Batchat Chapter 2: Mister Freeze
From the Mind of Brett Wall
What’s up all you filthy animals? Welcome back to the only Batman blog in the world hosted by me, Brett. On this edition of Batchat, we are going to be talking about the “supervillain” Mister Freeze (I put that quotes for a reason, I’ll tell you later). We are going to follow the same format as we did in the last chapter with Clayface. If you can’t remember or if you haven’t read Chapter one, here is a brief explanation of what you’re getting into:
Part One: Origin (brief. This isn’t a research paper)
Part Two: Powers and abilities (and if you’re lucky: FUN FACTS)
Part Three: Best adaptations
Part Four: Pitch
Part Five: Rating
I don’t see why we need to waste any more time, let’s get into it!
Part One: Origin
If you couldn’t tell from last week, the way I write the origins is like this: Part of it is from what I already know and the other part is from Wikipedia or whatever other website I find. I have promised my therapist, girlfriend, and deity that no matter what I find that contradicts what I know, I will not get upset this time. I’ll start with the basics. Dr. Victor Fries (pronounced “Freeze”. Yeah I know...I think DC should man up to what they’ve created and call him Dr. Victor Fries (as in the french kind), but whatever) is a cryogenist. Meaning that he likes to freeze stuff. Do you see what I’m saying here? Do you realize how dumb it is that Fries likes to freeze? I know, I know. You could say “Well, he was created in a time when comics were more for children” or “It’s just a joke, don’t take it too seriously” and to that I would say: I HAVE A BLOG ABOUT BATMAN, OBVIOUSLY I AM GOING TO TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY!!!
Anyway, it says here that Victor liked to freeze animals when he was a child. That’s cold. He meets this woman named Nora. Victor and Nora get married, have a bunch of kids, and live happily together forever. SIKE! Nora gets diagnosed a rare disease and do you know what this motherf***er does? HE FREEZES HER! He does this because there isn’t a cure for her disease, so he freezes her until there is a cure. Side note: In one story that I’m not too sure of (It might be Batman: White Knight, lemme look. Nope, he’s a nazi in White Knight, which is kind of dope. Not being a nazi...making...Mr.Freeze...a nazi. Ok I can’t find what comic it was) Nora isn’t Mister Freeze’s wife, but some woman that he pretends is his wife. Which I’m going to go out on a limb and say that isn’t ok.
In most cases, Mister Freeze is doing crime not to be evil, but to acquire funding for his wife. Which is why I put “supervillain” in quotes earlier. Usually, in older media, Freeze is just an ordinary villain, but more recently he has become more of an anti-hero and has been shown to be an ally to Batman several times. The anti-hero route is my preferred way for Mister Freeze. You know, I can’t really decide between Mr.Freeze and Mister Freeze. I may go back and forth with the spelling, I sincerely apologize for that.
Part Two: Powers and Abilities
Mister Freeze has no powers, however, his refrigerated (ok, I’ll admit, there is probably a better word than refrigerated) suit grants him super strength and longevity. OH! I just had a great idea for a villain. Ok so, hear me out, her name is “The Granny” and she has no care for public service workers. She's mean, her hair is full of ozone killing hair spray, and her eyelids are blue as Cleopatra. Her superpower is making the worker go home and call their doctor to get a higher dosage of their antidepressants. What do you think?
Mister Freeze’s suit is powered by diamonds, so he steals a lot of diamonds. Sometimes he likes to steal a lot of diamonds to make a big ol’ freeze ray to cover Gotham in...ICE!!! Oh, I forgot about his freeze ray. He has a freeze ray.
Part Three: Best Adaptations
Any Batman fan would know that the greatest version of Mister Freeze originated from Batman: The Animated Series’ episode “Heart of Ice”. It is the greatest origin story ever told for Mister Freeze, and might very well be one of the greatest origin stories ever.
If you’re looking for any movies with Mister Freeze in them, sadly there are no movies with Mister Freeze. There are no Batman movies with Mister Freeze. None If you’re still longing for more Victor French Fries, I have some good news. He is in Arkham City and a DLC for Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight. I haven’t actually played the DLC for Origins, and the one for Knight isn’t actually all that great other than it being a nice ending to his character arc. That being said, his portrayal in Arkham City is incredible. Absolutely incredible. He is by far one of the greatest boss fights in any game I have ever played.
Freeze is also in “The Batman” cartoon and I honestly can’t remember much about him other than he looked cool, also that show is top-notch so you should give it a shot.
Lastly, Mister Freeze is in the game Lego Batman: The Videogame, and while his character isn’t anything to praise that game is a wonderful start/restart/refresher on Batman and his mythos. That game is absolutely worth a first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and/or eighth playthrough.
Part Four: Pitch
A quick reminder of what this section is. It is where I pitch my ideas for ways Mister freeze could be used in Comics, movies, video games, or shows. This one was pretty hard for me last week with Clayface, and honestly, it’s going to be hard for me again. This time for a different reason. Where Clayface wasn’t a good enough villain, Mister Freeze is almost too good of a villain. I’m not sure I can make anything up that will be better than what we already have.
Mister Freeze: Life Story:
This one absolute knock off of Spider-man: Life Story. Quick synopsis of that comic, it’s about if Spider-man aged in real time, but still went through all of his story arcs. Where the “Life Story” model would work best with characters like Batman or Superman...oooo or Barbra Gordon, it would work well with Mister Freeze as well (With some tweaking to the format). Freeze doesn’t have enough iconic storylines to do it exactly like SMLS (Like my acronym?), but he does have a bit to go on. You could start off with a flashback to when he met his wife in the 40’s (or 50’s I guess) and then you could skip ahead to him getting his doctorate and then maybe he could start his own company called “Fries Enterprises” or “Fries Incorporated”, I don’t really like those though because they sound too big it needs to be small to portray his underdogness. I was thinking something like “Fries Medical”. I know him starting a company isn’t accurate to the comics, but hear me out. Fries Med specializes in Cryogenics. His idea is to use freeze tech to cure disease before they become terminal. I said flashback earlier, but really you could just make this the comic. Next thing that happens, Nora gets cancer. I know it isn’t anything fancy or rare, but in the 40’s it is obviously worse than it is now (still bad, but worse then, you know?) Fries then freezes Nora, and after that he gets insanely drunk, and ends up falling into something that makes him Mister Freeze. Actually falling into something is kind of cliche, lets say he gets so drunk that he causes a fire then gets severely burnt and he doesn’t want to go to the hospital because he would get arrested for causing the fire, he freezes himself, but not fully so he can continue his work. Now Mister Freeze is onto his next step, funding. After that the rest of the comic is about him finding money, but Batman keeps stopping him at every turn to the point where he can’t pay his bills so they turn his power off which kills Nora. Now Freeze is in a rage. This is the era where all he cares about is revenge and destruction. I should remind you that throughout this comic, Freeze continues to get older. Maybe after a good bit of Freeze doing terrible things, Knightfall happens where the Bat is broken. Freeze refuses to help even though horrible things are happening throughout Gotham. Then he sees a picture of Nora and decides to at least stop the mayhem. It’s probably going to have to be a bit worse than the Knightfall comic. Worse meaning more violent with a lot more murder. After the city is back in order, Batman visits Mister Freeze. This is when Freeze tells Batman all about his wife and why he became Freeze in the first place. The next thing that happens is Batman takes off his mask. He tells Freeze that if he would have known he would have funded the entire project. Bruce then offers him an...offer to fund Freeze if he would be willing to give up his life of crime and go back to his research in Medical Cryogenics Freeze accepts. Mostly because he thinks of Nora and by this time he is in his 60s or 70s. Years go by and now Fries Medical, now called Freeze Incorporated (or something like that) is now as big as any other medical research company out there. This is where the comic now comes to an end. Victor walks over to a machine and picks up the vile. He has found the cure for cancer.
I’m actually really proud of that. I was going to write some more ideas down, but honestly...woah. Right? If I think of any more, I’ll write them below before my wonderful sister posts this. If it goes straight to part five, you know I have not had any more ideas
Part Five: Rating
I’m pretty sure that Mister Freeze is one of the greatest Batman villains ever. He has a cool schtick and he is compelling as a character. I don’t like giving things a 10/10 because that would mean they are the perfect character, and Mister Freeze isn’t that. I’m not sure what the “perfect character would even mean honestly. My heart says to give him an 8/10, but I’m going to give him a 9/10...no nevermind I just thought about Batman and Robin (a movie that doesn’t exist). Mister Freeze is an 8/10. The two points are knocked off because of bad character portrayal in some movies, comics, and tv shows that I can’t seem to wipe from my mind.
Thank you again for joining me again for this blog that I am having a lot more fun with than I was expecting. Come join us again next Friday for Chapter 3 where we are going to talk about the mean, the green, Poison Ivy...who was also in that terribly horrible movie.
Q: What killed the dinosaurs?
A: THE ICE AGE!!!
—
Yeah, I did copy and paste the explanation from last week, give me one good reason why I should have to rewrite it?
Can I do another parenthesis inside of another parenthesis? I’m gonna.
There are no Batman movies with Mister Freeze.
*Art by Phil Cho