Wherever he went, his name struck fear into the hearts of those that
opposed truth, justice, and the Goody-Good way. He showed no mercy when
dealing with cold [sic], inhuman criminals, and he was the best at what he
did. His secret life was Bobby Drake, roving ex-student from Xavier's
school for ex-men. But in reality, he was ICEMAN, pursuant
perpetrator of evil and wrong-doers. He was the type of guy that would
grab your car in an ice structure if you ran a red light.
Bobby Drake was feeling relaxed that day, wandering home at
his usual time of a half hour after midnight. Suddenly, the
yuckey stillness of night was shattered by gunshots and two
thieves wearing nylon stockings over their heads. The pair of
thugs was dashing madly away from the first national bank of
Syria carrying a sack with a dollar sign on one side.
"This looks suspicious," said Bobby in his dumpy secret
identity voice. "And it also looks like a job . . ."
He pointed his palms at his feet as streams of ice gutted
from them and began to encase him in a block from the feet up.
". . . for . . ."
The ice completely engulfed his body, making him look like a
Frigidaire commercial. Inside the ice block, Bobby pushed on the
sides, cracking the frozen water apart and sending it flying in
little chunks. It was the crust of ice armor remaining that
transformed him from Bobby Drake into:
"I C E M A N ! ! !"
His voice was about an octave and a half below his previous
Bobby Drake speaking voice. It was commanding, rippling with
power and cold [sic] determination.
Aiming his hands to the ground, a frozen-TV-dinner-thick
sheet of ice formed beneath his feet and curved up and forward of
him like a slide. He began to ice skate forward, gaining speed
and altitude as he did so. His ice slide kept on forming at the
ends of the ice streams from his hands, leading ever higher and
closer to the two escaping criminals. Using this technique,
Iceman could get a speeding ticket on the freeway.
"Look!" exclaimed one of the crooks. "Up in the sky!"
"It's a contrail!" the other suggested.
"It's a popsickle!"
Then, in unison: "IT'S ICEMAN!"
They were frightened out of their wits. The first took aim
and fired two shots right into the frozen form. These leaden
projectiles might have slowed him down had they not all been
easily stopped by his ice armor.
"Hey," commented the other. "Didja ever notice that his ice
slide is usually several miles long, hanging in midair, with no
structural strength or supporting beams?"
"You sure pick a funny time to be a perfectionist!"
Iceman swooped down on the grovelling two, firing an ice
blast with one of his free hands. "Sorry to cool down your
operation, but I just can't stand to see burglars get away with
cold cash!"
"Aaaaagh!" the two said, both in response to his churning
ice ray and his bad pun. They were whisked off the street in a
deluge of extremely cold water, and at last lay suspended in the
center of an ice ball five meters across.
Iceman had a tendency to overkill his opponents.
"Good work, Iceman," said a police sergeant when he arrived
on the scene a few minutes later. "You're a credit to this
country!"
"Just doing my job, officer," he replied, and ice slid away
into the dark of the night.
"There goes a fine American. We'd probably have lost World
War II without him."
"But sir, Iceman didn't exist until 1963."
"See what a good job he's done? He didn't even have to be
there, and he still won World War II for us!"
In the High School cafeteria, Bobby Drake munched absent-mindedly on his
hamburgersickle while he picked his nose with an
ice pick. He hadn't seen Angelica Jones or Peter Parker around
recently, and was beginning to wonder if Peter had run off with
his girlfriend.
'I hope not,' he thought. 'Angelica was really hot stuff.'
Suddenly, the yuckey stillness of cafeteria food was
shattered by gunshots and two thieves wearing nylon stockings
over their heads. The pair of thugs was dashing madly away from
the serving kitchen carrying a sack with a cents sign on one
side. Bobby slipped away into a nearby telephone booth as soon as
the guy with the S on his chest got out.
"This looks like a job . . . for . . ." Crash!!
". . . ICEMAN!"
He quickly ice slid out of the remains of the phone booth
after the criminals. There was only one question on everybody's
mind: 'Where did Iceman come from? He must be faster than we
thought!'
The blue-white figure boldly charged at the two frightened
crooks. One of them took out a machine gun he had in his pocket
and riddled Iceman's armor — to no avail. He pulled a bazooka
out from his other pocket and was about to flatten the Man of
Ice, but Iceman got the first move.
"Now it's my turn, criminal scum! Cool your jets!" A ray of
ice came from his right hand and solidified in midair. It rammed
into the bazooka and thrust it from the crook's hands into the
far wall. The rocket launcher went off on impact, shattering a
piece of the ceiling and jailing the criminals in a pile of
fallen debris.
"We give up! We give up!" they said in unison.
The population of the cafeteria cheered wildly for the man
who was their hero and their idol (several macho men had lost
their girlfriends because they couldn't fire ice blasts like
him). Iceman immediately stopped sliding around and congratulated
himself on a job well done. After a few bows to his audience, the
police came and took the criminals away.
"You again?" asked the police sergeant. "Boy, you sure get
around. What would we do without you?"
"Probably burn up at the crime rate. So long!" He slid off
into the midday sunset.
"What's your name, mister popsickle?" asked a three-year-old
girl down by the pond. She'd never seen a guy bring his own roads
with him before.
"The name's Iceman, little girl. Say, would you like to see
me freeze that pond?"
"Well, I —"
She actually didn't have much to say in the matter. Iceman
stared at the pond intently and within a second it was solid H2O
throughout. "That's nothing," he commented. "Watch this!"
He aimed his hands at the base of the pond and sprayed his
icy stuff again. The pond, frozen fish and plants and all, rose
skyward on a column of Iceman's patented Handy Ice.
"How did you do that?" The girl's father had joined her,
and was far more impressed than she was.
"Easy. I'm Iceman, that's how!"
"Yeah, I know, but I mean how?"
"Well, you see, I'm a mutant with the ability to freeze
moisture from the air."
"There couldn't have been that much moisture in the air."
"Well, you see, solid ice, due to its crystalline structure,
takes up more space than does the same mass of liquid water."
"But not that much more space! And what's this about being
a mutant? The mutants I know are missing arms and legs and things.
I know this one mutant who's called 'Cyclops' because he was born
with only one eye. . . . Hey! Where'd he go?"
The man shrugged it off and turned his back to the
situation. On the rear of his tee-shirt was a picture of
Spiderman with a red circle around it and a line through it.
Below this was printed, "Make mine D.C."
The Iceman show had just been nationally televised for the
first time, and already Iceman could begin to feel his head
swelling inside its ice plating. This was the first live action
show that fictitiously reproduced the adventures of a real life
super-hero — in fact, of the real life super-hero. He hadn't
been on the street two minutes before he was surrounded by
autograph hounds and people wanting to see him "do that ice slide
trick."
"Hey, do that ice slide trick," they said.
"Glad to oblige." He carefully sprayed his ice in front of
him in exact measured doses, which seemed on the outside only to
form another big ice block. Then, carefully measuring his blow,
he punched the structure at a key point. The ice on the outside
fell away, exposing a statue which looked alarmingly like a
playground slide.
"There you are. One genuine ice slide." That got a few
chuckles from the group, but there were a few who ignored it.
They were the swooning girls begging to be noticed by him.
"Hello, miss," he said as he put a hand on one of their
shoulders.
"He touched me!" she crooned, and fainted.
"Gee, I didn't mean to give her the cold shoulder."
That was all the kid in the back could stand. He took his
slingshot from his back pocket, removed the wad of gum he was
chewing on, took dead aim and . . .
"Oh no you don't!" Iceman's keen, icy eyes caught it just in
time. He let fly an ice ray which turned into a snowball some two
meters in diameter. This stopped the kid quite well, who had some
trouble getting out from underneath it.
"Sorry I had to bowl you over."
The kid let fly with his gum wad anyway. It hit Iceman on
the palm of his left hand, where it quickly turned brittle and
shattered from the quick-freeze.
Iceman's impressive victory was cut short by a man in dark
sunglasses and a three piece denim sport coat. "FBI" he said,
shoving the appropriate badge in his face.
"So? Don't bother me with petty details. I have important
work to do!"
"But this is important! It's a matter of national
security."
"Sure it is. Just like the time you told me to stand in
while the White House refrigerator was on the blink. Get back to
me when you have something important to say."
He ice slid off out of hearing range. He followed up this
quick maneuver by ducking down below radar level and skimming the
alleyways for a while. Finally, when he made it to the next city
over, he decided to rest. He slumped down on the backside of a
building beside a row of garbage cans.
"But it is important!" the FBI man popping out from the
third garbage can said. It was the same man.
"Oh, all right. What is it," asked the Man of Ice.
"Harry 'Phoenix' Roberts has just escaped from prison."
"'Phoenix' Roberts. I've heard that name before. What was he
in for?"
"Arson. He burned down three city blocks at once."
"Oh yeah. I remember that: the 'Phoenix' Bonfire. I still
have nightmares about that news flash."
"Well, he's escaped, and he's on the move. We need you to
catch him; you're the only one who can do it."
"But why me? I'm just your friendly neighborhood Iceman!"
"Because it's a known fact that opposites attract. You deal
with cold, he deals with fire. You'll be drawn to each other like
flies to female flies. Comprende?"
"Oui oui, mon sewer. This looks like a job for. . ."
In unision, they both chanted: "I C E M A N ! ! !"
"It's so much fun being an ego maniac," he thought as he
slid into the sunset. "I'm best at everything: ice sliding,
refrigerator repair, saving the world, modesty, you name it."
He entered the Sleez Ball bar & grill non-chalantly, looking
like any other suave and famous super-hero off the street who was
coincidentally covered with ice. "Howdy, bartender. Give me a
beer."
"What kind do super-heroes drink?" asked the bartender as he
dried a glass. Bartenders don't normally dry glasses, but it
always looks nice on film. "Coors? Bud? Schlitz?"
"Root." he said with his commanding voice. The bartender
wouldn't think of cracking a joke about it. "On the rocks. And
put it in —"
"I know, a dirty glass. One root beer, comin' up!" He poured
a glass of Coors, then ground a couple of tree roots into it and
handed it to Iceman.
"Say," asked Iceman casually, "Have you heard anything about
Harry Roberts?"
"'Phoenix' Roberts? Sure. He's over there in the west
corner. He's been drinking himself silly all day, ordering round
after round of Everclear — that's ninety-five percent grain
alcohol — and sprinkling some weird powder on it. He has plenty
of dough with him, but I do wish he'd pay me in money for a
change. I don't understand how anyone could ingest that much pure
ethyl alcohol and not pass out. Oh sure, he's acting a little
strange now, but he just won't pass out."
"Thanks pardner. I think I'll mosey on over there and check
this feller out." Iceman proceeded to mosey.
"Strange fellow. I've never seen a guy act western in a
British bar before."
Iceman arrived at the west corner and addressed the table's
single occupant. "Harry Roberts?"
"Yes, that is I. What want you?" His voice sounded strangely
malevolent, but Iceman hardly noticed that when compared to the
smell of pure C2H5OH on his breath.
"Give it up, 'Phoenix' Roberts. I've got you cornered, and
no human force you can conjure up can stop me from taking you
in."
"That's true — no human force can stop you. But
. . ." Before another word could be spoken, Harry Roberts
clenched his fists and pointed them at Iceman. Twin streaks of flame
roared out from seemingly nowhere on them, catching Iceman square and knocking
him down. The heat had fazed him.
". . . ha ha! I am only barely human now!"
"Oh oh," thought Iceman. "Here it comes. One more super
villain origin. . . ."
"Ten years ago, a fiery bolt from the heavens intersected me
while I was robbing a candy store. At the time I thought nothing
of it, since fiery bolts from the heavens hit people every other
Wednesday. But by and by my perspective of the world began to
change. I became less interested in theft and more interested in
pyromania."
"From larson to arson, eh?" suggested Iceman.
"Don't interrupt! Anyway, I soon realized that I could start
fires without matches or having to rub boyscouts and girlscouts
together. I realized that this power came from a powdery residue
the fiery bolt left on my body. I scraped the powder off, and lo
and behold, my power to start fires at touch was gone.
"But my pyromania remained. What power could I get, I
thought, if I ingested this powder? I tried this and it did
absolutely nothing. Well, back to the good old matches. It wasn't
long before I wound up in jail for the 'Phoenix' Bonfire."
"And that's what gave you your nickname Phoenix, right?"
asked Iceman.
"No, I got that name because I reminded people of a day in
the Arizona Desert. Anyway, a few days ago, it finally hit me.
Instead of taking the powder straight, I should mix it with
something! I broke out of jail, dug my stash of powder out from
where I'd hidden it, and got to work. I had to mix it with
something that'd be flammable, yet wouldn't kill me if I ingested
it."
Iceman's eyes opened wide in terror. "Ethanol," he whispered
in awed fear.
"That's right. And now, as you have seen, the transformation
is almost complete!" His voice was taking on a more
megalomaniacal tone than Iceman had heard in a long time. This
was the first time in his life the super-hero Iceman had ever
been genuinely scared of someone or something.
Phoenix held his mug of Everclear/pyropowder boldly before
himself. "This is it! One more swig of this magical mixture, and
no force on Earth can stop me!"
"Oh, no you don't!" Iceman supported his weight on his right
hand and fired an ice blast at the mug with his left. His aim was
good, but Phoenix managed to pull the mug out of its way.
"Ha! You missed!" he said as he proceeded to chug-a-lug down
the last of the stuff. He threw the glass to the floor where it
crashed into hundreds of pieces, but no one seemed to notice. Not
when Phoenix's body was beginning to rumble and take on a new
shade of black. Flame oozed from the figure's fringes like a halo
as he bellowed, "At last, I have found it! I have shielded the
cosmic rays from the body of Alex Summers, and I am at last
becoming the Living Monolith!
"Whoops! Wrong giant origin. But I am managing to
get 'up in the world'."
Phoenix wasn't kidding. His head was already crashing
through the roof of the bar, and his body size easily matched his
height. And his growth was accelerating.
When he was finished, he towered sixteen and a quarter
meters above the smouldering remains of the Sleez Ball bar &
grill. Fortunately, none of the people had been killed . . .
yet.
"Phoenix!" shouted Iceman. "You look so black! . . . so
dark! . . ."
"Well, then," suggested the humanoid monolith, "I suppose
you can call me 'Dark Phoenix.' But I'd really prefer it if you
just called me . . . FIRE MAN!!"
Iceman's pulse was racing. It could have won the Indy 500 if
the Indy 500 were open to pulses. His temperature reached a
searing forty degrees Farenheit. He was doing what he hadn't done
for the past eight years; he was sweating liquid water.
With all that going against him, true believers, is it fair
that he has to fight the Fire Man?
"Maybe not fair," the big guy suggested, "But it sure sounds
like fun! Perish, mortal scum!"
Fortunately, Iceman had recovered enough to ice slide out of
the way of Fire Man's deluge of flame. Again, no one was killed
(we can't kill people in super-hero comics cartoons). Iceman set
himself up in what he deemed was a good position, six meters
above ground, and put nearly everything he had into his ice
blast. The blow did little more than manage to annoy the flaming
Dark Phoenix.
"Fool! Do you not realize that you are only prolonging your
demise by taunting me?"
"No, I thought I was just giving you a snow job." Iceman's
voice didn't even waver.
"Grrrrr! Hold it! What am I thinking? I don't have to
deal with you! All I have to do is destroy the city. You'll be
compelled to stop me by your own petty moral code. And I think
I'll start with that group of people over there!"
There was no way Iceman could let this go unchallenged. "Oh,
no you don't!"
"That's the third time you've said that todghrghplg —"
Iceman had commandingly surrounded Fire Man in a silo shaped
cage of ice a meter thick. It would take a forest fire three
hours to eat through that much special ice.
But Fire Man did it in only seconds. "Great snowflakes!"
exclaimed Iceman. "No one has ever melted that much ice before —
not even the Hulk! Come to think of it, I never iced the Hulk
before, anyway."
"That was a good one, icicle. Now its my turn."
Like he had done before, Fire Man aimed his fists at Iceman
and let loose twin beams of fire. The only difference was that
this time the beams were much bigger. Iceman tried desperately to
evade the shots, but the left beam hit him square.
Iceman was knocked from the sky. His armor was half melted
away, showing vague hints of his Bobby Drake identity. His ice
slide had peeled way back and was far out of his reach. His
weakened armor would never be enough protection against the six
meter drop, and to top it off, he was unconscious.
If Bobby Drake were an ordinary man, he would be dead meat
by now. But Iceman was not an ordinary man; if he were, this
comic wouldn't have been made, right? He recovered from the blow
mere milliseconds before he hit the ground. Thinking
instinctively, he anchored a new ice slide to the air and whisked
himself along in a slow arc, saving himself from certain doom.
"You survived! Hey, what's holding that ice ramp up,
anyhow?"
"The usual. Nothing, of course!" Iceman aimed an unexpected
attack straight at the eyes of the monster. The attack succeeded,
and Fire Man's windshields were iced over.
"Yaah! I can't see!"
'This is just the opening I need,' Iceman thought as he set
himself up for his next move. This would require the cunning and
brains found only in one such as . . . ICEMAN!!
'This guy was created by a fiery bolt from the heavens. If I
could get my hands on an icy bolt from the heavens, I may be able to
match his power level! Now where am I going to find one of
those? . . . Wait a minute! What am I worried
about? I'll make an icy bolt from the heavens!'
Iceman fired one of his biggest ice blasts ever straight
upward, just as Fire Man cleared the blinding ice wall from his
eyes. "Now, human scum," howled the Man of Fire, "Prepare to meet
your doom!"
"Not if I can help it! Have another ice blast in your eyes!"
"You don't think I'm going to fall for that trick again, do
you? All I have to do is cover my eyes," he said as he covered
his eyes.
'Good,' Iceman thought. 'He fell for it!' Iceman put both of
his arms out straight, palms facing Fire Man's abdomen, and fired
twin beams of cold like they were going out of style.
"Arrrgh!" the Fire Man yelled as he moved his arms from his
eyes to his gut. "Your cold blast can't kill me, but I would
prefer to be in a little less pain."
Fire Man extended one of his arms until his hand was
blocking the cold path. Now the pain had moved from his stomach
into his palm. He clenched his hand into a fist and began to
project fire from it. ". . . and firing my blast is a lot less
painful than taking one of yours!"
Iceman recognized this scene instantly, even through his
mounting fatigue. He was firing his cold blast right into Fire
Man's heat blast, and the effect was that of a push-of-war.
Should he give in even a little, although his armor had refrozen
itself, he would be well done. He put his head down to endure the
strain a little longer.
"Got to . . . keep this . . . up, or my
. . . goose is . . . cooked! Can't . . .
talk without . . . using ellipses . . . between my
statements!"
"Nothing can save you now, you reject from the frozen meat
section!" Fire Man raised his other fist into position and
readied to add its might into his blast.
All-of-a-sudden, a whistling burst into their ears. When
Iceman looked to its source, he saw a big ice chunk hurling at
him from straight above, shaped like a non-pointed industrial
screw.
"Cold diggity dog! My icy bolt from the heavens!"
"What?" thundered Fire man. "Why . . . it is an
icy bolt from the heavens!"
The bolt stuck down on Iceman and began surrounding him with
psychadelic ice shades as dramatic music began to play. He
started chanting, "By the power of Grayskull! . . ."
The dramatic music also chanted as Iceman's body slowly
gained size: "Ice-MAN! (dah, dah, da-da-da-da-dah) Ice-MAN! (dah,
dah, da-dah)"
Iceman slowly gained size and mass as his body grew
proportionally larger, meter by meter. Finally, it reached its
maximum of sixteen meters high, nearly the same towering size as
Fire Man.
"I have the power!" bellowed Iceman, concluding the chant.
The icy background ceased along with the music.
"Okay," he continued, "Now we're an even match!"
"Oh, no we're not! I'm Fire Man, remember? I'm a better
match than you are, any day!"
"You'll pay for that pun," Iceman said as he blasted him
with his newfound might.
"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! Never in my entire three
minute career as a supervillain have I felt such power! I . . .
must . . . counter it!"
Fire Man engaged his own brand of mighty blast, but this
time he was at a disadvantage. Iceman's first sixteen-meter-high
onslaught had weakened him, and now he had to repel Iceman's
superhumanly powerful ice blast with everything he had.
The two forms of nasty stuff clashed in mid-track, sending
peals of thunder over the landscape. This thunder went on to
create a 6.7 earthquake which wrecked several buildings and
injured many people, none of whom were killed, of course.
"No!" screamed Fire Man. "I've run out of fire!"
Iceman snickered, "Well, that's too bad for you!" He aimed
his hands at him, but instead of producing ice blasts, the only
things that came out were a few normal-sized ice cubes before his
hands stopped emitting altogether. "Well, whadaya know? I'm outa
snow!" This was not surprising, since by now Iceman's "freezing
moisture from the air" bit must have reduced the humidity level
in that city to the equivalent of Death Valley.
"It looks like we're going to have to fight this one out
hand-to-hand," Iceman said as he grappled the burning black
excuse for a humanoid.
The two titans clashed meters above the ground. They stepped
wildly from side to side, crushing what remains the earthquake
left behind. Their points of contact were sending out violent
sparks of rushing, charged air.
Iceman had to win, otherwise Fire Man would crush the Earth
in his hellish grip.
Though they couldn't detect it, both Iceman and Fire Man
were slowly shrinking, losing their mass energy as they cancelled
each other out and returned to their original size. By the time
they realized what was going on, they were back down to their
less-than-two-meter heights.
"My size," Fire Man cried. "What happened to my size?!?"
"You just lost it in a poker game. My poker game. Now you're
down to a size I can handle."
"Hah! I may have lost my sixteen-and-a-quarter-meter height
and my fire blasts, but I still have my body flame!"
"And your burnt toast coloration. It looks real strange on a
caucasian like you," Iceman said as he ice blasted Flame Man (one
step down from a fire).
"Argh. How'd you recover your ice blasts so quickly?"
"The same way you got back your flame blasts: we're not
wielding nearly as much energy, so we're not draining our
respective power sources nearly as fast."
"Oh? You mean I can flame blast? Thanks!" Flame Man blasted
Iceman.
"Yii! I shouldn't have opened my big mouth. Hey, cracklin'
brand, how'd you like a few ice balls!"
Two ten-centimeter diameter ice baseballs flew from Iceman's
hand and hit Flame Man square (Fire Man had been too obsessed
with his absolute power to figure out how to dodge). They flung
him back onto the ground, the impact of which nearly gave him a
concussion.
"Ouch! All right, no more mister nice guy!"
He never completed the threat. Iceman created a cylinder of
ice three meters high by three meters wide above Flame Man's
head, and let his own heat melt it. The deluge immediately doused
his fire, turning him back from Flame Man into Harry "Phoenix"
Roberts.
"If there's anything I can't stand, it's a megalomaniac. I
think I'd best 'freeze your assets'."
Iceman froze Harry Roberts in a humanoid ice shell
sixteen-and-a-quarter meters high as he screamed, "Nooooooooo!!
. . ." It was an overkill to say the least, but it was a fitting
ending.
"Good work, Iceman," said the same police sergeant. "This
statue will block traffic for a few miles back, but we haven't
had much traffic since the big quake, anyway. What would this
town be without you?"
"Probably a lot better off, since someone else could
probably have handled Fire Man without turning this place into a
shambles. But don't worry . . . I'll repair the damage."
Iceman ice slid away quickly and began rebuilding every
structure from memory as best he could recall, turning the rubble
into an igloo emporium. When his work was through, he turned back
and said, "Oh, don't thank me. We're all on the same team."
His ice slide carried him boldly into the gold-hued sunset.