“Search your hearts for the thing you value most, then despair, for I have come to take it from you.”Mr. Freeze (Michael Ansara) has returned to Gotham, paving a path of pain as he destroys an archaeological find and a recently-debuted work of art. With his wife no longer cryogenically frozen (after the events of the film Batman and Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero), Freeze’s plan baffles Batman until Bruce Wayne becomes a target, as Mr. Freeze aims to share his despair by taking from Gotham the things its citizens love best.
If you remember one thing from this episode, it’s almost certainly the moment when Mr. Freeze is revealed to be (spoilers) naught but a head in a jar mounted on robotic spider legs. You may even have had the action figure (as, surprise surprise, did I). And you’re probably wondering, as I have done all these years, why this episode takes one of the show’s best villains and runs him through a Cronenbergian body horror plot. In the “Arkham Files” features on the DVD set, Bruce Timm and Dan Riba talk about making Mr. Freeze more monstrous, more divorced from his humanity, after Sub-Zero “essentially took away his motivation.” There’s a cynical part of me that wonders how much the toy market factored into this move, but it’s worth noting that Timm and company don’t really phone in narratives like this one; put another way, the show hasn’t been very toyetic over the course of nearly ninety episodes, so why start now?
A relevant sidebar: I first learned the word “toyetic” from Joel Schumacher, who has famously deflected criticism of his Batman and Robin by saying that the powers that be at Warner Brothers had asked his movie to be more “toyetic.” (As someone who misspent his allowance on these figures, I’d say it worked.) It’s worth noting that Batman and Robin, widely regarded as the worst Batman film ever made, was released in 1997, the same year that “Cold Comfort” first aired on Kids WB, because it does seem that this episode tries to be very different from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pun-laden portrayal of Mr. Freeze, even as it can’t help but retread some territory. Both are surrounded by henchpeople in parkas, owing as much to Batman ’66 as to each other. And yes, Schwarzenegger’s Freeze plundered the masterful “Heart of Ice” origin, as did the comics, but recall that the filmic Freeze planned to immerse Gotham in eternal winter, just as this Mr. Freeze aspires to drop a “Reverse Fusion Bomb” on the city.
What’s interesting, though, is the philosophical depth in this episode, which I don’t recall Batman and Robin approaching. In the film, Mr. Freeze planned to hold the city for ransom to fund a cure for his wife, dropping the financial pretense when he presumed her dead. Here, though, we get something much closer to Bane’s plot in The Dark Knight Rises, with both rogues more invested in how much despair they can wring from Batman’s soul after his city falls (there, fire; here, ice – cf. Robert Frost?).
Ultimately, however, “Cold Comfort” really feels like a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” You know by now that I’m a proud evangelist for “Heart of Ice,” labeling it the all-time greatest episode of this show in last month’s rundown. It might seem like a loaded assessment, but compare this episode’s “A touching scene. I would be moved, if I were still capable of it” to Mr. Freeze’s original line, “Yes, it would move me to tears if I still had tears to shed.” One I’ve committed to memory; the other strikes me as a pale reflection. There’s also something strange going on with Michael Ansara’s voice; where BtAS cast him as emotionless with a deliberate pace to his words, here he seems like he’s rushing the lines, and the hollow echo on his voice doesn’t have the same tinny effect as in his earlier episodes.
The suit is sleeker and his face more skeletally gaunt, but overall this newer Mr. Freeze just doesn’t live up to the original. It’s in service to a very effective third act, however, in which Batman and Batgirl lurk through Freeze’s horror-inflected lair, and the revulsion at seeing Freeze’s disembodied head is a major success. Moreover, the show is really working when it’s focused on Batman’s partnership with Batgirl, whose black and gold costume looks great bounding around. They work exceptionally well together, and their professional dynamic marks a major evolution from Batman’s incontestable condescension upon her debut. (I’m plugging my ears at the faint suggestion of romance, though - #NotMyBatman, even if it’s framed as a schoolgirl crush.) All told, though, “Cold Comfort” takes a Shakespearean tragic antihero and reduces him to a sadistic bully. Mr. Freeze would return to the DC Animated Universe once more, in an episode of Batman Beyond, but here he’s effective as a visual, an idea, and a toy – but little more.
Final sidebar: three episodes in, and I’ve already lost track of how many supervillain plots orbit around destroying the city for the sake of destroying it. Joker gets a pass in “Holiday Knights” because of his quirky motive by way of a New Year’s Resolution he could never keep, but Two-Face and Mr. Freeze ought to be better than this. I’d say it almost makes one long for the petty days of “The Terrible Trio,” but let’s not say things we can’t take back.
Writer: Hilary J. Bader
Director: Dan Riba
Villain: Mr. Freeze (Michael Ansara)
Next episode: “Double Talk,” in which Arnold Wesker is no dummy.
🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇
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