Bit Too Chilly In Here — Reviewing ‘Astonishing Iceman: Out Cold’

Orchis’ vicious bloody strike on Krakoa took down Bobby Drake. Too bad for them, a new ice age has begun.

Buoyed and reformed through the power of love (no, really), the frosty X-Man is ready to strike back in Astonishing Iceman: Out Cold. A Fall Of X branded series from Steve Orlando, Vincenzo Carratú, Java Tartaglia, Chris Sotomayor, and Travis Lanham.

On the writing side of things, this was a miniseries that felt structurally messy.

Only in the final of the five issues does the struggle that Iceman is going through, as well as the sudden return of his romance with the Inhuman Romeo, make sense. This is what happens when 4/5 of the mini was made up of guest roles, deep cuts, and forced romance.

Orlando has work that I quite like, including some of his more recent Marvel books. Unfortunately, one of the habits that seems to have come since he joined Marvel is a desire to find the deepest of cut references to cram into books. A lot of “Remember this?” type energy at times.

Bobby Drake might be an omega mutant but he’s also one of the oldest and most well-known X-Men, and the most underutilized. Too often the jokester and screwup of the gang, relegated to mostly a supporting role more often than not. Therefore, placing him as an actual out there doing the stuff hero on his own was a solid move by Orlando. I wish it had come during the actual Krakoa age rather than as just one of many clearly rushed messy Fall Of X beats to end the era.

While I’m very much not a romance person, I am not against it in comics. What threw off this one though was the fact that Romeo was a character that Bobby dated when his young version was brought to the future, and Romeo was also a teen/young adult at the time. Apparently, there was a random Marvel Voices Infinity Comic on the Marvel Unlimited service that aged Romeo up and reunited the characters. That’s right, a big plot beat happened in a one-shot style comic behind a paywall of the company’s app service.

Being an Iceman-goes-superhero book, plenty of action is found on these pages. Carratù has such a natural style for these types of affairs. Plenty of depth and detail work with a style that has a natural energy befitting the heavy action of this issue. Things move so smoothly, living in that space where they are grounded but also whimsical/fantastical feeling at the same time. Panel choices make things hit even harder, keeping visuals creative and the flow of the story becomes even more intriguing.

All the colors have a very natural feeling. By that I mean most of the tones are very realistic in their levels, creating spaces that feel genuine. Each space, from Los Angeles to the Ice Palace to the Orchis facility has its own personality and color hues, as it should. Having the background and other elements hitting those beats allows the more vibrant colors of the superheroes, villains, etc to pop even more. There are very little differences in the palettes that Tartaglia and Sotomayor are using, keeping a unified feeling between the two sets of pages.

Speaking of something natural, Lanham does such a good job of creating a natural voice for the series. Using sentence case is something I’m quite a fan of because it easily creates that normal tone of voice. Throwing in other elements that change the font (size, type, etc.) then easily allows the reader to know when volume/tone changes. Lettering is just such a fun bit of art to consider because of what it can do to really make stories work at the end of the day.

Astonishing Iceman: Out Cold is now available from Marvel Comics.