Iceman dated human, mutant and otherworldly girls before dating guys

Art by Joe Jusko

Although he might have been gay in his initial 1963 appearance, Bobby Drake – the X-Man known as Iceman - dated girls for more than 50 real-time years and missed out on a chance to get with the gay superhero Northstar before coming out as gay himself in 2016. And then his dating life became really entertaining. Here’s a look back at his Marvel-time love life, both with his many attractions to fellow mutant girls like Darkstar, Lorna Dane and Kitty Pryde, otherworldly girls like Mirage and Cloud and human girls like Zelda and Opal Tanaka as well as his fatal attractions to Infectia and Mystique and his first regular human boyfriends. Yes, he was the youngest X-Man, but also the most prolific in that area.

When writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created the Marvel Comics Group series X-Men in 1963, it was separated from other superhero comics at the time by the X-Men being mutants, Homo Superior. They were born with an extraordinary gene that manifested during puberty, resulting in superpowers. In the Marvel Universe, mutants were not deviations from humanity, but instead the next step in humanity’s evolution. That’s why mutants were hated by humanity, which feared that mutants would take over the world. The X-Men’s mission was to find mutants and teach them how to deal with their super abilities, as well as to protect both mutants and humanity from the exploitation of evil mutants.

The X-Men’s teacher was Professor Charles Xavier, and in the first issue the X-Men consisted of Cyclops (Scott Summers), Beast (Henry McCoy), Angel (Warren Worthington) and the young Iceman (Bobby Drake). The latter was not impressed by new member Marvel Girl (Jean Grey) that had all the other boys in Xavier’s school drooling. “A girl… big deal!” Iceman thought to himself and strode off. And so. the scene was set for the revelation years later that he was gay, but before that, the X-Man Iceman – in his civilian identity as Bobby Drake – dated several girls before admitting to his true sexuality.

Straight double-dating and love triangle
Bobby Drake was revealed to have dated a girl named Judy before joining the X-Men when his origin was first told in back-up features in X-Men #44 to 46 by writer Gary Friedrich. Bobby Drake was living with his parents in a small town in Nassau County before moving to Westchester County, New York, to take up residence at Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. On a cruise for teenagers around Manhattan in Strange Tales #120 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Bobby Drake hit on Dorrie Evans, not knowing she was the girlfriend of Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four. Then he got a girlfriend of his own, Zelda – a waitress he met in X-Men #7 at a coffee house in New York frequented by bohemians. Soon Bobby Drake and his X-Men teammate Henry McCoy (Beast) were hanging out at the coffee house regularly on double dates with Bobby seeing Zelda and Henry seeing Zelda’s friend Vera introduced in X-Men #19.

Writer Roy Thomas took over with X-Men #20 and kept the very straight double-dating going and had Bobby come of age by turning 18 in X-Men #32. Following X-Men #47, Bobby and Zelda’s relationship seemed to end when new writer Arnold Drake had Bobby met the girl Lorna Dane on a street in San Francisco in X-Men #49. Bobby took a liking to her and brought her to his apartment where she turned out to be a mutant herself. However, nothing serious developed between them because Lorna Dane developed an attraction to the mutant Alex Summers known as Havok instead. The triangle culminated in X-Men #66. March 1970, by returning writer Roy Thomas who had Havok ask Iceman if Lorna agreed that she was his girl – the final issue featuring new stories until X-Men #94 in 1975. In between those issues, the straight love triangle seemed to get resolved in Hulk #150 from 1972 by writer Archie Goodwin where Havok had left the X-Men following a fight with Iceman over Lorna and Lorna followed Havok to his desert hideout. Stan Lee had Iceman appear with another girl – possibly Zelda - in Amazing Spider-Man #92 from 1971 anyway.

On friendly terms with mutant ex-girlfriends
In Marvel mags cover dated February 1971 it said on the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page: “We sure hope you caught Spidey’s recent ish #92 – the one featuring Iceman. The reason we mention it is that our chilly little cherub was such a smash hit in that yarn that we’ve been toying with the idea of giving Iceman a strip of his own. So, as soon as we can find an artist and a writer who can stand the temperature (ouch!), don’t be too surprised - !”

However, Iceman did not get his own book at that time and when the X-Men were relaunched as “the all-new, all-different” X-Men by writer Len Wein in 1975, Iceman left the team and Xavier’s school in X-Men #94. Instead, he joined The Champions in their first issue written by Tony Isabella that same year. The series lasted for 17 issues during which Iceman developed a crush on the Russian mutant Darkstar. When the team fell apart in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man # 17 by writer Bill Mantlo in 1978, Bobby declared his love to Darkstar, but she decided to return to Russia, leaving him single once again.

It didn’t take Bobby Drake long to pick up another girl, though. In the 1978 Incredible Hulk Annual #7 by writer Roger Stern, he was dating a Teresa Sue Bottoms, but upon meeting his friend, the angelic Warren Worthington, she seemed to forget all about Bobby while drooling over the Angel. In 1981, Bobby was still dating Terri in Marvel Two-In-One #76 plotted by Tom DeFalco, though.

Following his first solo feature as the hero Iceman in Bizarre Adventures #27 in 1981, Bobby Drake had a reunion with Lorna Dane – and her boyfriend Alex Summers – in Uncanny X-Men #146 by writer Chris Claremont, only to conclude that while he would always have a weak spot for her in his heart, he could finally accept that she loved someone else. He had a similar meeting with Darkstar in Marvcl Super Hero Contest of Champions #1 written by Bill Mantlo in 1982.

Falling for otherworldly girls
In 1983, Iceman joined the superhero-team the Defenders in Defenders #122 written by J. M. DeMatteis who in 1984 also wrote the very first four-issue limited series starring Iceman. In his own book at last, Iceman literally fell head-over-heels for a girl named Marge Smith during a visit with his parents in Long Island. Of course, she turned out to not be a regular girl at all, but Mirage, daughter of the otherworldly Oblivion, so of course that didn’t end well.

When Peter B. Gillis took over writing the Defenders with New Defenders #132 that same year, Iceman didn’t fare much better in love when another otherworldly being named Cloud flirted with Bobby Drake, only to be revealed as a nebula who had taken the forms of a dead straight human couple – changing between the sexes. This genderbending seemed to turn Bobby Drake off and the amnesiac Cloud left the New Defenders in #150 upon realizing what she really was. Then the book got cancelled with New Defenders #152 so that Iceman and his Defenders teammates Beast and Angel could rejoin the other original X-Men Cyclops and Marvel Girl in the new X-Factor series in 1986.

Still dating anything but ordinary girls
In X-Factor #29 written by Louise Simonson, the villainous Infectia set her sights on Iceman and practically threw herself at him in the very next issue. Iceman ignored warnings from his friend Beast that she was up to no good, but Iceman was too smitten with her to listen. When Infectia sure enough turned out to be a villainess, Beast saved Iceman from her dangerously infective kiss at great risk to himself in X-Factor #31.

In X-Factor #52 from 1990, Iceman began dating the Japanese girl Opal Tanaka who worked at a record store in Manhattan and was into Bobby Drake in his civilian identity. Like almost everyone of Bobby Drake’s girls, Opal was no ordinary girl either. In X-Factor #63 and 64 it was revealed that she was the granddaughter of a Yakuza crime lord. Bobby Drake continued to date her, though, and after having rejoined the X-Men, he introduced her to his parents in Uncanny X-Men #289 written by Scott Lobdell. However, the relationship ended in Uncanny X-Men #305 from 1993 when Bobby Drake and Opal had an argument about Iceman using her as bait to trap some villains.

Missing out on Nortstar amidst drama with past girlfriends
While many of Bobby Drake’s crushes and romantic relationships with girls, mutants and otherworldly beings seemed to be mostly platonic and didn’t go anywhere, he might have had sex with Opal Tanaka, though, because in the second four-issue Iceman limited series written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning in 2001, Bobby Drake suspected that he might be the father of a child Opal had given birth to after leaving him. It turned out that Bobby Drake wasn’t the father after all, but he had been prepared to start a new life with Opal and the child anyway.

In 2002, Iceman joined a new team of X-men in Uncanny X-Men #410 by writer Chuck Austen. When the gay superhero Northstar also joined the team in Uncanny X-Men #414, Northstar suffered an unrequited crush on Iceman because there were still no indications that Bobby Drake was gay himself. In Uncanny X-Men #425, Lorna Dane told Northstar that she had never slept with the “immature” Bobby Drake and the X-Men’s school nurse Annie Ghazikhanian had to tell Bobby Drake that Northstar was gay because Bobby hadn’t realized it on his own.

Annie Ghazikhanian was treating Bobby Drake for a secondary mutation that would leave him a man of ice permanently and the two shared a kiss in Uncanny X-Men #425. Still, Annie went for Alex Summers which made this the second time Iceman lost a girl he was interested in, to fellow X-Man Havok.

A straight love-triangle revisited
When Alex Summers broke off his wedding to Lorna Dane to be with Annie Ghazikhanian, Bobby Drake confessed to still loving Polaris in Uncanny X-Men #426 in 2003. She thought it was sweet after all these years, but it wasn’t until X-Men vol.2 #165 by writer Chris Claremont that she had recovered enough from her break-up with Havok to respond to Bobby Drake which she did by giving him a kiss under the Mistletoe at Christmas in 2004.

In 2005, Peter Milligan started his run as X-Men writer with X-Men vol. 2 #166 and gradually rekindled the 1970 love triangle between Iceman, Lorna Dane & Alex Summers. Annie had quit her job as the X-Men’s school nurse because the X-Men were too dangerous to be around, and the now single Alex Summers was interested in Lorna Dane again. In X-Men vol. 2 #173 Alex Summers confessed to Lorna Dane that he still loved her, but she rejected him to keep from hurting Bobby Drake. However, Bobby Drake was now unable to change back to his human form and was an iceman permanently, so his relationship with Lorna Dane was most likely strictly platonic.

By X-Men vol. 2 #180, Iceman could change back to Bobby Drake once more, but then Lorna Dane left the X-Men along with Alex Summers and they rekindled their romance while Bobby Drake stayed with the X-Men, single once again after having lost Lorna Dane to Alex Summers for the second time. When Lorna and Alex returned to the X-Men, Bobby Drake respected their relationship in X-Men vol. 2 #186.

Fatal attraction to a lethal MILF
In X-Men vol. 2 #188 from 2006, the book got a new writer, Mike Carey, which meant a new team of X-Men and a new love – or rather sex - interest for Iceman. It began in X-Men vol. 2 #190 when the villainess Mystique gave Iceman mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Mystique was the biological mother of X-Man Nightcrawler and the adoptive mother of X-Man Rogue. In X-Men vol.2 #193 it was Iceman’s turn to help Mystique out and in #197 and 198, they started flirting with each other and in #199 they kissed even though Mystique was supposedly a lesbian, confessing her love for the now dead Destiny to Iceman in #197.

The relationship between Iceman and Mystique culminated in X-Men vol. 2 #200 where Mystique seduced Iceman. He turned into Bobby Drake and the two of them had sex, only to have Mystique betray him and the rest of the X-Men afterwards. In #201 she told Iceman she slept with him to take him out in a strategic move as he was just too powerful a mutant, but she couldn’t remember when she enjoyed an ambush more though. This made it the second time Iceman had acted like a hormone-driven fool – the first being with Infectia – and it still wasn’t even for a man.

In X-Men vol. 2 #203, Mystique turned around and criticized Iceman’s sexual performance, though, but instead of killing him she let him off with a warning that she would kill him the next time she saw him and the two parted ways.

In the 2008 X-Men: Manifest Destiny mini-series, Iceman and the shape-changer Mystique squared off once again in a story by Mike Carey that had Mystique trying to lure Iceman to his doom by assuming the form of his former girlfriend Opal. He survived two murder attempts by her and stopped her from detonating a bomb on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. It turned out it was all her crazy way of showing she loved him. She escaped, swearing he would someday love her, but that day never came.

Iceman’s final straight romance
In 2011, writer Jason Aaron served up a new direction and a new girlfriend for Bobby Drake beginning in Wolverine and the X-Men #2 where Bobby Drake joined the senior faculty at the new Jean Grey School for Higher Learning as an accountant. In that issue, Bobby Drake followed an impulse to kiss his fellow X-Man Kitty Pryde who was a teacher at the school. Like Bobby Drake, Kitty Pryde had started out as the youngest member on the X-Men team she had been recruited for and in Wolverine and the X-Men #7, she kissed him back.

In Wolverine and the X-Men #24 from 2013, Bobby Drake went on a first date with Kitty Pryde and once they stopped trying to act like they were normal people and accepted that their lives are ridiculous, they had their greatest date ever and sealed it with a kiss. In Wolverine and the X-Men #32 they seemed to be an item, working together at the Jean Grey School and Iceman calling her “babe.”

In a storyline by writer Marjorie Liu running from Astonishing X-Men #62 to 65 in 2013, Bobby had been infected with an Apocalypse Seed that made him unleash his darker impulses, like calling his old girlfriends Lorna Dane, Opal and Annie and having them show up at a café where he was hanging out with Kitty Pryde and the recently married Northstar. Then Kitty Pryde didn’t know if her relationship with Bobby Drake was serious or not. She met with Opal to talk about Bobby Drake and how Opal felt his racist father had come between them. Then Bobby Drake talked with Opal himself about how she had lied to him about her son Robert being his just in time for Mystique to show up and take the Apocalypse Seed from Iceman. But a rift had now been formed between Kitty Pryde and Bobby Drake and in X-Men: Battle of the Atom #2 written by Jason Aaron in 2013 she quit the Jean Grey School and broke up with Iceman.

Coming out in his own series
In 2016, Bobby Drake had fallen for so many women, readers might have trouble swallowing yet another one. Maybe that’s why writer Brian Michael Bendis decided it was time for a new direction for the character and had a time-travelling young Bobby Drake confront the adult Bobby Drake in Uncanny X-Men #600 telling him he was gay? With a tear, the adult Bobby Drake admitted to being gay too. He had just repressed those feelings and done things to see if maybe he was straight. Now he admitted that he thought his X-Men teammate Angel was so hot it was annoying.

In Extraordinary X-Men #6 written by Jeff Lemire that same year, Bobby Drake came out to his openly gay student Anole. It was the first time he came out to somebody of his own volition as opposed to being confronted with it and admitting it.

In 2017, Iceman got his own ongoing series written by Sina Grace who was not only gay himself but also had a firm grasp for Iceman’s history and an uncanny ability to write engaging stories and witty dialogue. In the very first issue, Bobby Drake signed up for a dating site before confronting his ex-girlfriend Kitty Pryde in the next issue. She was running the Xavier Institute where Bobby Drake was working now. She was miffed she had to hear from another mutant that her ex was now gay, so Anole must have gossiped, but now she was no longer an angry ex but a concerned friend.

In the third issue, Bobby Drake came out in a text message for friends Northstar, the Human Torch and Spider-Man who seemed okay with it, as well as for ex-girlfriends Opal and Lorna Dane. Opal had no clue but thought it was cool and Lorna Dane figured she picked Alex Summers because a part of her had always kind of thought Bobby Drake was gay. Finally, after a failed attempt or two Bobby Drake came out to his parents in the fourth issue with his mother asking in the fifth issue if her son had been with a man. He replied: “No. Not yet.”

Iceman’s first boyfriend
At a party in Iceman vol. 3 #4, X-Man Wolverine’s bisexual son, the morally depraved Daken, asked Bobby Drake for a dance and thought Bobby Drake wanted him, but Bobby Drake really hated him because of past misdeeds and soon they were at each other’s throats, slugging it out and a feud ensued between them. So, Bobby Drake didn’t go for bad guys. What kind of man did he like?

The answer came in Iceman vol. 3 #6 where a regular human guy named Judah Miller picked him up in line for a shoe-sale while on a visit to Los Angeles. The two of them went with their friends to a club in West Hollywood where Bobby Drake and Judah danced and kissed and Judah invited Bobby Drake to come to his place so they could “talk, and stuff.” He wasn’t turned off by Bobby Drake turning out to be Iceman at all, so…

In Iceman vol. 3 #7, Bobby Drake was kissing Judah on a couch at Judah’s place, and they may or may not have gone all the way – Bobby Drake refused to tell his friends. But they probably did, because back at the Xavier Institute in New York, Bobby Drake texted with Judah who told him that he wasn’t proposing a long-distance relationship, but he’d like to keep knowing him and at the very least he had an ally in L.A. And then Bobby Drake decided to move to L.A. But the very next issue, Judah showed up in New York instead.

Still, the plan was for Bobby Drake to move to Los Angeles to be with Judah Miller and in Iceman vol. 3 #9, Bobby Drake’s friends at the X-Mansion threw him a farewell party where another gay mutant, Rictor, hit on him. However, Daken crashed the party and almost killed Iceman’s boyfriend so by issue #10, Judah Miller told Bobby Drake that his life was too insane for him, and Judah didn’t think Bobby should move to Los Angeles after all.

Kitty Pryde consoled Bobby Drake by telling him the X-Men needed him to stay with them in New York anyway and in #11 Bobby Drake did go on a date with fellow mutant Rictor, but none of them were over their exes so the date didn’t go anywhere. And then the series got cancelled.

From a one-night stand and a bad date to a boyfriend remembered
Kitty Pryde wasn’t kidding when she said the X-Men needed Iceman. In 2018, Bobby Drake had to put together an X-Men team to pick up the slack while some of the members of the Gold team served prison sentences. In X-Men Gold #23 by writer Marc Guggenheim, Iceman was talked into letting the new Pyro, Simon Lasker onto his team – a decision he certainly had no regrets about in X-Men Gold #32 where Bobby Drake and Simon Lasker had slept together in a hotel room following Kitty Pryde’s aborted wedding with X-Man Colossus. Bobby Drake reminded Simon Lasker that they had agreed it was a onetime thing, but Simon pointed out that “last night was a THREE-time thing.”

Then, later that same year, Sina Grace got another shot at writing Iceman because the trade paperback editions of his first 11 Iceman issues he wrote had sold well. In Iceman vol. 4 #1 there was no mention of Simon Lasker, though. Instead in #3, Bobby Drake got a hit on the dating site he had signed up for in vol. 3 #1 and went on a date with the guy, Carlos. And just as they got around to kissing, Iceman had to go into action against a Morlock along with his amazing friends Firestar and Spider-Man. Carlos wasn’t scared though, so after the battle Iceman dumped him for jumping into the fray for a selfie and wanting to tag him on social media.

Iceman got cancelled again after #5 in which there was a flashback to his relationship with Judah Miller. Sina Grace’s storylines from the Iceman series were wrapped up in the 2019 Uncanny X-Men: Winter’s End one-shot in which Bobby Drake got a present by mail from Judah Miller in honor of Bobby Drake’s birthday. Then Bobby Drake got warned off by his time-travelling future self against getting involved with Daken and Bobby Drake told Jean Grey off for outing his time-travelling younger self whose memories he now possessed. Those memories included a relationship with a guy named Romeo from All-New X-Men vol. 2 # 13 to 19 that ended in X-Men Blue #1 and 2. Finally, Bobby Drake wrote Judah Miller back, leaving the possibility open for them getting back together. But Bobby Drake is now single, happily gay and anything goes…

Iceman trading card by Jim Lee