Batman Annual #1 Preview/Discussion SPOILERS

[DragonPiece]

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2012/05...atman-annual-1

Oh man, this is going to be awesome! Freeze+Penguin plus tons of guests starts written by Scott Snyder with the help of his student James Tynion IV!

[Roldan]

I wonder if Tynion IV will actually get a gig other then being co-writer with Snyder. Also that's some guud art.

[shark]

That looks fantastic

[DragonPiece]

I wonder if Tynion IV will actually get a gig other then being co-writer with Snyder. Also that's some guud art.

At the moment it's just this and writing back ups on Batman, perhaps things change for wave 3?

[JasonTodd428]

That looks awesome!

[Roldan]

At the moment it's just this and writing back ups on Batman, perhaps things change for wave 3?

You'd actually hope DC had some sense and would put him on Detective Comics. I wouldn't even mind Daniel as co-plotter.

[RoughNTumble]

maybe tynion's first comic book shouldn't be one of the top in the industry

[SpideyZERO]

I expect we will be hearing more from Tynion, just like Higgins

Cool preview (pardon the pun), Freeze is coming!

[foxandwall]

So it is seems that six years ago, Bruce just came back to Gotham?

[Retro315]

So it is seems that six years ago, Bruce just came back to Gotham?

Don't get hung up on this "six years ago" nonsense. It's an arbitrary number selected so that the overall DCU hero group is "younger" and less legendary in their careers. "Six years ago" is just code for "early in Batman's career", and Mister Freeze, chronologically isn't even a "Year One" villain, he came along in the late 50s/early 60s, or Dark Victory, which would place him as a Year Three guy. It tracks, since even if Bruce has been back in Gotham for a couple years, Freeze is a guy so absorbed in his own world that he wouldn't even know.

I'm not big on this origin. Losing your actual lover to a slow disease is a far more appropriate and emotionally resonant reason for a man's heart to turn to ice. Just being a creepy nerd? Come on ... seriously? It's a neat concept, but I don't think it'll be surpassing the emotional resonance of the awkward guy making good and marrying a beautiful, lovely woman only for it to be ephemeral. Plus, Wayne taking the place of his jerk boss at the cryo-lab is pointless, since that's like his first kill and the guy who pushed him over the edge.

I'm okay with the mercy killing of his mom, it's twisted, but it's not a fundamental change in Freeze's motivation.

It's not a huge change, but I don't think it'll stick. I do like that the lab is a WayneTech branch, though - that can stay. Was it part of WayneTech in TAS? The twist was trying too hard to be a twist.

Still not a terrible issue, by any means.

[Patroklos]

Don't get hung up on this "six years ago" nonsense. It's an arbitrary number selected so that the overall DCU hero group is "younger" and less legendary in their careers. "Six years ago" is just code for "early in Batman's career", and Mister Freeze, chronologically isn't even a "Year One" villain, he came along in the late 50s/early 60s, or Dark Victory, which would place him as a Year Three guy. It tracks, since even if Bruce has been back in Gotham for a couple years, Freeze is a guy so absorbed in his own world that he wouldn't even know.

I'm not big on this origin. Losing your actual lover to a slow disease is a far more appropriate and emotionally resonant reason for a man's heart to turn to ice. Just being a creepy nerd? Come on ... seriously? It's a neat concept, but I don't think it'll be surpassing the emotional resonance of the awkward guy making good and marrying a beautiful, lovely woman only for it to be ephemeral. Plus, Wayne taking the place of his jerk boss at the cryo-lab is pointless, since that's like his first kill and the guy who pushed him over the edge.

I'm okay with the mercy killing of his mom, it's twisted, but it's not a fundamental change in Freeze's motivation.

It's not a huge change, but I don't think it'll stick. I do like that the lab is a WayneTech branch, though - that can stay. Was it part of WayneTech in TAS? The twist was trying too hard to be a twist.

Still not a terrible issue, by any means.

Nope, it was "GothCorp - The People's Company", ran by the aptly named Ferris Boyle... I said earlier in the thread that it doesn't make any sense to tie Freeze's origin to Bruce Wayne, so I'm glad someone else agrees.

[jgiannantoni05]

I'm not big on this origin. Losing your actual lover to a slow disease is a far more appropriate and emotionally resonant reason for a man's heart to turn to ice.

Yup. In a nutshell, this is my thought exactly.


Yea, I don't think this origin will hold or really come to people's mind as Freeze's definitive origin. This origin will only hold if no one tackles Freeze's origin for a long while, which will probably happen as Freeze isn't used much anyway.

Sometimes, popular geek culture decides something in a way a writer or DC can't really change.

[GarageGlamorous]

Eesh, that new origin sucks.

Luckily I have no particular affinity for the character in the first place, or I may have been extremely disappointed in Snyder. In the meantime, if Freeze comes up again, I'm just going to pretend that Heart of Ice is still canon unless otherwise stated.

And yeah, I can't really say I'm a fan of Snyder making everyone an unsympathetic psychopath. I know he apparently wants to make the Batman mythos dark and gritty and film noir-ish, but there are other ways of doing so that don't include character assassination. Honestly, it shows a bit of poor finesse as a writer on his part.

[sidekick77]

I'm not big on this origin. Losing your actual lover to a slow disease is a far more appropriate and emotionally resonant reason for a man's heart to turn to ice. Just being a creepy nerd? Come on ... seriously? It's a neat concept, but I don't think it'll be surpassing the emotional resonance of the awkward guy making good and marrying a beautiful, lovely woman only for it to be ephemeral. Plus, Wayne taking the place of his jerk boss at the cryo-lab is pointless, since that's like his first kill and the guy who pushed him over the edge.

Perhaps, but given what is revealed about Freeze's mother, their facsimile of a relationship and him transposing this memory onto Nora in an attempt to revive her and redeem himself, you can say he is frozen in time and that this is simply another symbolic interpretation of the 'ice' theme with his character. Just like Dini's take on Freeze.

In any case, like yourself, I did not interpret Freeze's actions on the ice as psychotic as some want to immediately read into.

[nosocialize100]

I like the idea of Freeze no longer being this hero/villain for the obsessive cause of saving his wife. After this story maybe he can do something new.

I do like though, that his character is still tied to obsession. Lets have him obsess more! How about…an obsession with Troll Dolls next!