takes all of that even deeper.

Most of the colors are very realistic in their toned-down nature, creating visuals that are familiar right on sight. Allowing the setting and background to feel genuine to the world around us. Therefore, superheroes, villains, powers, and other wild elements can stand out even more as they take on more vibrant qualities. Each space, from Los Angeles to the Ice Palace to the Orchis facility has its own personality and color hues, as it should.

Creating a visual tone that is easily followed is important in all of the artwork. Especially with lettering. Lanham uses sentence case for dialogue, which I always appreciate. Doing that creates a very simple baseline for voices and volume. Any deviations clearly become the rising of volume, showing of emotion, within our minds. Being able to hear and perceive emotions within these voices we create in our heads always helps.

The Marvel Universe sure has a lot of characters and spaces to choose from at any given moment, something that comes with 60+ years of publishing. Not all catch on with readers like the characters we tend to see constantly or more often than not. Deep dives can sometimes be interesting, and then other times not so much.

After bringing back Helium and the Elements of Doom as well as the villainous Mister Clean (seen more in this issue), we’re treated to the deep dive from the X-Line itself: the tattooed-powered Y-Men. Hard to believe it’s been fifteen years since the original bunch of Y-Men in the Decimation era Young X-Men series.

Look, I’m totally fine with deep dives and mining of the Marvel toybox. There are tons of things there that deserve another view or would work wonders in modern books. There are far too many times that the same old villains/characters are used over and over and over again. That being said, there sure is a lot of deep-dive nostalgia going on here. It’s something that stood out quite a bit about Orlando’s run of Marauders too.

It’s not a bad thing but it surely takes up a lot of space and can feel a bit too much like “Remember this? No? Oh well that’s fine, here it is anyways” situations.

I hate to poke at it again, but the Iceman/Romeo portions of this story are starting to feel too forced. These lovers reunited in a digital issue that one can only read if they pay to subscribe to Marvel’s comic platform. Here there is a lot of throwing around the world love, and their relationship already comes with issues since one of them is basically the only thing holding the other to this world currently.

There are good things about them, and I want to like it and follow it, but right now it’s just not hitting fully. Maybe once Iceman’s fate isn’t within the hands of this other person, it might work better.

Astonishing Iceman #3 is now available from Marvel Comics.