Mr. Freeze #1

"FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER!"

You know what DC Comics should do? They should just opt out of trying to sell to kids. Fuck kids! They don't know shit about what's good or interesting or smart. Just look at the shit I read when I was in junior high! Blue Devil? Really? Well, maybe it was well written. I should reread it to see if I had any taste. But I was also reading the Shannara books. Ugh. I can't believe I read so many of those. Although I was reading Elfquest and that's pretty good plus it had cute elves in it. I think I was reading Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality books. I may have been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide and, possibly, Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I began reading Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane but quickly lost interest. I think I was reading some Thieves' World books. I can't remember if I'd read Tolkien by then or not. I read The Hobbit in elementary school as well as all of the Oz books. I'm sure there are many more but who can remember them all? Anyway, I lost the track of why DC shouldn't market to kids. Young readers will definitely read good shit, so that argument fell apart almost immediately. But I still don't want DC to market to kids for reasons to follow!

I don't really have any reasons. It's just that I'm turning 42 later this month and I figured I need to start hating young people for absolutely no reason. Even though old people have every reason to hate kids when they think it's funny to run across their lawn and see the old person completely lose their shit over it. Goddamned disrespectful little shits! I can't wait until you fucking own a window on something so I can throw my fucking walker through it! Now go do math problems or something useful!

I think what I'd really like is for adults to stop babying their kids so much. All y'all parents do realize your kids know more swear words than you, right? So why the fuck do you have to try to keep the public world free of swearing? And if you'd teach your kids about biology, why can't non-sexual nudity be allowed in public spaces? The fact that people even get their sphincters in a knot over women breastfeeding is ludicrous. That borders on childish. You do know what breastfeeding is, right American public? It is giving sustenance to a child. Does this next thing need to be said? Yes, here in America it definitely does: BREASTFEEDING IS NOT SEXUAL! BREASTS ARE FOR FEEDING! Sure, people like to look at them naked as well. But people also like to look at shirtless men and sexualize them but nobodies yelling at them to put a shirt on. Women's nipples are taboo but men's nipples are useless and on display everywhere you go. You realize it's just a self-sustaining cycle, right? The more you force women to hide their breasts, the more their breasts become sexualized.

This is how you know the whole thing is utterly ridiculous. If a nice, plump man boob is shown on television out of context, it would probably get a censor bar over it. But if people know it's a man's boob, the bar can be removed. Same boob; different reactions due to perception. I think that pretty much screams bullshit.

Why am I talking about all this in a Mr. Freeze commentary? Oh yeah! I want Mr. Freeze to be yelling "Freeze, Motherfucker!" on this cover but overprotective parents would flip the fuck out over a stupid word. I suppose no parent wants to hear their child saying anything about fucking their own mother even if they didn't mean it that way. I think I already talked about my DCXXX line of comic books, so here I am, once again rehashing old material! Like how I did my Grasshopper walks into a bar joke during the Riddler #1 commentary after I'd already done the joke way back in an early Nightwing commentary! Once again, who can remember all of this shit?

I'm so lost right now. I'm just going to read my comic book and pretend none of this ever happened.

Hey! I was just talking about thirty years ago when I was twelve! So it all ties in. Kind of.

Young Victor Fries is currently watching his father walk out on his family. That's what happens when you move to Gotham! Everything falls apart. I have a feeling people raised in Gotham have no understanding of things like air and rail travel. They don't realize the city doesn't just keeping going on forever and you can, if you just start walking, leave. But since The Fries family have just recently moved here, they know they don't have to stay. So Victor's mom moves him to Nebraska to live with their grandmother. Nebraska is one of those place everybody knows they can move out of except the old people. Old people love that place. Except for Lincoln and Omaha and maybe Grand Island.

Elderly Nebraskan: "There are just so many people in those places! It's like living on the coast! And there's no corn within eyesight! And corruption? Corruption on every street corner! If you let your kids go to one of them big cities, sure as shoot, you're gonna lose 'em to another state eventually. And that state probably won't be Kansas. Or South Dakota. But one of them Sodom or Gomorrahs like California or New York or Seattle!"

Once in Lowell, Nebraska, the events of Batman Annual #1 take place and his mother nearly dies. Then she totally dies later when Victor decides she's abandoned him and dumps her back in the freezing lake where she almost died the first time.

Back in the NOW of DC Comics Timeline, Mr. Freeze is contemplating how best to continue with his research now that Batman ruined his work with Nora Fields by pointing out she wasn't his wife. So who was she? Does her name anagram to "an old Fries" for a reason? Victor seems to be speaking to somebody either in the room with him or being held captive in the room next door. It seemed Batman did help him to drop the obsession with bringing back his mother which he was projecting onto the woman he had convinced himself had been his wife, Nora Fields. But now he's free of that obsession and able to fully concentrate on his work. It seems whomever he is speaking with must be his new work.

Oh shit! I hope it's Starling!

Damn. He's probably captured his step-mother. But on the plus side, he thinks the Birds of Prey are ridiculous too! I'm so disappointed in that book.

Mr. Freeze would like to be put in contact with his potential half-brother. But being insane and a criminal (not professional!), it's a bit tough hammering out the details of a visit. Mr. Freeze doesn't get his chance until the Justice League are defeated and Super Woman and Owlman break everybody out of Arkham.

Once he escapes, Mr. Freeze manages to track down his family and tell them all about the events of Batman Annual #2! He also finds out that his father has died, so he's free to take his father's place just like the Oedipal Complex he swore he didn't have.

Just another person with serious Daddy Issues.

DC must stand for Daddy Complex. Maybe that's why DiDio is so anti-marriage. What happened, Danny? What did mean old daddy do to your famiwy? Why can nobody be happy on your watch? Childhood was so hard with daddy expecting so much. And then when daddy left, you told him that you'd show him! You'd become a great big powerful big shot one day, right?! And then daddy would take notice of you! Then daddy would see you weren't worthless! As long as daddy just sees you in your expensive suit at DC Press Conferences and he never gets a glimpse of you crying your eyes out while sitting on the toilet in your private bathroom in your majestic office full of priceless art.

Mr. Freeze #1 Rating: I don't know. Somewhere in the teens, I guess? I liked the characterization of Mr. Freeze but this just felt like an addendum to Batman Annual #1. I guess that's the problem using a character in Villains Month that was already spotlighted in another issue.

Also, I was photoshopping the Anguished Fat Man into each issue in Villains Month in the same way that I did with Zero Month. But then I forgot to do it for The Riddler and now I can't be bothered. Thus ends that tradition that was barely a tradition and really just extra fucking work. I loved you and will miss you dearly, Anguished Fat Man!