A Look Inside, Mr. Freeze!

                                                                                     
    This is an ongoing series of articles that not only shows the history of different comic book characters spanning as many titles and companies as I can think of, but also my personal history with the character. From where they began on the comics page to where they are now; including their appearances in film, television and other media. I hope to show how the world of comics and its enormous roster of heroes and villains have influenced me and shaped my life one character at a time.
 
    I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think. Now let's get started.
 
MR. FREEZE (DC COMICS)
 
Real Name: Dr. Victor Fries
 
First Appearance: as Mr. Zero, Batman #121 (1959), as Mr. Freeze, Detective Comics #373 (1968)
 
Created By: David Wood, Sheldon Moldoff and Bob Kane
 
The Origin Story
    Originally called Mr. Zero when he initially debuted, the character’s name was changed to Mr. Freeze after his use in the 1960’s Batman television series. Before the Crisis on Infinite Earths event completely changed the history of the DC Universe Mr. Freeze is considered more of a “joke” villain for Batman to fight from time to time. Back then Freeze was simply a typical evil scientist who designed an “ice gun” that malfunctioned and covered him in cryogenic chemicals which forced Victor to keep his body at a constant subzero temperature.

    The “Post-Crisis continuity however adopted the backstory given to him by Batman: the Animated Series, which shows Dr. Victor Fries as a brilliant biologist who, as a child, was fascinated by freezing animals. This twisted fascination caused his parents to send him off to a boarding school. Once in college Fries met his eventual wife Nora who would later contract a terminal illness and have to be put into cryo-stasis while Victor attempted to find a cure. Unfortunately before Nora could be frozen, Fries’ boss learned of his plans and tried to sell the designs for Victor’s freeze ray to the mob. Later Fries’ boss interrupts his experiments as he’s about to freeze his wife and even tampers with the ray which causes an explosion. The explosion kills Nora and leaves Fries unable to survive outside of the subzero temperatures of a cryogenic suit.

Powers and Abilities
    On top of being a scientific genius specializing in cryogenics, Mr. Freeze also carries a freeze gun that allows him to turn anything or anyone into a block of ice. Also, after Freeze’s accident he is unable to survive outside of a subzero temperature, therefore, Victor created a special exo-suit. The suit keeps his body at a consistently low temperature and grants him superhuman strength and durability.

My History With the Character and What I’ve Learned Digging Deeper
    When I was growing up I began to realize that for some reason I tended to have an affinity towards characters that had “ice” based powers. My favorite X-Man was Iceman, my favorite character on Mortal Kombat was, and still is, Sub-Zero. And for the longest time my favorite Batman villain was the man we’re here to discuss, Mr. Freeze.

    Unfortunately I haven’t been able to experience as much material involving the character of Freeze as I’d like, but thankfully my initial introduction to the character is considered by most as one of the best stories in his history. An Emmy winning episode from Batman: the Animated Series, Heart of Ice is possibly the best classic telling of the origins of Mr. Freeze. The story depicts Batman’s first confrontation with Freeze as he seeks revenge against his ex-boss Ferris Boyle. When Boyle discovered that Victor had embezzled funds from Gothcorp in order to fund his research and save his terminally ill, cryogenically frozen wife Nora, Ferris confronts Fries with a group of armed guards. The group tussles when Victor refuses to leave and Boyle kicks Fries into a table full of cryogenic substances and leaves him to die. However Fries survives but his genetics are transformed and Victor is left unable to survive outside of a subzero environment. The brilliance of the episode however, comes from Fries’ relationship with his terminally ill wife and his devotion as well as his willingness to do whatever he has to in order to save her. On top of that, Freeze describes himself as now being devoid of emotion after they had been “frozen dead” in him due to the accident and the loss of his wife. His depictions of loss and cold are gripping as well as heartbreaking which makes this episode instantly unforgettable.

    Now this is where things go a little off the rails as the horrendous live action Batman & Robin film is released in 1997. For those of you who haven’t been subjected to this I’ll give you a quick overview. Arnold Schwarzenegger portrays Mr. Freeze who is actually given a fairly comic-accurate origin despite constantly searching for really big diamonds to power his subzero exo-suit. Freeze is taken down by the Dynamic-Duo and imprisoned after attempting to steal diamonds from the Gotham Botanical Gardens fundraiser at which Batman and Robin are attending. Coincidentally the other big bad of the film, Poison Ivy, is attending the same fund raiser and is captivated by Mr. Freeze. Ivy later breaks Victor out of prison with the help of her monosyllabic goon, Bane and the three set out to cover Gotham in layer upon layer of ice. While the characteristics of Mr. Freeze, terrible ice puns aside, are kept in decent shape, the film is just bad and nearly killed the integrity of the character as well as comic book films in general.

    Next up on my icy road to discovering Mr. Freeze was the direct-to-video animated feature, Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero from 1998 which won an Annie Award for Best Home Video Animation. After the overwhelming sadness that was Batman & Robin it was a more than welcomed relief to discover a return to the chilling portrayal of Freeze I had initially fallen in love with. Bringing back the wonderful Michael Ansara to the role of Mr. Freeze from the animated series, the story follows Victor returning to Gotham after his wife’s condition takes a turn for the worse. We discover that Nora Fries is in need of an organ transplant to continue living and it just so happened that Barbara Gordon, Batgirl, is a perfect match for Nora’s unique blood type. As always with the animated series’ interpretation of Freeze the character and story is incredibly moving and captivating and though it doesn’t have the same emotional resonance as Heart of Ice, it was nice to remember why I enjoyed the character in the first place.

    Years later when DC Comics began their New 52 run of titles I was introduced to a new take on the character of Mr. Freeze. In Batman Annual #1, the issue that follows the conclusion of the Court of the Owls storyline, we discover that Mr. Freeze’s cryogenic-thaw formula was being used by the Court of Owls to thaw their Talon soldiers. More importantly, is the revelation about Freeze’s origins which completely shatter everything we thought we knew about the character. It is said that as a child Victor’s fascination with ice began when his mother fell through a frozen lake. The intense cold enabled his mother to survive long enough for help to arrive but the accident left his mother in constant pain. To end his mother’s suffering; the demented Victor decided to push her into a lake, drowning her. As if that wasn’t enough, the new origins depicted in the Annual say that Nora isn’t, nor has she ever been, Victor’s wife. Apparently her name was actually Nora Fields, who was born in 1943 and when, at the age of 23, she discovered that she had an incurable heart disease, her family decided to cryogenically freeze her in the hopes that a cure may be found in the future. Victor wrote his doctoral thesis on her case and eventually fell in love with her after finding a job working as a technician for the Wayne Enterprises facility she was being housed in. Eventually, Bruce Wayne became aware of and uncomfortable with Victor’s attachment to Nora and shut the project down. Enraged, Victor threw a chair at Bruce who dodged the attack making the chair smash into some tanks filled with cryogenic chemicals. And, just like in the original telling of his origin, the chemicals doused Victor and he became Mr. Freeze.

    This shocking alteration made my jaw drop when I first read it and it completely changed my perception of Mr. Freeze. In this one issue I now saw Freeze as a psychotic force to be reckoned with and that the depths of his insanity, a trait I had never applied to my description of the character, showed his capacity to fall in love with a woman he had never even met and murder his mother.

    In doing my research I learned that Hellboy creator Mike Mignola provided the designs for the Batman: the Animated Series Mr. Freeze. I also discovered that the release of the animated direct-to-video film, Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero was actually postponed due to the negative response that the live action Batman & Robin, which featured Mr. freeze, received. The film went on to become the highest rated direct-to-video Batman film on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a 90% “Fresh” rating and remained the highest rated animated Bat-film until Batman: Under the Red Hood which took in a 100%.

    I also discovered that fan-favorite actor Nathan Fillion voiced Mr. Freeze in the Robot Chicken DC Comics Special where the character crashes into a museum and runs into some other “ice based” DC villains like Icicle and Captain Cold.

Group/Team Affiliations
    Mr. Freeze has been a member of the Injustice League, the Secret Society of Super Villains and was originally employed at GothCorp before his accident. The company was originally introduced in Batman: the Animated Series but was eventually brought into the comic universe.

Notable Appearances in TV, Film, and Other Media

• George Sanders, Otto Preminger, and Eli Wallach each portrayed Mr. Freeze in their own two-part episodes of the 1960’s Batman live action television series.
• One of the most notable appearances of Mr. Freeze in any medium is in Batman: the Animated Series. Michael Ansara lends his voice to the character and Freeze’s introductory episode Heart of Ice, won the series an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program. After the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, the backstory given to Freeze in the series is adopted into the comics.
• Clancy Brown voices Mr. Freeze in The Batman.
• John DiMaggio portrays Freeze in the Batman: the Brave and the Bold animated series.
• Keith Szarabajka lends his voice to Mr. Freeze in the animated series Young Justice.
• And who could forget Arnold Schwarzenegger portraying Mr. Freeze on the big screen in 1997’s Batman & Robin, no matter how hard we try.
• Mr. Freeze appears in Lego Batman: The Video Game played by Ogie Banks.
• Maurice LaMarche voices Mr. Freeze in Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Origins.
• Mr. Freeze has his own Story DLC entitled Cold, Cold Heart in the Batman: Arkham Origins video game.

Recommended Viewing
    The box office hit Batman & Robin starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as…just kidding, the place to start when it comes to Mr. Freeze is without question the episode Heart of Ice from Batman: the Animated Series. Not only is this episode possibly the best of the series, and what future comics in the “Post-Crisis” continuity is based off of, it is also an incredibly emotional and gripping story. There are few things that I actually get choked up over and just as few stories that I can think of where I feel more for the villain than the hero, but this does both inside of its twenty-two minute runtime. The delivery of the lines immediately convey the story of a man who has lost his ability to feel and by the end, even the Dark Knight himself can’t help but sympathize with the ballad of Freeze.

    My other recommendation is, shockingly, the other major story from my history with the character. The New 52 Batman Annual #1, which completely takes the classic origins of the character and flips it on its head. I won’t repeat myself from my description above but to me, the alterations of Freeze’s origins are not only fascinating but also terrifying. As soon as I read the twist that Victor had imagined his marriage to the cryogenically frozen Nora, I’ll be honest I was pretty deeply disturbed. To me this new revelation showed a new level of psychosis that immediately made the character more dangerous and unpredictable, which I loved.

Final Thoughts
    The heartache and loss in Mr. Freeze’s original backstory immediately tugged at my sappy heart-strings and reeled me into a position to fall in love with the character. Recently however, the twisted alteration to that same backstory has brought a character that I wasn’t giving much thought to back into the forefront of my brain. And even though the impact of the character was nearly decimated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the idea of a villain who could instantly freeze the world to match his soul still fascinates and frightens me.