Warning: Spoilers for Marvel’s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic #1
Marvel’s Inhumans have barely been seen since 2018’s Death of the Inhumans, but a surprise Inhuman has reappeared in the pages of Marvel’s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic #1, finally confirming that there are still other Inhumans around besides Black Bolt. The last panel of Marvel’s Voices: Iceman shows Romeo, the short-lived first boyfriend of young Bobby Drake, returning to the pages of Marvel Comics and rescuing Iceman from certain death.
Romeo was introduced in 2016’s Spider-Woman #10 as a teenager who had recently transformed into an Inhuman after being exposed to the Terrigen Cloud released by Black Bolt, giving him strong empathic powers. After joining the Royal Inhuman Diplomatic Mission he quickly encountered Iceman on a mission where they clearly felt an attraction to each other, and slyly left his number in Bobby’s phone.
To be clear, this Bobby Drake was the time-displaced Iceman from the past, so Iceman and Romeo were around the same age when they began dating, although their relationship did not last long after the disastrous Inhumans/X-Men war. Marvel’s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic #1 – written and illustrated by the acclaimed Luciano Vecchio – is the first Marvel’s Voices Infinity Comic and is 4-issue limited series that gives Iceman and amazing new suit and superhero symbol, and dives in deep to Bobby’s continued identity formation around his sexuality. Later in the issue Iceman teams up with his former teammate Firestar to help in evacuation and rescue efforts after a natural disaster, and as he is saving people from a collapsing building he misses a section of the wall, which slams into him and throws him into the water while deactivating his ice-flesh which keeps him mainly safe from injury. As Bobby begins to drown he is suddenly grasped by an arm, revealed to be Romeo, looking very alive and a lot older than the last time he was seen in Marvel Comics.
While the Inhumans have been around at Marvel since the 60s they had a huge resurgence in the early 2010s after Marvel moved away from creating X-Men content due to not owning the movie rights, but after regaining those movie rights and following the failed Inhumans TV show, Marvel decided to scale back the Inhumans role in the Marvel Universe. The 2018 Death to the Inhumans series was made in response to this effort and it featured many of the world’s Inhumans being taken over by the evil Vox, which sadly led to Black Bolt needing to use his powers to slaughter almost every singly Inhuman outside of the royal family and some scattered throughout Earth. The only Inhumans to be seen since then have been Black Bolt and a few others in The Darkhold Saga, so it is a really pleasant surprise to see Romeo’s return especially if one is a fan of the Inhumans. Romeo and Bobby were always a really cute couple, and now that adult Iceman has young Bobby’s memories he also remembers dating Romeo. Earlier in the issue Iceman explicitly comments on how Romeo must still be a teenager running around the world, but from Romeo’s character design it looks like he has somehow been aged up, to be around Bobby’s age, meaning he might become Bobby’s new love interest.
Bobby Drake said earlier in the issue that he is looking for old-fashioned love, and if Romeo has somehow time-travelled or done some other thing to make him physically and emotionally Iceman’s age, this could turn into not only an adorable LGBTQ+ love story, but also the beginning of a fun new way for Marvel Comics to slowly bring the Inhumans back into the fold.
Marvel’s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic #1 is available now on Marvel Unlimited.
