This is "Can't Cross Over," a feature where I look at instances when comic book writers had to adjust their stories to deal with crossovers.

Today, we look at how Iceman lost his powers during a crossover, but not for long once the plot was continued in the X-Men comics.

As you may or may not know, the House of M saw the mentally unstable Scarlet Witch be manipulated into altering the world with her reality-altering powers to make mutants the rulers of the world. A small group of X-Men and Avengers tried to bring down the so-called "House of Magnus," and during the melee in House of M #7 (by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel and a bunch of inkers), Wanda decides that mutants are the problem...

In the final issue, we learn what she did. She literally erased the mutant gene from almost all the mutants on the planet. Only a few hundred were able to be saved by Doctor Strange (shockingly, almost all of the most famous mutants were saved)...

While most of the famous mutants remained mutants, there were a few notable exceptions - Magneto, Professor X, Dani Moonster, Polaris and, it appears, Iceman...

Within a couple of years, all but Dani Moonstar would see their powers return through various methods.

Iceman, though, is a whole other story.

In X-Men #177 (by Peter Milligan, Salvador Larroca and Danny Miki), Bobby Drake deals with the lose of his powers...

In #178, though, he is captured by a militant anti-mutant group that figures nows is the best time to attack the X-Men.

He is about to be shot when...

In the following issue, we discover that Bobby never REALLY lost his powers, but his mind just sort of shut down his powers (this story fits right in with a recurring theme in Iceman comics, about how much Bobby represses his inner self. It is hard to be, like, "He could never be repressing the fact that he was gay! Oh, I mean, he once suppressed his entire mutant ability, but no, repressing his attraction to men, that's impossible!)...

I'd love to know exactly what happened here. Was it not cleared through the X-Office when it happened? Or was it ALWAYS meant to be a short-lived thing? Either way, it was pretty weird.

If any of you have any suggestions for other good examples of comic book writers having to alter their stories to adjust to major comic book crossovers (or situations like this one), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!