When Mr. Freeze Got A New Origin Story, Batman Fans Revolted

The Batman villain Mr. Freeze is a fan-favorite among DC Comics readers, which is why they revolted upon hearing that DC had changed his classic origin story. Victor Fries has fallen out of favor in recent years; the poor critical reception to 1997’s Batman and Robin has all but ensured the villain won’t make a big-screen reappearance in a very long time. But while the character is still liked by many, his New 52 incarnation’s origin story was so despised that his fans managed to change it.

In 2011, the Flashpoint crossover ended with the Flash rewriting the reality of the DC Universe. Every DC book was rebooted starting with Issue #1 (even long-runners like Action Comics and Detective Comics), and the continuity was reset for many – but not all – of the flagship superheroes. Superheroes all emerged in the public eye within the last 10 years and characters like Superman had entire histories rewritten. Villains were not exempt from this reboot either, including Mr. Freeze.

Mr. Freeze was an otherwise unremarkable Batman villain until the 90s Batman: The Animated Series rewrote his backstory in the critically acclaimed episode Heart of Ice. In the series, Freeze is a scientist named Victor Fries, who uses a cryogenic device to prolong his wife Nora Fries’ life while he searches for a cure for her otherwise-fatal condition. Fries is involved in a horrific lab accident which allows him to survive in extreme cold temperatures, but at the cost of wearing an environmental suit to live anywhere else. Now an emotional shell of his former self, he commits crimes for the sole purpose of gathering resources to find a cure for Nora. In the New 52 version, the story is much the same…except Nora was never his wife.

In Batman Annual #1 released as part of the New 52, Batman reveals that Nora Fields was born in 1943, and placed in cryogenic suspension. As the first person in the world to undergo the procedure, Victor Fries wrote his doctoral thesis on Nora and eventually fell in love with her and deluded himself into thinking she was his wife – even though the two had never shared a single conversation. “She’s old enough to be your grandmother” says Batman as the two fight in the cryogenics lab. The revelation was not well-received by fans at all, who believed the new origin took away all of Fries’ sympathetic characteristics and turned him into just another insane Batman villain (oddly enough, what the Heart of Ice episode set out to change in the first place).

Eventually, DC heard the fans’ voices and retconned Mr. Freeze’s story back to the Heart of Ice version, with Nora as his wife once more. The attempt by DC editorial to radically change Freeze’s backstory was admirable, however; perhaps they simply wanted him to rise above his 30 year-old backstory and experience character development. Mr. Freeze would continue to menace Batman, but the character growth of the villain would be forever frozen in time.