This Wednesday, April 22, Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mahmud Asrar are wrapping up All-New X-Men with issue 40. But the issue is already making news for outing one of the original X-Men members as a homosexual.
There are full spoilers ahead! You’ve been warned!
The Advocate has posted several pages from All-New X-Men # 40 that reveal that Bobby Drake aka Iceman is gay.
Among some comic fans and professionals, Iceman has long been rumored to be gay. Bleeding Cool has posted several examples of writers and artists alluding to this.
However, the All-New X-Men # 40 pages seem to state that Iceman’s older self is not homosexual, which seems to imply that the younger Bobby and the older Bobby may not be the same man. Bleeding Cool hypothesizes that the younger X-Men are from an alternate timeline, which also leaves the door wide open for the changes to Bobby’s character to be ignored by subsequent writers.
The only way that this change will become permanent is if the older Bobby Drake also comes out as gay. But that will be up to Bendis’ successor.
Bendis’ last issue of his dual X-Men title run will arrive in May’s Uncanny X-Men # 600, which will presumably return the five original X-Men to the past.
