Spoilers for Marvel's Voices: Iceman #2 ahead
The Krakoan Age of the acknowledging just how queer Krakoa really is.
Since their creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two legendary Jewish comics creators, the Merry Mutants of Marvel have faced discrimination and marginalization that mirrors the real life experiences of oppressed communities, first as an allegory for being Jewish in America, then for racial inequity, and more recently as an allegory for LGBTQ+ oppression. The subtextual allegory worked incredibly well for decades, but was disrupted by the Scarlet Witch's "Decimation" event of the mid 2000s, and has become more concretely a "mutants vs. humans" storytelling device in the last several years.
When the mutants left the mainland and settled on Krakoa in Jonathan Hickman's acclaimed 2019 Iceman #2 Bobby and his time-traveling ex-boyfriend Romeo are catching up while sightseeing when Iceman is approached by Julian Quintero, the young queer cousin of the superhero Reptil, who asks for Bobby's autograph, calling him an icon.
Drake assumes that Julio is also a mutant, and that he feels as though Bobby is a mutant icon, when in reality Julio is not a mutant and instead views Iceman as a heroic icon for the LGBQTIA+ community. Bobby is incredibly encouraged by this lovely interaction, and starts to feel like he is finally figuring out his place as a gay man and mutant hero, which is then juxtaposed with the devastating news that his father has died. Iceman's father and mother are famously anti-mutant bigots, as well as being unive of Bobby's queerness, and it turns out that his father refused the life-saving medicine created by Krakoa just because he doesn't like mutants. This emotional juxtaposition between the hate and oppression Bobby's parents feel towards the mutants, with the joy he felt at being called a mutant icon by a young queer person, does the important job or bringing the impactful mutant metaphor back into focus. While the mutant metaphor has never, and will never, be a perfect allegory for racism or homophobia, it is lovely to see X-Men writers being allowed to explore in a more explicit way the relationship between mutant and queer oppression in the Marvel Universe.
There are currently a number of queer comics creators in the X-Office at Marvel, and creators like Marvel's Voices: Iceman's Luciano Vecchio and New Mutants' Vita Ayala are finally being allowed to explicitly show LGBTQ+ identities and relationships on the page, giving Marvel a better opportunity to return to the X-Men's roots as a complex, but enduring mutant metaphor for real world oppression.
Marvel's Voices: Iceman #2 is available now on Marvel Unlimited.
