Mr. Freeze's new origin

[Ironman2978]

All true and part of the reason I liked the issue... Then Snyder decided to make him commit matricide when he was 8 years old. In one panel he went from troubled genius to mother killing maniac.

I think he killed his mother because he wanted to preserve her memory of her before the accident instead of the shell of the woman she is now but yeah I understand why people would hate him killing his mother. I agree with Stu's post though. This actually shows why Batman doesn't want to help cure Nora.

[Aelle3]

I dunno if I'd say it was "better", but the new origin certainly does help to make a lot of Freeze stories make more sense. With Nora as the wife, in order to make him trying to cure her be villainous, to get to do that he'd have to hurt other people by stealing diamonds/funding he needed for his research, or work as a hired killer to raise the money. This created the massive plothole of Bruce Wayne not just funding Freeze's work so he'd have at least one of his rogues out of the way.

True and these are good points but I think that particular situation could be solved by having Freeze 'fall out' in some way with Bruce Wayne and not accept his funding. On the other side can Bruce Wayne publicly fund a man who has recently committed murder (not sure how much murder New52 Freeze has committed, so I might be totally wrong).

[dupersuper]

spoilers:

His wife isn't actually his wife, just some chick who was frozen 100 years ago who he's obsessed with. As a previous poster said, he went from insanely dedicated to just insane.

end of spoilers

That...sounds really stupid.

[Pict]

Missed this thread, but I'm with the Heart of Ice fans. Now, apart from theme, Freeze and the Mad Hatter are pretty interchangeable as villains. Nutjobs obsessed with women based on their themes.

[Masked Manhunter]

I enjoyed 'Snow' from Legends of the Dark Knight, although I didn't like the art. The Batman just looks terrible. :P
Anyways, I haven't read new origin but I doubt I'll like it after reading how different it is.

So what 'Mr.Freeze fans' think of 'Snow' ?

[Sacred Knight]

While the idea in of itself I don't think is bad, I just don't like the change for a character like Mr. Freeze. I think there's some story there, sure, but to me its very finite, and thus in the end not worth the change. I prefer Nora really being his wife.

[stk]

I'm trying to think how long the character was around before we got the origin that included Nora. 30-35 years or so? And then we had the +Nora origin for... 20 years after that? So really, the character has had more time without it than with it.

That said, it would be hard to improve on Heart of Ice.

[Neutrino]

It's kind of like how I want to know more about Killer Croc now that he's Roy Harper's alcoholic anonymous sponsor...

Sorry to derail the thread, but is this true? That's absolutely hilarious and utterly stupid, and pretty much a character assassination of the (non-)character of Killer Croc. Never change, Lobdell... but if you have to, make sure to change a DCU character in an equally unlikely way. Ha. Wow.

[DrSimonHurt]

Well, Croc is just a guy with problems. He isn't actually a monster. Apparently alcohol abuse was one of his many problems.

And right now, I like Freeze's new origin. The thing with Nora being his wife was too one-dimensional. It didn't allow for him to do anything in a story other than whine about his wife and be a weak anti-hero. If it wasn't that, he was just a joke villain in the background.

[MrRoussis]

I think he killed his mother because he wanted to preserve her memory of her before the accident instead of the shell of the woman she is now but yeah I understand why people would hate him killing his mother. I agree with Stu's post though. This actually shows why Batman doesn't want to help cure Nora.

This.
He killed his mother because, in his mind, she was already dead. It gives Bats a motivation to not help him and we still have the complicated 'sympathetic' angle that we are acuustomed to. Sure he's kinda crazy... but not like... Joker or Scarecrow crazy. More like... Two Face crazy. There you go. No more sadness.

[MrRoussis]

Missed this thread, but I'm with the Heart of Ice fans. Now, apart from theme, Freeze and the Mad Hatter are pretty interchangeable as villains. Nutjobs obsessed with women based on their themes.

Yea... not really. He's not obsessed with women. He's obsessed with ice and the cold and what it does to people. He can easily obsess over something elese related to ice. Like watching an ice cube melt.

[KingofMadCows]

I think the new origin had the potential to work but the main problem is that it's filled with idiotic contrivances and makes absolutely no sense.

Here are some obvious contrivances and plot holes:

spoilers:

1. Why was Bruce against researching a way to defrost the cryogenically frozen people? The whole reason why those people were frozen is because they had sick and wanted to be thawed out again when cures were found. 2. Why was Fries so desperate to unfreeze Nora? She had already been frozen for several decades. She's perfectly fine as long as she's frozen. There's no urgency in her situation at all. In fact, it's far more dangerous to rush things since the danger lies in unfreezing her. It makes far more sense for Fries to do things legally by conducting more research and doing more tests to improve the defrosting process so that she can be unfrozen safely. 3. What exactly was Fries' plan after he unfreezes Nora? She still has a heart condition and needs surgery. Was he planning to do the surgery himself? When did he become a heart surgeon? How is he going to take care of her after the surgery? Again, it would make far more sense for Fries to do it legally to ensure that Nora can get the treatment she needs after she's unfrozen. 4. Why did Bruce decide to confront Fries inside the cryogenic chamber near all that sensitive equipment and dangerous chemicals? Why didn't Bruce just look Fries out of the lab or have him arrested as he came in or out of work? 5. Why did Batman use the real Nora as bait for Freeze? Freeze had no idea where Nora was and took Bruce's word that Nora was in his office, so there was absolutely no reason for Batman to use Nora at all. It's especially hypocritical for him to use Nora since he made a point to Fries about how Nora can't consent to being a part of his experiment. Well, I'm pretty sure that Nora couldn't consent to being used as bait for an insane mass murderer either. In fact, Batman's whole "plan" needlessly put a lot of people in danger. Why didn't he evacuate everyone in the cryo storage chamber? All those people are helpless, what if Freeze killed them all in a fit of rage or to spite Bruce/Batman? 6. The "traps" Batman, Nightwing, and Damien set for Freeze where stupid. They acted like idiots by announcing their presence to Freeze instead of doing the sensible thing of trying to take him out in a surprise attack.

end of spoilers