Mr. Freeze is the name of twosupervillains appearing inAmerican comic books published byDC Comics. Created by writer Dave Wood and artistsSheldon Moldoff andBob Kane, the character initially debuted inBatman #121 (February 1959) asMr. Zero, amad scientist with an unknown birth name who, after a physiology-altering mishap, becomes an ice-themed criminal typically armed with freezing weapons and an adversary of the superheroBatman forced to live insub-zero temperatures and wear a special "cryo-suit" for survival. He was later renamed "Mr. Freeze" after the version featured in the 1966Batman television series.
In 1992, Mr. Freeze was reinvented as atragicvillain by writerPaul Dini, producerBruce Timm, and artistMike Mignola forBatman: The Animated Series, which portrayedVictor Fries (pronounced "freeze") as a scientist inGotham City who suffers a lab accident while trying tocryogenically preserve his terminally ill wife,Nora. He turns to crime to fund his research in his obsessive quest to cure Nora by any means necessary, which brings him into conflict with Batman. The animated revamped depiction of Mr. Freeze received widespread acclaim and redefined the character, providing such a burst in his popularity that DC Comicsretroactively integrated theorigin story conceived by Dini into the mainstream comic book continuity, and adapted it for almost every incarnation of theBatman franchise since.
As one of Batman's most enduring enemies belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up hisrogues gallery, Mr. Freeze has been adapted in variousmedia incarnations. He has been portrayed in film byArnold Schwarzenegger inBatman & Robin (1997), and in television byGeorge Sanders,Otto Preminger, andEli Wallach in the 1966Batman series, andNathan Darrow inGotham.Michael Ansara,Clancy Brown,Maurice LaMarche, and others have provided the character's voice in animation and video games.
Created by Dave Wood,Sheldon Moldoff, andBob Kane, the character made his first appearance inBatman #121 (February 1959) as "Mr. Zero", a criminal scientist whose experimental "ice gun" backfires and spills cryogenic chemicals on him, forcing him to wear a sub-zero suit for survival and transforming him into agimmickystock villain who commits ice-themed crimes.[1][2][3] The name "Mr. Freeze" was first used when the character was adapted for the 1960sBatman television series, in which he was played by three different actors:George Sanders,Otto Preminger andEli Wallach.[4][5][6] Mr. Freeze debuted in the episode "Instant Freeze" on February 2, 1966, and his comic book counterpart was renamed inDetective Comics #373 (March 1968).[7]
Nearly thirty years later, lead producersPaul Dini andBruce Timm completely overhauled the character inBatman: The Animated Series. ArtistMike Mignola redesigned Mr. Freeze for the series at Timm's request, whileMichael Ansara provided the character's voice.[8] The episode "Heart of Ice", which was written by Dini and directed by Timm, aired on September 7, 1992, and retold Mr. Freeze's origin as Victor Fries, a scientist who turns to crime to find a cure for his cryogenically frozen, terminally ill wife,Nora.[9] This revamped depiction of Mr. Freeze was critically acclaimed and led his characterization and backstory to beretconned into the mainstream comic book continuity.[10][11][12][13]
| Mr. Freeze | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | As Mr. Zero: Batman #121 (February 1959) As Mr. Freeze: "Instant Freeze" Batman (February 2, 1966) |
| Created by | Dave Wood Sheldon Moldoff Bob Kane |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Unknown |
| Species | Metahuman |
| Place of origin | Gotham City |
| Notable aliases | Mr. Zero[1] |
| Abilities | |
To create an ice gun, a scientist whose name remains unknown starts experimenting with a concentrated freezing solution. He suffers an unfortunate accident that changes his physiology, forcing him to live in environments belowzero temperature. He adopts the criminal identity of Mr. Zero. To be able to go out to the normal environment, Zero creates anair conditioned costume, which helps him remain in cold temperatures, even in hot climates. Using this equipment, Zero gathers a small gang and starts a crime spree inGotham City, stealing mainly diamonds and other precious jewels. Mr. Zero is eventually confronted by the local vigilantes,Batman andRobin. Unable to stand against his cold weapons, the Dynamic Duo fails to stop Zero. They are captured by him and brought to his secret cold hideout, near the mountains. Trapped in blocks of ice, Batman and Robin learn Zero's plan to steal a large collection of gems. Batman eventually breaks a nearby steam pipe, causing steam to fill the hideout, melting the ice away and apparently curing Zero from his ailment. After this, Batman and Robin are able to capture the whole gang and bring Zero to the authorities.[3]
After years of inactivity, Zero's condition apparently returns. Going back to his life of crime, he changes his alias to Mr. Freeze and is forced to remain in cold temperatures once again. In this second exploit, Freeze redesigns his cryo-suit and improves his cryothermal gun. With a new gang, he starts a new series of crimes and steals valuable pieces of art. Similar to his first criminal activities, Freeze is eventually stopped by Batman and Robin.[14]
Long after this, Freeze becomes part of amock criminal trial.[15]
Mr. Freeze later changes his cryo-suit with one that allows him more mobility. Freeze eventually falls in love with a woman called Hildy. To slow her aging process, Freeze sets out to recreate the accident that transformed him. For his experiments, Freeze uses wealthy people in Gotham as test subjects, but all the efforts result in failure. The victims turn into frozen zombies, who follow Freeze's commands. His new crimes alert the police and Batman. In the ensuing fight, Batman is only able to win when Hildy shows her true intentions and betrays Freeze, only to be encased in solid ice when her plan backfires.[16]
Freeze's next plan consists of freezing Gotham City by removing all the heat and transporting the energy to the neighboring city ofMetropolis. Freeze is unable to accomplish his goal and is stopped by Batman andSuperman.[17]
During one last attempt to freeze Gotham entirely, Mr. Freeze creates a large ice cannon. After robbing a bank, Freeze is confronted by Batman and the newRobin, who manages to defeat him with help fromVicki Vale andJulia Pennyworth, whom Freeze previously captured.[18]
| Mr. Freeze | |
|---|---|
.png) The Victor Fries version of Mr. Freeze as depicted inBatman #525 (December 1995). Art byKelley Jones (pencils) andJohn Beatty (inks). | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Television: "Heart of Ice" Batman: The Animated Series (September 7, 1992) Comics:Batman: Mr. Freeze #1 (1997) |
| Created by | Paul Dini Bruce Timm Mike Mignola |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Dr. Victor Fries |
| Species | Metahuman |
| Place of origin | Gotham City |
| Team affiliations | Injustice League Secret Society of Super Villains Legion of Doom Suicide Squad GothCorp |
| Abilities |
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Following theCrisis on Infinite Earths continuity reboot, Mr. Freeze's origin is retroactively revamped to match the one conceived by Paul Dini forBatman: The Animated Series.[22] Dr. Victor Fries is a brilliant expert in cryogenics in Gotham City. As a child, he was fascinated with cryonic preservation and liked to freeze animals. His parents are horrified by his "hobby" and send him to a strictreform school, where he is miserable, bullied andabandoned by his parents; as a result, he feels detached from humanity. In college, he meetsNora, the woman he ultimately marries.[1]
Eighteen months after Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, Nora contracts a fatal disease, so Fries begins developing a freeze ray forGothCorp to preserve her in suspended animation until a cure can be found. Fries' boss Ferris Boyle decides to tell the Mob about the gun, leading Batman to create a team of specialists to help him do his job better. As Fries puts Nora in suspended animation, Boyle interrupts and tampers with the experiment, resulting in an explosion that kills Nora. Fries survives, but the chemicals in the freeze ray lower his body temperature to the point that he must wear a cryogenic suit to survive. He swears revenge on those responsible for the death of his wife (whom he talks to often) and becomes Mr. Freeze, the first superpowered villain whom Batman faces in this continuity. Eventually, Batman's operatives find Freeze, who shoots one of them with his freeze gun, but Batman eventually apprehends him.[1]
During the "Underworld Unleashed" storyline, Mr. Freeze sold his soul toNeron in exchange for cryokinesis and temperature control where the latter ability enables him to survive in warm temperatures without use of his cryogenic suit.[23][24] While planning to freeze the elderly to preserve them, Mr. Freeze was secretly planning to steal their assets causing his henchmen Ice and Cube to get concerned. Though Batman defeats Mr. Freeze, he ends up getting away.[25] He would somehow revert to his pre-upgraded appearance causing him to sport a new cryogenic suit and wield a new freeze gun.[26]
Initially locked inArkham Asylum, Freeze was eventually transferred to the Gotham State Penitentiary, from where he escaped and attempted to steal technology fromS.T.A.R. Labs until he was stopped and returned to prison by Batman.[27]
During the "No Man's Land" storyline, Mr. Freeze sets up a base in the sewers which is stumbled upon byGearhead and Tommy Mangles.[28] Mr. Freeze finds them and uses his freeze gun on them after getting information about a storage room with canned food in it. He andRatcatcher were defeated byRobin and arrested by Detective Mackenzie Bock with the Gotham City Police Department also bringing the frozen bodies of Gearhead and Tommy Mangles into their custody as well.[29]
Freeze's crimes tend to involve freezing everyone and everything that he encounters[1] so he forgoes alliances with the other criminals in Gotham, preferring to work alone. On rare occasions, he has worked with another member of Batman's rogues' gallery, usually, as an enforcer for Gotham's mob bosses, such as thePenguin during hisreign[30] orBlack Mask during thereturn ofJason Todd.[31][32]
In one of his notable team-ups, Freeze constructs a cryogenic machine forHush so that Hush might take revenge on Batman, Freeze's equipment allowing Hush to preserveCatwoman's surgically removed heart to use as a means of threatening her life.[33]
During the "Infinite Crisis", Mr. Freeze appears as a member ofAlexander Luthor Jr.'sSecret Society of Super Villains.[34]
After Batman'sdeath, most of the Arkham inmates werefreed by anew Black Mask. Freeze was among them and he started working on a project called Ice-X Protocol when the GCPD tried to capture him. He stunned them with his gun and captured Gordon, taking him to his secret lair. Gordon managed to break free and defeat Freeze by causing an explosion that weakened Freeze. After his capture, Freeze was taken toIron Heights Prison.[35]
During the "Salvation Run" storyline, Mr. Freeze is among the villains that are sent to another planet by a Boom Tube by theSuicide Squad.[36]
Mr. Freeze later fashions a sub-zero machine forNyssa al Ghul in exchange for the use of her Lazarus Pit. He attempts to restore Nora to life without waiting for the adjusting needed in the pool chemicals; she returns to life as the twisted Lazara and escapes. She blames her husband for her plight, and she estranges herself from him.[37]
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In September 2011,The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, during theNight of the Owls crossover, theCourt of Owls sends assassins known as Talons to kill 40 of the most important citizens of Gotham, including Mr. Freeze.The Red Hood,Starfire andArsenal choose to save him, and subsequently remand him intoBatgirl's custody.[38]Batman Annual (vol. 2) #1 introduces a new origin for Mr. Freeze. Here, Victor Fries' fascination with cryonics began when he was a boy and his mother fell through the ice of a frozen lake. The ice was able to keep her preserved long enough for help to arrive, thus sparking his lifelong obsession with cold. It is later revealed that the accident left Fries' mother in constant pain, and Fries ended her suffering by pushing her into the same frozen lake. In this new origin, Nora was never Fries' wife. Her name was Nora Fields, a woman born in 1934. When Nora was 23, she was diagnosed with an incurable heart disease, so her family placed her in cryogenic stasis hoping that a cure would be found in the future. Fries, having written his doctoral thesis on Nora, took on a position as a cryogenic researcher and technician at Wayne Enterprises, the facility that housed Nora's body. Eventually, he fell in love with Nora and became dedicated to finding a reliable method for slowly thawing cryogenic subjects. However, Bruce Wayne ordered the project to be shut down, as he began to feel uncomfortable with Fries' obsession with Nora. Furious, Fries hurled a chair at Wayne, who dodged the attack; the chair smashed into an array of cryonic chemical tanks, the contents of which sprayed onto Fries and transformed him into Mr. Freeze.[39]
The Court of Owls uses Freeze's cryogenic-thaw formula to revive their Talons, and then they try to kill him. Freeze survives but is captured by the Red Hood and sent toArkham Asylum. He escapes shortly afterward and rearms himself with the Penguin's help. Freeze decides to kill Bruce Wayne and takes Nora, whom he believes to be his wife so that they can leaveGotham City behind forever. InfiltratingWayne Enterprises, Freeze has a brief fight withNightwing andRobin, but he subdues them. Then, Freeze goes to the penthouse, where he finds Batman and the frozen Nora. Batman defeats Mr. Freeze by injecting his suit with the thawing formula, which he had intended to use to revive Nora from suspended animation.
During the "Forever Evil" storyline, Mr. Freeze appears as a member of the Secret Society of Super Villains at the time when theCrime Syndicate arrived from their world.[40] TheScarecrow later visits Mr. Freeze to let him know of the war going on atBlackgate Penitentiary.[41] TheMan-Bats are able to bring the remaining Talons to Mr. Freeze after the Man-Bat and the Scarecrow steal them from Blackgate.[42][43] Mr. Freeze andClayface later encounter the Rogues when they land in their territory.[44] Mr. Freeze tells theMirror Master III he is not interested in capitalizing on the bounty on their heads, only to use theWeather Wizard to create optimal conditions for him to freeze Gotham. As the Rogues are fighting the two, Black Mask (alongside his False Face society) arrives to capture the Rogues to receive the bounty.[45]
InDoomsday Clock, Mr. Freeze is among the villains who meet with theRiddler to discuss the Superman Theory. When theComedian crashes the meeting, Freeze's helmet is punctured by a bullet shot by an unseen combatant.[46] In the "Ends of the Earth" story arc ofAll-Star Batman, Freeze has awoken many people that have been held in cryogenic stasis — using them as an army to steal resources for his research to cure his wife Nora, himself, and all of these people — and plans to release deadly bacteria held in one of the world's oldest ice cores to make a new world, butBatman has injected himself with a cold-resistant virus that becomes airborne when his skin is exposed and is able to kill the spores.[47]
In "Dark Nights: Metal", Mr. Freeze was given a special playing card byThe Batman Who Laughs that gave him innate cryokinesis.[48] Mr. Freeze and his frost monsters fought different superheroes who moved through his domain. Robin is the one who defeated Mr. Freeze and he regressed back to normal when the threat of the Dark Multiverse was sent back to its own dimension.[49]
Mr. Freeze was suspected of murdering three women and was put on trial. Due to Batman's later investigation, he found that Mr. Freeze didn't commit the crime and he was found not guilty by the jury.[50]
Severalyears later due to the events in "Year of the Villain",Lex Luthor gives Mr. Freeze a vial that would cure and furthermore revive his frozen wife. Freeze had to kidnap several women who matched his late wife's characteristics in both mental and physical states, going as far as modifying their DNA to hers to experiment with the vial before reviving his wife. In the end, it worked and his wife came back to life cured. She soon took up the name "Mrs. Freeze".[51] After Mrs. Freeze betrayed him, Mr. Freeze turned to Batman for help.[52] During the fight, Mrs. Freeze used a syringe on Mr. Freeze which started to heat him up while also eradicating the special nanites that kept him cold without the assistance of his cryogenic suit. Batman had to put Mr. Freeze in the same cryogenic state that Nora was in while Mrs. Freeze fled to the northern parts of Canada.[53]
Mr. Freeze was later seen as an inmate at Arkham Tower.[54]
Like most Batman villains, Mr. Freeze's crimes are often centered around a specifictheme; in his case, ice, cold and snow. The lab accident that bathed him in chemical coolants radically altered his biology and lowered his body temperature to 23 degrees Fahrenheit, transforming him into a metahuman who is impervious to sub-freezing temperatures and incapable of surviving outside of them.[21] As a result, anything Freeze's skin comes into contact with will freeze. He can generate ice around his body, encase an entire person's body in ice simply by touching them, and cause ice to rapidly form along structures through physical contact.[20][21] The demonNeron briefly grants Freeze the ability to generate absolute zero temperatures around him, though his body is soon reverted to its original sub-zero state.[55] Since the chemicals he was exposed to were meant for cryo-stasis, Freeze's aging has been decelerated to the point that he is considered to be virtually immortal, and he is immune to mosttoxins,bacteria,viruses, and illnesses.[56][1]
Freeze possesses a genius-level intellect and a gifted scientific mind. He is an expert inphysics,chemistry,neurobiology,medicine, andmechanical engineering, having built his own specializedcryogenic suit and equipment to keep his body temperature below freezing, as well as a "freeze ray" gun capable of creating gusts of cold that approach absolute zero.[1] Freeze'sarmored suit also increases his strength and durability to superhuman levels. His inventions have been described as being as technologically advanced as that ofApokolips orLex Luthor.[57]
IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time List ranked Mr. Freeze as #67.[58]
InBlackhawk, Mr. Freeze appears as a robot created and controlled by Professor Thurman to pose as a villain so that Thurman could use his "Instant Freeze Icing Machine" invention to commit crimes without incriminating himself, but the plan is eventually foiled by the Blackhawks and Thurman is arrested.[59]
An issue ofThe Brave and the Bold revealed that there was a criminal onEarth-Two who also operated as Mr. Zero. While not much is known about Earth-Two's Mr. Zero, his freeze gun was among the weaponry used byEarth-Two's Hugo Strange to attackRobin,Batwoman, and Batman of Earth-One.[60]
An alternate timeline variant of Victor Fries / Mr. Freeze appears inFlashpoint: Citizen Cold. This version is a friend ofFallout and an enemy of the eponymousCitizen Cold, who later kills Freeze. Additionally, Freeze's motivations revolve around seeking a cure for Fallout's radioactive powers.[61][62][63]
An alternate universe variant of Victor Fries / Mr. Freeze appears inBatman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After being exposed to mutagen by theShredder, Freeze mutates into an anthropomorphic polar bear and joins other mutated Arkham Asylum inmates to attack Batman andRobin before the inmates are defeated bySplinter. Sometime later, the inmates are stated to have been cured and inA.R.G.U.S. custody.[64]
An alternate universe variant of Victor Fries appears inBatman: White Knight. This version retired from his criminal lifestyle to focus on curing his wife Nora Fries' disease. Additionally, his cryogenically mutated physiology considerably slowed his body's aging process. Years prior, Victor unnamed father and Nora's father, Jacob Smithstein, worked as cryogenic researchers in interwar Germany. Amidst the rise of the Nazis, Victor's father joined them as an SS officer and became cold and abusive towards Victor. After being conscripted to experiment on Jewish prisoners using cryotech, Victor helped the Smithsteins escape, during which Jacob was shot and made Victor promise to protect Nora. After arriving in the U.S., Victor would go on to help deliver Bruce Wayne after the latter's mother Martha went into premature labor and attempt to saveAlfred Pennyworth.[65]
An alternate universe variant of Victor Fries appears in theDC Graphic Novels for Young Adults novelVictor and Nora: A Gotham Love Story, written byLauren Myracle and with art by Isaac Goodhart.[66]
Mr. Freeze targets the industrialist responsible for his wife's death.
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