Villains are frequently motivated by trauma, loss, or vengeance, or at least most of Batman’s villains are. Perhaps this is why Batman never kills them and instead leaves it to the authorities, as he has had his fair share of grief and sorrow. However, in today’s episode, we will be discussing one such Batman villain that definitely deserves sympathy: cryogenicist Dr. Victor Fries aka Mr. Freeze.
Victor was fascinated as a child with the idea of freezing animals in order to preserve them so that they could live in the future. Victor’s parents, concerned about his behavior, enrolled him in a strict boarding school, where he felt isolated and depressed. However, he met and befriended Nora, a young woman with whom he fell in love and eventually married.
But their happiness was short-lived as Nora was diagnosed with a fatal illness, and Fries, overcome with sadness, attempted to save her using cryogenic technology. The experiment, however, went dreadfully wrong, and Fries’ equipment malfunctioned, engulfing him and his lab in a blizzard of ice. Victor had survived, but his body could no longer function at above-freezing temperatures, and Nora’s condition had deteriorated.
He developed a suit to defend himself in his altered state in order to keep his wife’s treatment going. To get money, he started robbing banks under the moniker Mr Zero. Batman and Robin were ultimately able to stop him, but he persevered. He uses cryonic technology to create a weapon that fires a beam that freezes anything in its path as Mr Zero. After faking his death, Gotham City assumed he was dead. Fries changed his outfit and reappeared as Mr Freeze during this time. To this day, he is still battling Batman and Robin.
Some of the best comics featuring Mr. Freeze
White Knight
During the rebirth era of The DC Black Label, a variety of alternate-canon stories were imprinted so that writers could experiment with the DC characters and break the monotony of the main timeline. Sean Murphy’s ‘White Knight’ is one of those alternate timeline comics.
In this timeline, Mr. Freeze is an ally of Batman. Batman here is more of a cruel person and is slowly losing the favor of Commissioner Gordon, his family, and Gotham. It is later revealed that the roots of it were Alfred being on his deathbed and Mr. Freeze agreeing to Batman for keeping him alive.
White Knight Presents: Von Freeze
In this storyline, Mr. Freeze is a Nazi Germany-era Holocaust survivor. The story runs through a flashback leading up to Mr. Freeze Sr. who travels to Gotham and starts working with Thomas Wayne
Gotham Central – In The Line Of Duty
This series revolves around the members of the GLPD with Batman being more of a peripheral character helping them out. They were against the monstrous and unhinged Mr.Freeze in the first two issues of “In the Line of Duty”
First Snow
Although the annual issue of this series by some fans, the New 52 reboot did give us some of the best Batman story arcs ever in 2010 thanks to the head creative duo Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. This story has a radically different origin story for Mr. Freeze where Nora isn’t his wife but a stranger with whom he is experimenting. This twist in the conventional Mr. Freze along with his childhood grim with his mother is what brought the controversies but nevertheless, the story arc is one the best
Battle For The Cowl: Commissioner Gordon A Cold Day In Hell
This story follows the events after Batman was considered dead after his confrontation with Darkseid in the final crisis. Gotham city is without its cape crusader and the extended Bat family sees turmoil descend onto their city while deciding upon who will don the cape and the cowl. Mr. Freeze here like other villains grew more threatening in absence of Batman wreaking havoc on Gotham City. Mr. Freeze is seen to kidnap GCPD’s Commissioner Gordon and take him to a cold dark place where his voice is heard saying that Batman won’t be here to save him anymore.
Dark Victory
In this storyline, Mr. Freeze is not the main antagonist but was sent by Two-face to exterminate Commissioner Gordon and co while they managed to locate his hideout. This storyline follows the tragic downward spiral of Harvey Dent into Two-face when he returns and a mysterious Hangman carries out hits against certain GCPD officers.
Mr. Freeze at his vicious best!
Amongst all villains of Batman Mr. Freeze lacked a proper origin story that would give its audience a proper understanding of the character. However, the origins of Mr. Freeze from the comic “Batman- Mr. Freeze” do suffice for the need. Written by Paul Dini and penciled by Mark Buckingham the comic has the best origin story of Mr. Freeze.
The plot begins with Mr. Freeze, wreaking havoc in Gotham City with his cryogenic gun, freezing anyone he wishes to, with Batman on his way to the scene. Commissioner Gordon arrives and tries to stop Mr. Freeze only to realize it’s too risky and the only option is to hold him back and evacuate the area till further reinforcements come.
Mr. Freeze freezes random people on the streets all based on his judgment narrating how after all these years everything makes sense to him. He narrates how as a kid he was considered to be an embarrassment for his parents owing to his fascination to freeze animals. All he wanted was to preserve them forever and not let them die. He recalls it all. He narrates how he fell in love with Nora and how beautiful the feeling was.
His happiness was taken away when Nora was diagnosed with a disease that gave her no chance for survival. He had left his job as a teacher and kept looking for companies that could fund his research on cryogenics as he believed that it was the only way Nora could be saved. After repeated rejections, Gothcorp, owned by Ferris Boyle, agreed to pay for his research.
So one night when the doctors had completely given up Victor brought Nora to cure her in his cryogenic chamber. Boyle on the other hand had asked to stop Victor’s research as it was not cost-effective and that night when he was trying to cure Nora, Boyle and his men arrived to shut it down.
The hassle led to an explosion and Boyle considered Victor to have died it in. Nora and the cryogenic chamber were in good condition and so Boyle preserved it in hopes of getting any profit out of it in the future.
A year later one by one the executives of Gothcorp were getting assassinated by something unknown and finally, it is revealed that Victor is alive but in a condition where he can survive only in subzero temperatures. He had a cryogenic suit and called himself Mr. Freeze. He finds Boyle and Nora’s chamber. He freezes Boyle and as he planned to take away the chamber Batman arrived.
Their confrontation accidentally led Mr. Freeze to shoot his cryogenic gun at Nora’s chamber shattering it into pieces. He realized his loss and blamed Batman for it. He then swore to destroy everything Batman ever loved starting with Gotham City. In the current scenario where Mr. Freeze is causing a rampage in the city, Batman and Robin arrive but Mr Freeze shoots Robin and freezes him.
He then taunts Batman if he now understands how a loss of near one feels. Before Batman could take control he is caught by Victor’s henchmen and just when he was about to be shot he summons the Batmobile towards them at full speed causing an explosion and allowing Batman to free himself from them.
He later gets lured into a snowy Gotham Park zoo where he fights with two vicious polar bears and the most dangerous predator of the Antarctic on water. All these happened while Freeze and his henchman watched. Batman survived all of his traps and confronted him smashing his glass helmet making it impossible for him to breathe as he could only survive at sub-zero temperatures provided by his suit.
Mr. Freeze in Gotham
Three months after morphing and becoming Mr. Freeze, Victor continues to live and work at Indian Hill to aid Strange’s ambitions but has grown increasingly enraged. When one of Hugo Strange’s old Pinewood Farms test victims reappears, Strange chooses to silence her and believes it is time for Victor to try out his new modified suit.
Strange and his aide Ethel Peabody approach Victor in his cell to present the plan, which pleases him. Victor, dressed in his suit and equipped with his cryo rifle, freezes a road and collides with a prison transport van carrying Karen, as well as James Gordon, Bruce Wayne, and Alfred Pennyworth. Gordon begins firing at Victor to defend Karen, briefly stunned, but his suit protects him from serious damage.
Karen realizes she is the one Victor desires and jumps out in front of him, where he freezes her with his cyro pistol, followed by him smashing her into several pieces. Victor then flees the area, using one of his ice grenades to hide his tracks. Strange had plans to demolish Arkham Asylum and devise a method to bring the dead back to life a few days later. Gordon, Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox, and Selina Kyle were among those he held imprisoned.
Strange, seeing that time was running short, directed Fries to assassinate Gordon, Bruce, and Fox. Strange became enraged when Selina intervened and called them out on their behavior, and he ordered Victor to kill her as well. Bridgit Pike, Selina’s friend, intervenes just before Victor is about to do so. Despite Victor’s call for her to move, she takes a stand, and the two end up in a duel, with Victor’s ice ray vs Pike’s fire.
During this, Strange becomes caught in the crossfire while attempting to flee, leading both Victor and Pike to call a halt to their struggle. Gordon intervenes and successfully resuscitates Strange. During Oswald Cobblepot/crusade against Penguin against the “monsters” of Indian Hill, which resulted in arrests and fatalities, Fries was forced out of Gotham City, where he escaped to an icy region and began researching a cure.
Weeks later, Penguin and Ivy Pepper track down Victor Fries and convince him to assist him in his vengeance against Edward Nygma. While claiming that he cannot tolerate temperatures below -50 degrees Fahrenheit, he is resentful against Penguin for his defamation of the Indian Hill “monsters.” Penguin and Ivy Pepper were able to persuade Victor Fries to join their cause by giving him his unique exo-suit, which they had taken from Wayne Enterprises.
Bridgit Pike was still furious toward Victor Fries when Cobblepot’s friends regrouped at Oswald Cobblepot’s Mansion, and she instructed Penguin and Ivy Pepper to keep him at a distance. After Victor Fries noticed a question mark on Oswald Cobbplepot’s picture and inquired about it. Penguin makes no response and informs Victor that he may sleep in the freezer. However, after being apprehended by the Court of Owls, Freeze and Firefly assume Oswald has abandoned them and fled his house.
Fish Mooney approaches them instead, and they accept to work for her instead. They help her rescue Oswald Cobblepot from the clutches of Barbara Kean, Tabitha Galavan, Butch Gilzean, and Edward Nygma. Mooney and several of her thugs walk to a train station in Gotham after the Tetch virus has been released on the city.
While they are on their way out, the party is attacked by Bullock and Gordon, who want Strange. Gordon points his rifle at Fish with the intent of killing her, but before he can fire, a freezing ray from the side shoots his gun out of his hand. Mr. Freeze arrives from the shadows, and Fish chuckles and asks Jim if he really believed she’d go into the city alone.
Mr. Freeze is one of the people that accompany Fish to Strange’s hidden facility, where Strange provides Fish with the treatment for the Tetch virus. Nygma was taken aback when he learned Oswald had been manipulating him because he knew Nygma would take him there. When Edward Nygma is released from his frozen captivity after more than five months, Oswald Cobblepot calls Mr. Freeze to the Iceberg Lounge with the goal of re-freezing the Riddler.
Victor Fries, who was waiting in the shadows, then zapped the revolver from Oswald’s grip before threatening to freeze him again. He changed his mind and claimed that he would make Edward live without knowing who he truly was, sparing his life from further shame. After presenting the frozen Oswald to Sofia Falcone, Freeze requested a monetary payoff for his “arrest.”
Jerome Valeska, Jervis Tetch, and Jonathan Crane escaped from Arkham Asylum. Penguin took control of the manor after Sofia Falcone’s downfall. Valeska planned to recruit the criminals for his terrorist organization, assembling Victor Fries and Bridgit Pike as well as fellow escaped Arkham inmates Jervis Tetch, Scarecrow, and Oswald Cobblepot in one great Legion of Horribles.
Jerome then took the whole Legion to the Falcone Mansion, much to Penguin’s dislike, who took control of the manor after Sofia Falcone’s downfall. Thereupon, Mr. Freeze raised his arm, but Valeska commanded him to put all questions on ice until the end, before Jerome turned to Oswald, thanking him for doing his part in hosting them today.
Mr. Freeze raises his arm, but Valeska orders him to put all questions on ice until the end. Right then, Jervis Tetch entered the Falcone Mansion and came into the dining room, leading to Jerome asking Jervis to sit down and join their conversation by pointing at the empty chair next to him. Once that happens he could care less how the other members of the Legion of Horribles rip the city apart.
The Legion of Horribles returned to the Falcone Mansion after completing their individual tasks. Penguin managed to recruit Solomon Grundy for the villain alliance, much to Jerome’s delight. Victor Fries and the other members of the Legion went to the Gotham City Hall to abduct the mayor, Holden Pritchard. Scarecrow and Victor, two of Jerome’s disciples, broke into Wayne Industries’ chemical facility in order to obtain more of the poison.
While Scarecrow sprayed some of the lab employees with laughing venom, Mr. Freeze got out his freeze cannon and froze numerous chemists. Around the same time, Jerome Valeska died after jumping off a building, and the Legion of Horribles was permanently dissolved. When Gotham Metropolis becomes an abandoned wasteland, all of the villains claim their domain and seize control of specific areas of the city.
Fries then raises his goggles, signaling to the frozen criminal that this is now his domain. Over the next few months, the GCPD was able to recover the property previously owned by Victor Fries. Mr. Freeze instantly freezes the guy as he raises his rifle.