Icon #1-8

Icon #1-8

Originally released in 1993

Written by Dwayne McDuffie

Art by M.D. Bright

While I've dipped my toes into DC's Vertigo imprint through titles like Swamp Thing and Sandman, I haven't gone back to the Milestone line since I read Static, so I'm doing that today. Unlike Static, I have no real background knowledge for Icon - I think he's this imprint's Superman equivalent, though I'll see how accurate that is.

Much like Superman, Icon is an alien, though he's not humanoid at first.  Crash-landing on Earth in the 1830s, his ship analyzes the first person who touches it and changes his appearance to make him look like a human baby.  In the present day of 1993, he's a conservative lawyer who seems like he'd prefer to keep to himself.

During a mass-empowering event called the Big Bang (that resulted in Static, among others, getting superpowers), a would-be writer named Raquel who's dragged along by her friends who want to take advantage of how busy the police are to steal from wealthy neighbourhoods.  After seeing that Augustus Freeman (the man that they try to steal from) is bulletproof and can fly, Raquel tries to convince him to use his powers to help people, but he is pretty firmly against it at first.

Icon's highly conservative viewpoint seems pretty rare for superheroes (I can count the number of examples that come to mind on one hand, Wally West is the only traditionally heroic one, and he drifted away from the conservative mindset - the others are anti-heroes or Guy Gardner), though it falls flat when he says that people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps like he did, when he has the advantage of being a long-lived being who can pose as his own great-grandson.

Raquel serves as his sidekick Rocket using a belt made of alien material that will protect her from harm. She seems like the heart of the book, encouraging him to help others while providing a more grounded viewpoint, pointing out that the police likely won't be willing to work with a flying black man. (She uses a different term that Icon disapproves of, and one that I feel incredibly uncomfortable with writing)  Icon rather naively believes that showing up and offering to help the police will work, but the moment that he makes his offer, the police immediately try to arrest him with no justification.

The mayor is being held hostage, and Icon is willing to comply with the police despite their behaviour. Rocket isn't as willing to put herself into police custody and fights back, with Icon only doing what he needs to do to defend himself.  It's only when the police can't handle the hostage takers that he steps in.

The leader of the mercenaries is a former assistant to the mayor named Kevin. When the mayor wanted to prove she was tough on crime by using an experimental tear gas on a gathering of criminals, Kevin tried to warn everyone only to get caught up in it.  The result was the Big Bang, which killed a bunch of teenagers and gave the survivors powers - Kevin was among those survivors and gained the ability to turn into a large lizard-man, and he intended to use the attack to force the mayor to admit her role in the Big Bang.

Once Payback is convinced to turn himself in, Icon tells Rocket that she'll have to stay out of the action going forward given her condition. Unbeknownst to her, she's pregnant. Rocket talks it over with her friend, but as Rocket isn't sure, they decide to confirm it with plenty of awkwardness to be found.

As Rocket deals with the unplanned teen pregnancy, Icon tries to dig into the Big Bang incident only to draw the ire of a gang called the Blood Syndicate in a story with the unfortunate-sounding title "May We Bang You?" (I'm assuming that sounded as dirty back then as it does now)

Icon puts up a good fight, but between the seven humans, one possible alien (DMZ, who Icon intends to use as a way to get off of Earth), and a talking dog, he's overwhelmed.  Rocket showing up gives him enough of a breather to convince everyone to talk things out; he confirms that DMZ is an alien who's also stranded on Earth, and they agree to pool their resources before Icon gets back to his original reason for going into the Blood Syndicate's territory - to find out what caused the Big Bang incident.

The conversation causes Raquel to realize that she knows very little about Icon, so he agrees to tell her about himself in issue 7. He is honest with her, but he barely starts his backstory before she assumes that he's lying or messing with her.

Rocket contemplates abortion, knowing that she wouldn't be able to keep going in school or superheroics if she has a baby (especially when the father wants nothing to do with her), but she still seems torn on the decision. Icon disapproves of Rocket's underage pregnancy, but he is still supportive - he fell in love with a woman who became pregnant with his child, but he was concerned that the baby would not survive and that it would endanger the life of the woman that he loves, so they followed through with an abortion. This annoys Rocket because, deep down, she was hoping that he'd convince her to keep the baby - part of her wants to, but she wanted someone else to tell her that, and that's what she ultimately decides to do.

Icon finishes telling his backstory in issue 8, convincing Rocket to believe him. He's been through a lot over the past century and a half or so, including multiple faked deaths, several World Wars, and a marriage. The issue ends on a hopeful note, with Rocket deciding to write about what she's experienced with Icon over these past few months.

While Icon's personality makes him a less uplifting character than his inspiration (he's kind of a stick in the mud at times, and his response to a criminal who stole to feed his family is "you should have gotten an education and developed marketable skills"), the series had a strong start and dealt with issues and characters that you don't usually see in comics. It has a very different feel compared to Static, though I'm not sure which Milestone books I'd look into beyond these two. Icon and Rocket were two characters that I knew nothing about going into the comic, so it was interesting to come into it with a fresh perspective and learn about the world and the characters as I went along.