Icon

Happy birthday Cool Geoff! Now that the surprise is done and over with, you've opened your gift of the first volume of "Icon" (there is at least one more that I saw!) and we can "unpack" why DID I go with Icon?

Let it be SUPER known that I passed it by because I thought it'd be too weird. You know why. And when I went back and picked it up, I put it back down. Again, because of weirdness.

But then I was all: Listen, am I REALLY just going to pass on buying this book just because of the characters racial appearance?? (if you've read the first bit, you know why just saying 'race' wouldn't have quite made sense) That's messed up!

I've read the first issue of Icon before, if not the first trade (can't remember for sure), and it's a unique book for the reluctance to get this hero into the game. The origin, powers wise, was easy. Getting him into "the never ending battle" was hard. It's usually the reverse for characters; more often then not at the very least.

Take the Fantastic Four as the prime example I could think of (Spider-Man actually works against my argument, so forget I said Spider-Man. Spider-Man!): they go up in a rocket, get bombarded by space rays, crash land on Earth, get horribly mutated (some FAR more horrible than others), and what's the first thing they do after freaking out about their new powers? Collectively decide to pull together and use their powers for good. Getting the powers was the tough part, using the power for good? Everyone was assumed to be onboard with this, and they were!

There's also the cultural appeal in seeing what Dwayne McDuffie was aiming for with his Milestone books. He wanted to see more people of colour in his comics, and so he made it so. Have to admire him on that one.

Ah, but, naturally, had the first volume of Static been around, I'd have gone with that one for sure.

Hope you like it and it's not too weird a present for you! Becaese that'd be bad!

That's it, I've typed alls I can writes and can now writes no mores.