James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Cartoon Characters That He Liked As A Child – Part 9: Iceman

Day 9 of the A-Z Challenge, and this is where I come into my own. Sorry, this is where ‘I’ comes into its own. ‘I’ can be confusing at times. So can I, but for different reasons. ‘I’ is a first person nominative singular pronoun, whereas I am definitely not a first person nominative singular pronoun. I am just inclined to write confusing paragraphs like this one, whereas ‘I’, being a letter, is unable to write anything as all, though is frequently used in the written form by people like me to write confusing paragraphs like this one.

But enough of this letter-based fun and onto some other letter-based fun involving my love of cartoons.

I is for Iceman

There have been many Spiderman cartoons over the years. I’ve enjoyed quite a few of them. Probably my favourite was the cartoon from the 1990s, which was a vintage period for superhero-based animation. Alongside Spiderman, there were other Marvel offerings such as The X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and The Fantastic Four, which were all pretty great. DC, meanwhile, gave us Batman: The Animated series, which spawned Superman: The Animated Series and subsequently The Justice League, and The Justice League Unlimited cartoons. There have been multiple animated offerings from both DC and Marvel over the years, but the 1990s was a particularly golden time, when the animation was of a high standard and was, crucially, matched by the narratives for the most part.

However, the cartoon I’m focusing on today is from the early 1980s. It was called Spiderman and his Amazing Friends. The ‘amazing friends’ were the aforementioned Iceman and another character called Firestar.

Iceman, AKA Bobby Drake, was originally an ‘X-man’, but there has always been plenty of crossover between Marvel’s various franchises and so it’s reasonable that he was requisitioned for this particular cartoon. Firestar was created specifically for Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, but has subsequently joined the X-Men in the world of comic books. If I speak as something of an authority on the subject of Marvel comics then don’t be fooled, I’ve never read a comic book in my life. I’m pretty handy with a Google search though. Having said I’ve never read a comic book is in no way meant to detract from the fact that I absolutely love superhero cartoons and movies. That I’ve never really explored the source material, doesn’t mean I’m not grateful that it exists – I just prefer my superheroes to be on screen rather than in print.

I loved Spiderman and his Amazing Friends when I was a child. Indeed, it’s something of a testament to how much I was enthused by it that, even though Spiderman was pretty much my favourite superhero growing up, I actually might’ve had a slight preference for Iceman in this particular series. He was both figuratively and, I suppose, literally cool. I loved the way he transformed by freezing himself in a block of ice and then breaking out of it. All Spiderman did, by comparison, was put on a costume. I also liked the way that Iceman travelled around, by creating his own ice-travelator. Firestar, who completed the trio, was also great. I re-watched a few episodes in preparation for writing this post and the show held up surprisingly well. It is a little dated and doesn’t really hit the standards set by the 1990s Spiderman series, but it was really quite watchable. Also there is a surprising amount of sexual tension between the characters for what was, essentially, a children’s cartoon.