Issue(s): Bizarre Adventures #27 (Iceman story only)
Cover Date: Jul 81
Title: "Winter carnival"
Credits:
Mary Jo Duffy - Writer
Alfredo P. Alcala & George Perez - Penciler
Alfredo P. Alcala - Inker

Review/plot:
This Bizarre Adventures story is listed as being "in full color for the first time" for this X-Men Rarities reprint and says that the art was "inspired by George Perez & Alfredo Alcala". It's not clear to me exactly what that means. Did they completely repaint the issue, using the b&w art from the original as a reference? If so, i should probably give colorist Ariane Lenshoek (credited only as "Ariane") with an art credit as well.

Bobby Drake is a "visiting sophomore" at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. As Iceman he helps foil a theft of a computer system installed by Henry Pym...

...and learns that he can step out of the shadow of his team mates and be a hero on his own.

The oddest thing about the story is at one point the bad guys actually kill a bunch of students, and a few minutes later everyone is partying and celebrating after Iceman stops them.

If you can ignore that, it's a cute little story.

A police officer appearing in this story, James D'Angelo, has been a minor recurring character in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu and also has a few Spectacular Spider-Man appearances.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Bizarre Adventures story was printed in 1981, but the timing doesn't seem right for him to be a sophomore. The X-Men have been doing college level coursework at Xavier's since the 1960s. Soon after leaving the X-Men in 1976, Iceman and Angel transfer to a college in California, as seen in the first issue of the Champions. So it's more likely that Iceman has been acting as a "visiting sophomore" as part of an exchange program with the Xavier Institute in fairly-nearby upstate New York (and ice sculptures of Nova and Ms. Marvel confirm that it must take place closer to publication date than the 60s). In any event, the story is relatively context free. The MCP places this after Iceman's appearance in Uncanny X-Men #146. As Jay Demetrick notes, Iceman is wearing the costume from his latter day Champions appearances.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: X-Men Rarities TPB

This story was originally scheduled for Marvel Spotlight(after some previous announcements about solo Iceman), but the book got cancelled first.

When this issue of Bizarre Adventures was announced, the Jean Grey story was supposed to be about Phoenix and her sister being kidnapped by Attuma and transformed into water-breathers. The 3rd story was to be Quicksilver by Jo Duffy/Alan Weiss and said to be pulled from inventory. The Nightcrawler story by Cockrum got ran instead, so there may be an unpublished Quicksilver story laying around(unless it showed up during the DeFalco EIC era).

I think that the Quicksilver story was the one that ran in Marvel Fanfare 14. (It could have been updated to bring it into continuity.)

If you look closer, Iceman is wearing his full body Champions style costume with the V-shaped panel on his chest under his ice here, placing it sometime after The Champions #14 where he debuts it. He's going solo here so definitely after the Champions broke up post-Spectacular Spider-Man #18.

In Uncanny X-Men 145 (May 1981), a narration box mentions that Iceman is "On the eastern seabord" and a "college sophomore" and had just finished a term paper.

Iceman probably got his first officially recognized year of college at UCLA while he was a member of the Champions and was only taking "college level courses" at Xavier's after he graduated.

If you go by the ol' 4 years publishing time = 1 year of Marvel time that seems to be most people's average, Bobby (Who had an 18th birthday in 1967 comics) would have turned 21 in comics from 1979-1980. I agree with what Jay says above, Iceman probably took some classes behind the scenes during "the Hidden Years" when X-Men appearances were few and far between and then entered UCLA during the Champions series as a sophomore.

Time-wise this makes sense to me because Iceman is supposed to be a bout a year younger than most of his other contemporary X-Men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel) as well as Spider-Man, Johnny Storm and Rick Jones.

Peter Parker graduated college in a 1978 comic, and most college graduates are 22. The point being, I can buy Bobby being 21 and a delayed-entry sophomore here; to me this times out just fine.

(I actually have a theory that Peter might really be Bobby's age and graduated high school and college a year or so early -- based on post-2000 claims that he was bitten by the Spider at 15, which is younger than I thought -- but that's a theory for another thread. Either way the timing works).

I think at least by the 80s and the Marvel Indices it was already established that Peter got bitten as a sophomore. It feels like it was later because only a couple years later Peter graduated high school and went to college, but Stan Lee and Marvel seemed to be operating in "real time" for at least the early 60s.

Hmmm, in the original printing of Bizarre Adventures 27 (black & white) one of the criminals yells 'set your guns to stun' before they go on a shooting rampage against the students. So I don't think anyone actually dies. Without that line though, it does look pretty brutal.