Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #190-196

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #190-196

Originally released in 2005

Written by J. Torres (#190-191), J.H. Williams III and Dan Curtis Johnson (#192-196)

Art by David Lopez (#190-191), Seth Fisher (#192-196)

Yesterday was the first significant snowfall in my area, so I wanted to acknowledge that by focusing on a Mr. Freeze comic as soon as I could.  However, when looking into major comic stories featuring Mister Freeze, I found that there weren't many out there. To say this was a surprise is an understatement - Mister Freeze was one of the highlights of Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Origins... Even with Batman and Robin, it's been a while since I saw it, but from what I recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance was entertaining.

Even more surprising is how his motivation is changed between those media and the comics.  Normally, Freeze is motivated by a desire to save his terminally ill wife, Nora, who's been cryogenically frozen until a cure can be found for whatever disease she has. Here, Nora is already dead, even though this story takes place early in Batman's career, which seems like it would lead to a bunch of missed opportunities.

Freeze is still motivated by Nora, though in this case, he wants to die and be with her, and he's planning to take all of Gotham with him by freezing it.  Batman's quick to point out numerous flaws in this plan (it might not even kill Freeze, and if he wanted to die, he could just take off his helmet), but Freeze is too far gone by this point.

Issue 192 goes back to when Mister Freeze was just Doctor Victor Fries, and Batman's only a year and a half into his career.  As Nora is struck by a hereditary neurological disease, Batman is starting to feel like he can't accomplish much more on his own - he has allies in the form of Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent, but they have lines that they can't or won't cross.  As a result, Batman starts to assemble a team, though it seems like something is going to wrong with it for a variety of reasons. (all of the characters seem to be made up for this, his choices feel a little haphazard, and none of them are around in the present day)

The art in this story takes some getting used to, though the artist does a good job with making Alfred's disappointment clear on his face when his advice goes unheeded.  He can clearly tell that Bruce is suffering, but Bruce is so obsessed with his crusade that he won't see that laws and procedures are in place for a reason.

Desperate to find a cure for Nora's condition, Victor brings her to the lab where he's working to put her into cryogenic stasis in order to stave off the illness.  However, his boss had been testing the military applications of the device without his knowledge, causing it to react much more severely than he expected.

Nora dies as a result of this, and in his grief, Victor tries to take himself with her, damaging the machine and leading to his frozen condition.  However, he survives the process and hallucinates Nora telling him that she's still alive and waiting for him to cure her.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of Nora being killed and Freeze's hopes being nothing more than a hallucination; I like the idea that the possibility exists for Freeze to redeem himself, and Nora's death seems to make that much less likely.

Batman's team does an excellent job with gathering information, but when they're noticed and questioned by the police near a spot where criminals are meeting, one of them panics.  The situation escalates quickly.

This serves to drive a rift between Batman and Gordon, with Gordon knowing that Batman is involved even when Batman tries to play dumb.  The group sticks together, but the tipping point proves to be Mister Freeze, who is much more than any of them expected to deal with.

One member of the group, a former military man who was discharged as the result of being a scapegoat for a higher-ranking member's screw-up, goes off on his own to kill Freeze, but in the process, Nora's body is shot and shattered.  This doesn't deter Freeze, though - the hallucinatory Nora tells him that he'll just have to work that much harder to bring her back.  This hallucination also proves to be his undoing when he's cornered by Batman.

I feel like this series doesn't really get why the reinvention of Mr. Freeze in Batman: The Animated Series made him so popular.  Then again, maybe the brief nature of his appearances worked in his favour - he only made three appearances in that show, plus one in Batman Beyond and a short movie (it was only sixty-five minutes long or so), and all of them were great. (though I can't speak for the movie as of yet; I saw it when I was a kid, and it's been a while)  Maybe the motivation of saving his wife doesn't work as well when it's in a comic book, where he could be around for decades without being any closer to that goal.