X-TRA X-CERPT: Origins of Iceman & Beast

Journey back to "The Early 60's" to see how Beast and Iceman got their starts, which is apparently a fascinating story.




Originally Published in X-Men #44-53

Iceman by Gary Friedrich and George Tuska
Beast by Arnold Drake and Werner Roth

So, throughout the latter half of their 1960's run, (Not-Yet-Uncanny) X-Men featured backup stories relating the origins of its team members prior to X-Men #1. We have already been through Cyclops' story, easily the best of the bunch, which features the future Deputy Leader being tempted into joining the evil ways of the sensational and late lamented JACK O'DIAMONDS.

Iceman's story begins with him on a date (to see West Side Story) with a young Judy Harmon. He is assaulted by a romantic rival, one Rocky Beasley, and uses his ice powers to protect himself. Word spreads quickly, with the townsfolk thinking he has, and I quote, "black magic." They bum-rush his house and haul him to jail for mob justice.

Cyclops arrives to free him but Bobby insists on standing trial, belief in the American Justice System being unshakeable in his young mind.

They fight but eventually the mob catches them and decides to lynch the pair (!!). Professor X arrives mind-wipes the lot to enable their escape. Bobby agrees that there is truly no justice in this world and decides to join the X-Men.

Professor X even generously agrees to erase his parents' memories of his powers, for their own good, and not because that's just how he gets his jollies.

In Beast's case, we have already gotten some of his backstory: his father was a nuclear technician and his mutant extremities were known since birth. Though he grew up learned, his phyiscal attributes also made him a star football player.

Some burglars storm the field during a (televised!) game trying to escape the cops, and Beast takes them down with his Mutant Football Powers, earning the attention of the villainous ¡EL CONQUISTADOR~!

Conquistaor captures Beast and forces him, with his parents at gunpoint, to steal a power source for his destroy-the-world device. He does, but the X-Men arrive to free him, and sabotage the device.

The big takeaway from all of these stories is not to cross Professor X, because he will stone cold end you. Fortunately for all of us, in the present, he remains dead.

At first I preferred the Beast story because it was more action-oriented and involved a conventional, even colourful (if broad and forgettable) villain, but it borrows so much from the origins of Cyclops and Prof. X it feels redundant - the only saving grace was that Hank McCoy is inherently the most interesting X-Man to read about so far.

Iceman being strangely keen to stand trial and refusing to believe the justice system could in any way be corrupt against mutants - until literally facing the noose - is more interesting and a decent examination of what the underlying theme of the X-Men was in the 1960's. It's a shame that this broken faith doesn't really relate to sunny, funny Bobby Drake as we've known him, and probably won't be worked into his character going forward, since the characters themselves are usually as deep inside as the paper they're printed on.

Stories with this same outline have become more frequent as the comics have increased their emotional palette, to varying degrees of acclaim.

In the end, the mutant backstories are just exactly what they intend - mildly entertaining filler so that the main story of the issue doesn't have to be padded out too long. There's just not much backing these characters themselves up, as it turns out.

Of course, we still have Angel's backstory, which we are told slots in between Iceman's and Beast's, for whatever reason.