Icon

It's not as 'street' as it looks

Icon is a Milestone Comics superhero series written by Dwayne McDuffie, which ran from 1993-1997. Along with the other Milestone characters, he has recently been imported into the DC Universe.

Augustus Freeman IV, in reality an alien space traveler stranded on Earth, is persuaded by a young woman, Raquel Ervin, to use his alien powers to become a superhero. He takes the name Icon, and Racquel becomes his sidekick, Rocket.

This series provides examples of:

• Captain Ersatz:
  • Supporting character "Buck Wild, Mercenary Man" is a parody of Marvel Comics's Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (with occasional forays into being a parody of other token black heroes including Black Goliath, The Falcon, and Black Lightning).
  • Icon himself is a counterpart to Superman, something which has actually been noted in-universe in series such as Final Crisis and Young Justice.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: One storyline has Raquel discovering that she is pregnant. Everyone she asks for advice — including the socially conservative Icon himself — is sympathetic to her situation, and offer no objection to the possibility of her aborting. She eventually decides that she was really fishing for a trusted authority figure to tell her to do what she wanted to do anyway — carry the baby to term.
• My Grandson, Myself: Augustus Freeman IV was also Augustus Freemans I through III — he's been stranded on Earth for over 150 years.
• Plea Bargain: Part of Buck Wild's backstory:

Buck: It all started when I wuz convicted of a crime I didn't commit. I plea bargained down from the crime I really did.

• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Icon
• Sufficiently Advanced Technology: Icon's powers are the result of advanced alien medical technology, supplemented with advanced alien gadgets.
• Transplanted Human: Apparently, the reason why he looks human is that he automatically copied the genetic code of the first human he met - A plantation slave woman.