X-Men: The 20 best characters of the last decade

13. Iceman

Bobby “Iceman” Drake is one of the original five X-Men. Like Nightcrawler, Bobby believes that humans and mutants can coexist. Sometimes his self esteem was rattled. A lot of it had to do with him being insecure about who he was… and not just being a mutant. We find out that Bobby is gay and didn’t know how to address it – not being able to truly be yourself would make anyone self-conscious. Thankfully, teammates like his younger self, young Jean Grey, and Kitty Pryde were there for him. Since then, Iceman has been more confident than he’s ever been.

Iceman took a giant leap in the last decade. While he was a teacher at the Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters, Logan told Bobby he wanted more out of him – Logan got it. Bobby became a leader; someone that the kids could trust. He became more powerful, making sentient icemen that help in battle. On two separate occasions he put the entire world in winter and froze Hell.

Bobby was just the comic relief for a while. That’s not to say that he didn’t have deep or memorable moments that weren’t comedic. It’s that in this past decade, Iceman has gone to another level. Hopefully he’ll continue to do so going forward.