Some more pages from Batman Annual #1

[superboyprime]

Plus, some of Scott Snyder's comments on Twitter about altering Mr. Freeze's origin.













And Snyder's Twitter comments:

"On the one hand, he wanted to save Nora, who was frozen - he wanted to heal/revive her. ala sub-zero and hear of ice. On the other, sometimes he's a villain who wants to freeze the world, like in "The Batman" and other stories. Out of love for both versions, we were trying to unite them in a single character who'd have more in common w/batman & still (hopefully) be sympathetic."

"The idea is that he falls in love with the cold for its power and beauty, but refuses to see its destructive qualities & limitations."

Comments

[rainspirit]

Seems solid to me. A lot of thought been put into it, and it's not all crap.

I'm a little worried that it's going to be rejected on the basis that it's "new." That's how the Riddler got downgraded to a crazy villain guy, after all.

[icon_uk]

Don't know if they're equitable situations, I don't recall much in the way of negative feedback to the reformed Riddler still trying to outsmart Batman, but in a new way. It seemed a very organic progression of the character. Still don't think this feels like that.

[icon_uk]

I fully appreciate that Mr Snyder has put thought and consideration into this, I still don't think it works as a fusion of the two origins/motivations. If you remove the happy, mutual love of Nora and Victor and replace it with one sided creepy obsession you remove, IMHO, the whole point of the Heart of Ice origin.

[espanolbot]

Well Heart of Ice wasn't the original origin for Mr Freeze in the first place, it was just the first one to put some actual thought into it.

This is just another different idea for how he came to be, so it's valid as Heart of Ice is as they've also put some thought into how this one works as well.

[mrstatham]

I personally don't think tacking on issues in his childhood does wonders for the character, personally. I liked that Freeze in Heart of Ice recognised the power of cold, and used what was accident to his own ends and was entirely focused in his revenge on one man, but lectured Batman on the things he could never have again. This one.. He just seems about five steps or so away from cold puns.

On the one hand, I think.. Maybe the Heart of Ice story doesn't work well for comics. BTAS and it's assorted spinoffs and follow-ups had Freeze in four or five episodes if you include the movie, I think? The whole 'Nora' thing is one of those things that, to me, feels like it could get really old in a sequential context, because either Freeze is never going to cure her and starts sounding like a broken record, or something incredibly outlandish would happen, like in the last few issues of Cass' old series.

[espanolbot]

"Old country"? Where did the Fries family come from originall, I wonder.

The part about freezing animals it's particularly new, in one of the origins released around the time of Batman and Robin it had Victor attempting to freeze small animals in tubs of liquid in his freezer. This parents took him to a psychologist about it, but Vic's dad interpreted their advice as "You're not being strict enough, beat your son until he stops this morbid ice fixaton".

It kind of established that his entire life was incredibly miserable until he met Nora in college, which is why he was so fixated on bringing her back to him when she got sick. Though this being the DCU, they could have the constant "Will they, won't they" thing regarding whether Nora would ever be cured, so in his first fight with Batman Nora was shattered by Vic by mistake by one of his attempts to kill Batman.

This was what transformed him from "incredibly lonely man who'd do anything to save the only person who he thought ever loved him" to "bitter sadist who enjoyed making other people as miserable as himself", which... wasn't as good characterisation, but did free him up for some good stories. For example, in Gotham Central.

They later attempted to fix the whole "Nora broke" thing by having Nyssa al Ghul glue her together again and hold the promise that she'd revive her at a later date as a means of extracting some cheap supervillain work from Vic during the whole Villains United thing.

This didn't go so well, as Cass Cain (who Nyssa said was her property and had Vic freeze her in place, so she could tell her how much her life's work is a sham) told Vic that Nyssa never actually intended to cure Nora (probably true) but that if he freed her she'd help get her to Nyssa's Lazarus Pit. This resulted in Nora being turned into a pyrokinetic necromancer and running off, never to be seen or mentioned again once Cass' series concluded.

[icon_uk]

The name Fries is associated with the Netherlands and Germany I believe,

[espanolbot]

Just noticed that the Arkham Asylum from the game logo is on Victor's uniform, cute.

[darkknightjrk]

Freeze's glass helmet also has that shield decal that he has in Arkham City.

[mrstatham]

A shame they just didn't go with Freeze's AC look in general. That worked so much better in terms of being a hi-tech, cool-looking costume than the mess he's wearing here.

[md84]

"The idea is that he falls in love with the cold for its power and beauty, but refuses to see its destructive qualities & limitations."

That makes it sound like Fries only loves Nora BECAUSE she's a human popsicle. The moment she thaws out and is cured, he'd probably lose interest immediately. Probably because he'd have to actually get to know the real Nora instead of the imaginary one he built up in his mind.

[cypherfdp]

I don't recall getting hard from the temperature recently, so no, I can't quite sympathize with that aspect.

[espanolbot]

I think that it's a bit more complicated than that.

[damar148]

Okay, what's with the bare arms for every ice-based character? First Captain Cold, and now Victor? And what is the point of the mohawk.

Seriously, this is the 90's all over again.

[darkknightjrk]

I think it's part to take away the most obvious way to dispatch him. How do you take out Mister Freeze? Punch a hole in the helmet, all the fight's out of him. Making him a little more resistant to warmer temperatures means that writers have to be a little more clever in how to take Freeze down.

[glprime]

...I like the use of the Arkham games' logo, I guess?

[protogarrett]

Did anyone else laugh when he turned around and there was just a hole?

[darkknightjrk]

You sick, sick monster.

...

I uttered a low chuckle too, and then I felt bad. :(

[nyadnar17]

If Snyder can actual make this deluded, animal torturing, stalker, psychopath a sympathetic character I will bow down to his mastery of the dark arts of storytelling.

[espanolbot]

The animal torture isn't new, that was part of the previous comicbook version too. Really the only genuinely non-evil/severely mentally ill with good parts version of the character is the DCAU version and MAYBE the Arkham City version, and even then both were extremely viscious when people get in their way.

[gerardotejada]

I dont understand, people keep "finding" (making I say) reasons to call this heresy, Im not pointing any of the people here (thou I havent read all the comments) but in general. I think Snyder is doing something good, have good arguments and a cool story to tell.

I know for somepeople Its hard to let go of prejudice, DCAU version of Freeze was perfect, solid, one of the best Batman stories ever told. Yo cant add nothing to It, so If Snyder wanted a Freeze story he needed a new tale, and Its better than invent a new character just for remplacement.

The issue of debate is If should be another Freeze story, Should we let Freeze rest in peace? Should writers accept the character is fullfilled? Thats in my humble opinion the problem.

Im glad that people are keeping a little Saint Walker's faith in Snyder, he is (along with Lemire) one of the little "new" faces that have shown true talent (hell Morrison, Azarello, etc. they are f***ing old and feel oxidated many times).

Thats are my thoughts, penny free.

[creeper_lady]

That part about birds dying from helplessness after loosing a toe to frost bite is surely exaggerated ? I've seen plenty of poultry bird survive loosing digits to the cold (though admittedly those are in captivity). I'm sure he's just saying it to taunt the penguin, but if anything Cobblepot should have a good idea about avian care.

(Not sure why I've let that bother me guess I don't like the idea of animal abuse)

[espanolbot]

I've seen tons of pigeons with toes and feet missing around town, maybe he was experimenting on song birds or something?

Okay, so I've tought quite a bit about this and I think I've got it:

[drexer]

This is very much an antithesis of what Mr.Freeze has stood for years as a villain in the Batman universe.

Now, first of all I have to say that this has nothing to do with the original concept of the character or its original personality, has many have pointed out it was Heart of Ice which gave Freeze the biggest and more important boost to its story which endured across many years with various evolutions and adjustments. Those biggest hallmarks of a character story continue to influence it across its evolution, and just like one cannot say that Year One does not still matters for Batman one cannot say that HoI does not matter anymore for Freeze.

With that out of the way, it's important to note how the Freeze character existed before this reboot and how he fitted with the whole aggregate of Batman villains. Excluding any reboots and added details and just analysing the core of HoI, Freeze is one of Batman's villains whose growth into madness came in his adult years after being put through 'one very bad day'; thematically he stands on the pedestral as one of Gotham's examples of what the city might do its inhabitants, an evil memory that the state of a city so unbalanced, so tettering on the edge of social construction can turn even its more promising members into villains of so wrapped a place it is, of so though a world it is to live in. As such, he might not be diametrically opposed to Batman but he is with so many other heroes of the Bat-family and friends: Gordon, Barbara, Huntress(Bertollini), Tim, Stephanie and others are the other face of the coin, the examples that balance the horribleness of Gotham and which prove that human decency can still keep us afloat and inspire us to become heroes.

There is a thread of thought that is going around that suggests that Freeze was somehow 'stuck' with his HoI origin, claiming as if for every one of his actions he needed to justify it with a shoutout to the person of Nora. This is, to put it quite simply, bullshit. The character of Freeze, like many heroes evolved, and the evolution he went through made it so that while Nora stayed as his motivation, his action spoke louder than words and his past was still visible in his storylines while not mentioning his origin story(if the cocnept of an origin chained a character that very much then we would suffer far much more stories in which Batman always has to speak of his parents deaths, and yet stories where sucha fact is not mentioned are common enough). As an example I submit the very first arc of Gotham Central, where Freeze attacks a public cerimony for Gotham's students and Gordon. At no point that I can remember in the story does the text reference HoI or speaks of Nora, and yet Freeze does not act out of character from his origin; his actions are a lashing out against the city and against its sharp divide between the luck yand the unlucky such as his, and his actions are a reflection of the turmoil within him that makes him act, of the certainty of his cleverness and intelligence and his worthiness, and of the hate that he felt when bad luck and figures such as Batman and the police decided that he was a villaina dn that his wife should die without his help.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let us look at what this reboot does:

Here Freeze has been a disturbed boy since his childhood, he has done awful things to animals and he grew to be a stalker over a woman that never had a choice. His face here is the face of born madness, of an idea that villains are handpicked at birth by nature instead of the previous concept, that villany is within us all and that it can come out in any bad day. It goes very much against the concept of his previous incarnation and against a central concept of the Batman mythos, that choice and willpower are a central part to what people grow into and that the villains at Arkham are no more villains than victims, human beings who were simply pushed beyond the brink of sanity and which then pushes and pulls at hour memories and feelings because simply: who of us has never had a bad day, a day where it seemed hope was lost? Freeze's humanity was a very central part of his cemented origin, and that humanity came not from being a chosen one of malice but a victim of random luck and chance. Now? Now one can still fear him a bit, but one cannot look at him and see the human he once was and fear the implications of what that brings into our subcounscious.

Sorry if any of this was hard to understand, I felt my writing slipping away from me at various points there.

Re: Okay, so I've tought quite a bit about this and I think I've got it:

[majingojira]

Very eloquently put. I doubt it could have been said better.

[superfangirl1]

I felt a little bad from him with what happen to his mother. The rest I don't like of him being a obsessed stalker over a woman he didn't even know.

[big_daddy_d]

After thinking about it..I don't hate the new origin..actually I never did hate it but just didn't like it. I honesty think the origin would be best suited for another continuity, like the Nolanverse for example. I can see that.

[kraesil]

At this rate I need a "stupid reboot!" icon specifically for stuff like this.

[maridee42]

What if Nora is actually psychically calling out to him? Influencing his obsession?

[dr_archeville]

So Fries is some sort of 'cryomaniac' now?