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Iceman is one of the most powerful mutants in the Marvel Universe — and he’s earned his Omega-Mutant status over the years.
When he was first introduced in X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Iceman was more or less a fairly basic mutant — capable of giving his body a simple snow-like shell with the ability to generate and throw snowballs around. But over the years, Iceman’s sheer potential has revealed him to be an entirely different class of mutant.
As an Omega-Level Mutant, Iceman is one of Marvel’s single most powerful beings, and as he’s discovered greater control over his powers over the years. As such, Bobby Drake has proven exactly why he earned his distinction from the rest of the mutant population… and then some!
Bobby Drake — aka Iceman — was a founding member of the X-Men. As someone with elemental powers, Bobby has always been able to generate a field of subzero temperatures around him, cooling and condensing any moisture in the nearby atmosphere into ice. At first, he typically used this power in fairly pedestrian ways — creating ice constructs and slides.
He eventually discovered how to effectively cover his body in an ice-like shell, granting him more durability and control over his abilities. But over the years, his true potential became more apparent through the help of others. Scott Lobdell and Tom Raney’s Uncanny X-Men #291 & #292 saw Colossus’ brother Mikhail Rasputin use his own powers to transform Iceman’s body into his “final form,” revealing he actually had the potential to transform his physical form into a body of organic ice, and not just an outer shell.
Iceman continued to experiment with his powers, particularly after Emma Frost took control of his body in Uncanny X-Men #314 (by Lobdell and Lee Weeks) and revealed he can exist without a body — living on, essentially, as a sentient presence by controlling his very molecules even when his body was destroyed. Then, he was simply able to use the surrounding moisture in the atmosphere to craft a new body. While controlling his body, Emma was shocked at his pure potential — and would later teach Drake how to more fully control it in Uncanny X-Men #331 (by Lobdell and Bryan Hitch).
Since then, he’s gained even more control over these abilities, proving capable of creating legions of other ice copies, allowing him to form entire armies out of himself with relative ease in Wolverine & the X-Men #2 by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo.
Variants of the hero also proved to be Omega-Level, particularly his Age of Apocalypse incarnation, who was effectively always in his ice form and gained such control that he could turn other molecules into ice, and transport them alongside him. As a result, Iceman is effectively unkillable, with even attempts to destroy his body just slowing him down. Iceman’s innate control over temperatures has also increased to the point where he can effectively remove the cold from areas, allowing him to even heat certain areas up. In essence, Iceman is a living weather pattern, a more specified version of Storm’s control over the atmosphere and surrounding weather conditions.
He’s reached such a point of control over his abilities that he’s easily earned his status as an Omega-Level Mutant, which has come to be defined as a mutant whose powers cannot be said to have any external limit, and cannot be matched by any other living being. During the Hellfire Gala, Iceman was one of the Omega-Level Mutants recruited by Magneto to terraform Mars. For his part, Iceman was deployed to the northern pole of the planet and almost effortlessly created entire polar ice caps, bringing water back to Mars and helping life to spread and thrive on the newly dubbed Planet Arakko. While his may at first seem like a fairly basic mutant ability, he’s increasingly proven himself worthy of his Omega-Mutant status.
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