Iceman Came Out. Now He’s Coming Back in His Own Series.; The New York Times, June 28, 2018

George Gene Gustines, The New York Times; Iceman Came Out. Now He’s Coming Back in His Own Series.

"What is next for Iceman? 

I’m really excited that we’re coming back with a new No. 1. This is going to be a great way to invite readers to celebrate with us. Iceman is going to be thinking about how he can help other people and use his mutant power to be the best he can be. He’s going to be up against some pretty big bad guys. In the first issue he’s preventing the next “Mutant Massacre” with Bishop, another X-Man.

We’re also going to see a lot of the previous cast but played out in different ways. Bobby’s relationship with his parents will not be as fraught. He reached a level of peace that you can get to — even with parents like his. We’re going to see his dating life. It’s just going to be such a breath of fresh air to see him really stretch his arms out and have fun. 

You mentioned there would be some community outreach too. 

The reason I love X-Men books is that they speak so much to people who identify as other. We’re going to be seeing Bobby trying to figure out how he can be a shining beacon to the gay community. That’s where me and Bobby Drake are alike: How do you take this platform and try to do something meaningful? That’s something I want all readers to think about: How can you make a difference in your world? I feel super proud of the story I’ve crafted with all those things in mind."

The Iceman Cometh Out; New York Times. February 19, 2018

Stephanie Burt, New York Times; The Iceman Cometh Out

"Superhero comics address, and empower, straight white nerdy boys. That’s been true of most comics, for most of their history. But is it the genre’s central truth? For some of us, it never was. As Ramzi Fawaz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has pointed out, superhero comics are the only popular genre in which anomalous bodies are not just tolerated but celebrated: The same thing that makes you look weird means you can save the world. Moreover, comics — because they involve stories of human (and superhuman) conflict and change; because they show hand-drawn pictures, with stylized faces; because they often appeal to us first in childhood — invite identification: We read them in search of ourselves, or our future selves.

These facts about comics explain — in part — why the X-Men became the most successful superhero franchise of the 1980s. Mutation, the source of X-powers, could stand, well or badly, for stigmatized real-world identities, as well as for the outsider status most kids, at some point, feel. The best X-books integrated real-world diversity too. Under Chris Claremont (who wrote many of them from 1975 to 1991) the core cast included a few women of color, one of them a virtual god, along with very strong hints of queer sexuality. More than almost any other gaudy bang-pow-pop cultural property, X-books offered — then and since — an imaginative space where L.G.B.T. readers could feel at home."