Batman Annual #1

[flint_marko]

In the present...


 

Comments

[kraesil]

Apparently not. Hey, it's the NuDC! ANything is possible etc, etc.

[wizardru]

Wow, don't like this very much.

1) Bruce Wayne is made into the reason Mr. Freeze exists. This is a bad call, IMHO. It makes Batman the villain for no real benefit and makes his motivations for dealing with Freeze selfish.

2) Freeze is now a psychotic stalker. Another bad choice, IMHO. A lot of Batman's rogues gallery consists of guys who, at some point, were sympathetic. They made bad choices, they went overboard in reaction...but often they had some starting point where tragedy or injustice pushed them in the same way it did Batman. It highlighted not only how good Batman was, but how close he was both to madness (and how helpful Alfred and Dick were to keeping him grounded).

This seems like a reboot for no big benefit. I mean, what exactly is gained with this change, where Freeze is now a deranged psychotic who is fixated on a cryogenically frozen woman he's never known? Now he's just another knockoff Arkham crazy with far less of an interesting story to tell. (Unlike, say, crazy Clayface III in the Alan Moore story where he's living with a mannequin in a similar situation, but much more amusing).

[md84]

The alternative would be to keep using the "Heart of Ice" interpretation. Which is a brilliant one, but makes it harder to keep using Freeze as a villain, a problemt he DCAU didn't have thanks to the different medium.

[icon_uk]

This is very true, though I think this is limiting too, since his motivation is just... to be evil or something.

And again, some of the DCAU motivation allowed for more open stories. The "spider-head" Freeze from later in the series has, since losing the now cured Nora to another man, a motivation to ensure that if has lost HIS love, everyone ELSE should loses something/someone they love, be it art, a lifes work, a family member. As a recurring theme that has a lot of mileage in it, and makes him different from being just another cold based killer.

[golden_orange]

But that just kind of makes him look like a spiteful dick, really. Which, it has to be said, isn't that much more sympathetic than 'deluded stalker'.

[majingojira]

Frankly, that argument comes off more as a desire for a static character than anything else.

I'll take Dynamic over static any day of the week.

[golden_orange]

Well, in this particular case it's actually more an argument that Mr. Freeze either way ultimately loses some audience sympathy. Which is, more or less, a consequence of the fact that he's a popular recurring villain in a long-running narrative. If he's gonna be a bad guy and keep doing bad things, then he's naturally not going to remain incredibly sympathetic for very long.

But hey, I'll freely admit that it's sacrificing some depth, here. From what I've seen, I much prefer "Heart of Ice" to this. But I wouldn't necessarily say it's a 'desire' for static characters (frankly, I'm not overly interested in Mr. Freeze either way) more an argument that they aren't necessarily the worst things in the world. I mean, the Joker's a pretty static character -- the surface details might change from time to time but his fundamental character and motivations tend to remain more or less the same -- and yet he tends to work.

And for better or worse, static characters can be quite suited to in mediums like long-running superhero comic book narratives where, frankly, narratives tend to be circular and repetitive and development tends to get reverted to suit the needs of a new generation or a new influx of writers and editors. I'm all for dynamic characters, but there's little point in having character development if there's nowhere they're going to be developing too; Mr. Freeze is a popular Batman villain, people are going to keep using him, so by nature any character development or dynamism he gets is either going to be short-lived (since if his story reaches a natural conclusion within one writer's telling of the tale, it'll just get reverted when the next set of writers dust him off to use him again) or is not going to be that deep (so that he suits the purposes of a number of different writers).

Essentially, if people are gonna keep using Mr. Freeze, then to some degree he's gonna be a bit of a static character so that he can keep being used. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but like it or not, it's the way American superhero comics are and they probably aren't going to be changing any time soon.

[jlroberson]

It's an awful lot like the BATMAN FOREVER Riddler, isn't it? Which seems to be one of the default Batman Villain generators: evil chemicals or disgruntled Wayne foundation employee are two reliable ones, and goodness, here we have both in one.

I thought this was lazy. I thought the ending was completely needless and in fact confusing, and took away any impact the rest of the story MIGHT have had. I thought that by removing the tragic element of Mr. Freeze and simply making him a straight-up psychopath you've actually made him MORE redundant and silly than before. He no longer has any unique reason to exist.

I would classify this under "failed try."

[eyz]

ugh...so "Mr Freeze" happened now due to Bruce's dickish attitude....

[md84]

How is this dickish? Bruce is simply confronting a deluded stalker for trying to perform illegal and possibly dangerous untested procedures on a woman who is in no position to consent. Bruce is the one with the power of attorney here, it's his call to make whether or not the risk is worth it. And in this interpretation it's Fries who attacks first. Bruce was being remarkably lenient if anything. He could have just called the cops. Instead, he decides to show up in person to explain to Fries why he is putting a stop to this. That shows that Bruce does still have some respect for the other guy.

[jlbarnett]

actually he SHOULD have called the cops. Or at least had better security

[golden_orange]

That doesn't make him a dick, though; he underestimated Fries, but he didn't make him start throwing chairs around.

[golden_orange]

Let's not be too quick to play the 'Bat-dick' card; okay, Bruce has been given Ferris Boyle's role in the origin, but it's pretty clear from these scans alone that Fries is the one at fault here.

Thoughts on another DCnU character change...

[glprime]

Re: Thoughts on another DCnU character change...

[majingojira]

That's been my thoughts on 90% of it as well.

[leoboiko]

This is ridiculous and beyond acceptable!

What kind of scientist would use degrees Fahrenheit</i?!?!?!

[espanolbot]

British ones when they're talking about how hot it is, and when it's cold they use celsius.

[tauruschick12]

Tbh it ruins what made him interesting. There is a reason Mr. Freeze was C-list before Heart of Ice.

It made him dark, but tragic, and even though he was cold and emotionless, you pretty much completely agreed with him and understood where he was coming from. It was grey and morally ambiguous.

If he's just a crazy stalker, then he's...just a crazy stalker. Why should I give a damn about him?

[md84]

It arguably makes him scary. While people in real life don't have freeze guns, there are plenty of crazy stalkers in real life who are just as deluded as Freeze.

[golden_orange]

I fully agree that it made him sympathetic and tragic initially, and particularly sympathetic when dealing with the people who were responsible for what happened to him and his wife -- but like I said earlier, when he's going around flash-freezing innocent people to death because they're happy and he isn't, that becomes less 'grey and morally ambiguous' and more 'this guy's a spiteful tool'. His many victims weren't responsible for what happened to him, after all.

[md84]

I wonder if that episode was written to remind people that the guy is ultimately a villain. Not without redeeming and sympathetic qualities of course, but still a villain. That episode did give us more reasons to feel sorry for him even as he does unforgivable things -- being reduced to a head in a jar can't be good for one's sanity.

Of course, tie-in comics make his reasons for leaving Nora moot. Turns out the only reason Nora didn't go back to Freeze was because her jealous spouse at the time hid all of Freeze's correspondence. And she only rejects him in the end not because of his physical degradation but because of his moral degradation.

His final appearance in Batman Beyond is interesting since Bruce and Terry -- the old and the new Batman -- have conflicting views about the newly rejuvenated Fries. Bruce sees a dangerous man who lives for revenge and could snap at any moment, and Terry sees a tragic sympathetic man who just wants to atone and start over. And in the end, they were both sort of right.

[lego_joker]

I've stated this on other comics boards, but again... must Mr. Freeze be a villain before all else? It seems to me that Snyder/DC's head honchos went into this story going, "Okay, Freeze HAS to be a villain and HAS to keep fighting Batman. See how much sympathy you can inject into him along the way, but don't get too hung up over it, 'kay?"

Whereas the DCAU version, IMO, felt more like "Here's this guy named Victor Fries who was caught in the middle of several extremely shitty situations. Let's develop his character sympathetically and logically, and if he just happens to fight Batman and get deemed a "villain", then whatever. Labels be damned, he's the hero of this story".

Much like Two-Face or the Riddler... if richer possibilities can be mined from Freeze by keeping him as an anti-hero/a morally neutral character, then why not? Must he be kept in the "villain" slot at all times? Are people that desperate to see Batman's rogues gallery have a guy with an ice gun on hand at all times?