An extra star for the excellent artwork. Otherwise Batman: Snow a fairly empty retread of Mr Freeze's origins; one that left me cold. ( )

I picked this book up because it tells the origin of Mr. Freeze, probably the most prominent of Batman's villains to not have an origin detailed in anything else I've read in my Batman readthrough so far (the Joker got The Man Who Laughs, Catwoman had a significant subplot in Batman: Year One, Two-Face will very shortly get The Long Halloween, and then of course there's Four of a Kind for Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, and Man-Bat). To my surprise, that turned out to be the least interesting part of this story; I don't think Mr. Freeze's story really adds anything to the book. It lacks the tragedy I recall from the 1990s Batman cartoon, and it doesn't really resonate with the other material in this book. It's very nearly an irrelevant side-plot!

The main function of Mr. Freeze is to be a supervillain of a type Batman has never seen before: one with hi-tech weaponry, and thus threatening on a scale that, say, Catwoman or the Joker is not. This is because the story is really about Batman's attempt to put together a crime-fighting team, able to help him do what he's coming to realize he can't do alone, and what Gordon and Dent and Alfred can't help him with. Of course I loved it: Batman assembled a scrappy gang of misfits who have to learn how to work together, and learn that they're strong as part of a team even if they are unfulfilled and often powerless outside of it. They're a fun bunch, and I loved the scenes of them working together, as well as the scenes of them out in the field-- and as it does in these kinds of stories, things turn sour, and that works really well, too. I suspect these guys appear nowhere else in the Batman canon, but I sure wish they did.

Writer Dan Curtis Johnson captures Batman's voice really well. By which I mean, I could imagine Kevin Conroy saying his lines! But seriously, this story really gets Batman and what makes him tick: Batman is not a loner, but a man who needs a family to keep going, and this story is the key one where he identifies that. It's about a year before Batman gains a Robin, but (as the final page drives home perhaps a little too heavy-handedly) this is where the emotional process starts. I also really liked Seth Fisher's artwork, which is cartoony but detailed in a way I find hard to articulate but really enjoyed looking at. Hopefully I come across more of his work someday.

Batman "Year One" Stories: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Early in his career, before there was a Robin, Batman decided that Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent were too conflicted in their loyalties and responsibilities to always give him the help he needed. So he assembled a team of specialists in various fields, trained them and put them to work. This book pits them against Victor Fries when he becomes Dr. Freeze. Interesting idea, and good portrayal of the interactions between Batman and his associates at this time in his career. Not wild about the stiff and muddied artwork, though. ( )