Batman: The Dark Knight #23.2

Issue Details

Synopsis

MR. FREEZE Before Victor Fries and his mother moved to Nebraska, his father abandoned them in Gotham City. His mother had suggested that they move to Lowell with his grandma until they could get their own place, because it would be better to be close to family. Only a coward like his father would walk out on his family. By the next year, she had fallen through the ice on their way to the annual snowman contest and lost much of her mental capacity from exposure to the cold. By the next year, Victor felt that she had abandoned him, breaking her promise, and he allowed her to drown in the same icy water that had crippled her.   Now, reflecting on that story, Victor has decided that it wasn't his methods that were the problem, but the subject of his affection. Nora Fields was never his wife, and through his last encounter with Batman, he had realized that his efforts to bring Nora back were merely his attempt to bring back the part of his mother that he lost when she fell through the ice. Now, though, Victor is intent on doing it in a more direct way.   Some months ago, Victor had been in Arkham Asylum when someone has slipped a scrap of newspaper under his cell door, revealing that his father had started another family, and was now making headlines for their fund-raising for cancer research. He realized, then, hat he still had blood in the world; a family to preserve. Unfortunately, he was incarcerated.   Victor had refused to show the clipping to his doctor at Arkham, but he admitted that he would like to contact the new family he had discovered. Dr. Felton warned that this did not strike him as a good idea, on account of his patient's obsessive love disorder. If Victor was looking for a replacement for Nora, it could endanger the Fries family. Coldly, Victor responded that he had seen his file, and he knew Felton considered him incurable, so his efforts there were pointless. Choosing not to deny it, Felton agreed to take a letter to the Fries family. Victor promised to kill him if he was lying.   When the Justice League fell to the Crime Syndicate, Victor's escape from Arkham was facilitated by the ensuing chaos. In the time before those events, he had written several letters and received no response, and so he assumed that Felton had failed to deliver it. During the breakout, he broke into Felton's office, and found the man cowering there. Finding his letters stacked on the doctor's desk, Victor froze them solid, and stabbed them into the doctor's body.   Once free of the Asylum's grounds, Victor rode a barge to Gotham proper, planning his revenge on Batman - who may already be dead - and the double-crossing Court of Owls. Seeking a way to vent his rage, he targeted his former inmates as they planned to murder and eat a captured nurse. As he brutally destroyed their bodies, he begged a favor of the rescued Nurse Wilmont. She would need to help him locate his new family's home. Unfortunately, he was displeased to learn that his father had died before he had a chance to preserve him.   Now that he has found his family, he feels he owes them an explanation of his condition. Bruce Wayne had discovered his romantic obsession with Nora Fields, and intended to have him get help, at the cost of his work with Nora. Victor had become angry, and his violent outburst saw him fall victim to a blast of cryogenic fluid. The result required a refrigerated suit for his continued survival.   In his father's home, Victor helps himself to a glass of wine, and says grace over their dinner. In truth though, he has frozen his father's wife and children solid, and it was he who saw to it that his father was murdered.