Batman - One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze #1

[cyberghostface]

"The assignment was potentially a tricky one, as the rogue we were asked to pit Batman and Robin against was Mr. Freeze. I love the character, and written him a little as a guest star in Arkham Manor, but ironically, he’s sort of forever trapped by that incredible episode of the animated series.

An all-time episode of television re-introduced and rebooted a minor villain into a tragic figure. He’s sympathetic, and…perhaps too much so? What we attempt to do in ONE BAD DAY: MR. FREEZE is reframe…certain aspects of their relationship, and look at a more toxic side to the man." -- Gerry Duggan

Comments

[justsotired]

I went quiet because I found that my opinions were becoming negative, even for my sensibilities.

But when I say that modern writers don't understand how relationships work and can't be arsed to learn, this is what I mean.

The tragedy is because their relationship was HAPPY, not because it was DYSFUNCTIONAL. If you make Victor and Nora's relationship dysfunctional, what happens loses its tragic, romantic impact. Any college creative writing teacher could tell you that.

[laughing_tree]

I imagine it's not so much the creative team doesn't know it makes it less tragic than that they had other goals for the character that clashed with and ultimately took higher priority than making the character tragic.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

This was my read of it.

[nyadnar17]

Basically.

There is zero point to the character(s) if their relationship was a toxic swamp.

[blueprintstyles]

From now on I think Mr, Freeze has to be written by women or if a man, someone younger. Because every time they revisit Mr. Freeze they screw it up. The only one who hasn't that few years was Sean Gordon Murphy because he new not to screw up a good thing.

[deh_tommy]

What’s wrong with guys writing Mister Freeze? Plenty of men have written him and his tragedy well - heck, the big turnaround that made him a sympathetic character was written by a dude.

In any case, this is an imaginary story, so even though this sort of angle usually irks me personally and my immediate knee-jerk reaction was unpleasant, I think they’re allowed to explore and tell a decent yarn through it. It’s not like the New 52 Batman Annual.

[blues32]

The hell is Freeze doing at Blackgate? Arkham has always been the best equipped for him.

"Perhaps too much so"? The whole point was that he was a truly loving husband and she a loving wife. They were blissfully happy until Nora got sick. Victor could have saved her if he just had enough time, but the CEO of the company ruined everything, trying to pull the plug on Nora and wound up changing Victor forever. Boom. Mister Freeze is born. There's no need for twists or alterations.

You want to change something? Have Nora be dead. Then, just like in the New Batman Adventures, Mr. Freeze starts seeking to spread his despair. I loved that episode. Just out of pure, empty bitterness, Victor started shattering people's dreams. Freezing works of art and destroying memoirs...things that take a lifetime to make. That is truly devastating.

[icon_uk]

Arkham is an asylum for the mentally ill. Is Freeze mentally ill? It could be argued, that no, he's not, especially given the comicsverse rather arbitrary interpretation of legal insanity.

Blackgate already has to handle people like Killer Croc, who is likelwise not insane.

[blues32]

I know that, but Freeze has ALWAYS gone to Arkham Asylum purely because they are better equipped to imprison him and keep him alive at the same time. In the Arkham Asylum video game, you find his cell, still covered in ice.

As for Killer Croc, I'm pretty sure he's in Arkham as well. He has the occasional lapse in humanity. I remember in the Knightfall comic, Croc is found in the sewers, hunting and eating rats after the full scale break out of Arkham. During such times, he needs to be coaxed back to sanity via therapy so he can go back to just being a thug and a gangster instead of a cannibal.

[lego_joker]

I'm just gonna pretend the last couple pages are the entire story, 'kay? 'kay,

[icon_uk]

Yeah, this has some terrific domestic scenes showing how Robin's arrival shifts Batman's dynamic, but the Freeze storyline I want to ignore except the last pages.

[huntleyhaverstock]

Yeah, this is well-executed -- a tough assignment, competently carried out -- but why? Freeze's story is amazing and heartrending as is. Not every villain has to be a secret creep who was always in the wrong. Sometimes good people lose, and deal with it badly, and that makes them more interesting.

The only thing that sort of justifies this for me is the turn at the end; it suggests that this story wasn't just about grimdarking up Mr. Freeze for its own sake, but giving him a chance to actually have a character arc (within the bounds of this one story, at least) that let him show personal growth. That's the one knock against Paul Dini's script for "Heart of Ice": Appropriately enough for the character, Freeze does not grow or change. He remains frozen in place, the same grieving, lost soul at the beginning as he is at the end.

Here, after all the nastiness we're dragged through, at least at the end we get to see him thaw a little.

[icon_uk]

We do see growth in some later episodes of BTAS, especially in Sub-Zero, which is admittedly then undone for "Cold Comfort" and then we see his IMHO excellent finale in Batman Beyond's "Meltdown"

[blues32]

I like Cold Comfort. His character growth isn't undone. He just grows further in a negative way. With his life's work of saving his wife complete...and her marrying someone else...he feels a bitter emptiness. Unaging but still falling apart, he wants to spread the pain he's feeling. It's a very human thing to do.

And this growth is seen again in Meltdown. He's got everything back. His body, his health, everything...only it gets taken away and when he tries to get help, he's betrayed. He lashes out one last time before just giving up. "Believe me, you're the only one that cares."

[tcampbell1000]

No one wanted this.

You know how sometimes we'll get a style pastiche from the 1960s or something where the printing is all four-color dots and every sentence ends in an exclamation point? And everything's all repressed and Comics-Coded and there's maybe a fifth-grade-level moral crisis before it all wraps up by the end of the issue?

This feels like an edgy early-1990s pastiche, from the period after Watchmen and Dark Knight and all made superhero subversion cool, but after people stopped trying to make those subversions any good. The end's a bit of a swerve, but mostly this is just cynicism for cynicism's sake. "What if Batman were a crotch-grabbing asshole?" "Well...he wouldn't be Batman, then." "Okay, how about one of his enemies, then?" "..."

[ap0cryphal]

I feel like Batman writers are learning the wrong lessons from Tom King.

Maybe Chip would've done a better job on this, I dunno. He certainly did better with the batman prequel series.