This 1959 Comic Is the First Appearance of Batman’s Most Tragic Villain — But You Might Have a Hard Time Recognizing Him

The Silver Age is notorious among Batman fans as something of a creative nadir for the hero. Faced with newly-restrictive comics censorship, DC’s writers and artists were at a loss for what to do with their hard-boiled Dark Knight, who had spent his 1940s “Golden Age” battling madman, murderers, and gangsters. It was this era that spawned many of Batman’s most enduring foes: Catwoman, the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, Two-Face … all products of the character’s earliest years. And all virtually disappeared for most of the fifties and early sixties, replaced with science-fiction tinted foes like Doctor Double X or the Planet-Master. On the surface, Batman #121’s “Mister Zero,” a mad scientist with a freeze-ray, looked like another one of these forgettable, one-off foes. But for some reason, this 1959 issue stood out from the pile of Batman back issues presented to the writing team of 1966’s Batman television series, and they would decide to give “The Ice Crimes of Mister Zero” a direct adaptation. Only one thing needed a change: the name. “Mister Zero” would become “Mister Freeze,” and began his decades-long transformation into one of Batman’s most enduring foes. 

Despite being barely-recognizable in his 1959 debut, Batman #121 is still a collector favorite, commanding a four-figure price-tag even in low-grade condition. It’s precisely because many of Batman’s foes debuted so early on that Mister Freeze’s first appearance is so highly prized: this issue is the oldest major Batman key that many fans can ever hope to find, let alone afford. Comics grading authority the CGC (Certified Guarantee Company) records just shy of 1,200 copies of Batman #123 in their “population record.” A pretty small – especially as compared to other major keys of the same era – but orders of magnitude higher than the 100-200 copies on record of keys like the Joker and Catwoman’s debut Batman #1 or the Penguin’s in Detective Comics #58. High-grade copies of Batman #121 are still incredibly rare, and can sell for prices upwards of $10k, as with this graded 8.0 on eBay now, listed at a price of more than $15k.

How Adaptations Saved (And Nearly Ruined) Mister Freeze

Fans today don’t realize just how much the 1966 series did to help salvage the character of Batman, whose comics were by the mid-sixties in serious danger of cancellation. Those aforementioned years of unfocused, bizarre, downright silly storylines had led to a serious decline in readership, and for good reason: they had gotten the hero too far away from his element, and didn’t showcase what makes Batman compelling. When ABC handed prospective showrunner William Dozier recent issues of Batman and Detective Comics to get him interested in the series, he became convinced by reading them that it would be impossible to make a serious Batman adaptation. Instead, the series adopted its iconic, divisive tongue-in-cheek tone, which propelled it into a ratings hit and a certified pop cultural phenomenon. 

Mister Freeze appeared six times in Batman across three two-part stories in the series’ first two seasons. In season one’s “Instant Freeze” and “Rats Like Cheese,” Mister Freeze is portrayed by legendary old Hollywood star George Sanders (best-known today as Shere Khan in Disney’s 1967 The Jungle Book). The plot was taken from Mister Freeze / Mister Zero’s first (and only, to that point) appearance in Batman #121, recently reprinted in Batman #176. Arguably, if DC hadn’t decided to include “The Ice Crimes of Mister Zero” in that reprint issue, Batman’s writers would never have come across the villain, and he might have continued to languish in obscurity. 

Despite what his later origins would tell you, Mister Freeze has had his share of good luck. And yes, those origins did come later: this Mister Freeze isn’t looking for a cure to his beloved wife’s rare illness. He’s an unnamed scientist experimenting with a concentrated freezing solution that, when he accidentally comes into contact with it, lowers his body temperature so that he cannot survive above freezing temperatures. Again departing from his better-known characterization, the original Mister Freeze isn’t bothered by this: he uses the freeze-solution to power his signature freeze-gun weapon and takes to committing cold-themed crimes. That motif would endure in his subsequent appearances in Batman, where Sanders was replaced by director / actor Otto Preminger for two-parter “Green Ice / Deep Freeze” and by Eli Wallach for the character’s final appearance in “Ice Spy / The Duo Defy.” Around the same time, DC would reintroduce Mister Freeze’s comics counterpart, changing his name from Mister Zero so that he would be recognizable to fans of the series. That second appearance, in Detective Comics #373, would be Mister Freeze’s only appearance for almost a decade. He made sporadic appearances in the late seventies and early eighties, beginning with a four-issue story arc running in Batman #291-294.

It would take another adaptation for the character to truly earn his place as one of Batman’s top villains, when Paul Dini and Bruce Timm redefined Mister Freeze for his appearances on Batman: The Animated Series. Finding the comics character to be “nondescript,” the duo decided to revamp his origins, giving him his now-iconic tragic backstory. Inspired by 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dini and Timm’s Mister Freeze was brilliant scientist Victor Fries, driven to crime and madness by his efforts to find a cure for his cryogenically-frozen, terminally-ill wife. This was then adapted for Mister Freeze’s return to live-action, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1997’s Batman and Robin. Widely regarded as one of the worst super-hero movies ever made, Batman and Robin also did significant damage to Mister Freeze’s newly-built reputation, with Schwarzenegger’s over-the-top performance and obnoxious ice puns making the camp of the sixties series look downright restrained.

Why Fans Still Love Mister Freeze – Even After Batman and Robin

The short answer is that Batman: The Animated Series’ Mister Freeze, especially in his debut two-parter “Heart of Ice” is that good. With his revised origin, Mister Freeze challenges Batman in a way that few of his other foes do: Batman’s sense of “justice” relies on knowing he’s doing the right thing by fighting crime. Foiling a robbery committed by the Penguin or the Riddler is unequivocally good. But with Mister Freeze, Batman has to think about the cryogenically frozen Norah Fries – especially as Bruce Wayne was funding Victor Fries’ cryogenics experiments. After Dini’s 1997 Batman: Mister Freeze one-shot cemented the animated backstory as comics canon, it gave other writers license to take that complexity and melancholy in new directions. In the thirty years since, Mister Freeze has become a constant foe for Batman, as well as other heroes like Robin, Batgirl, and on occasion, even Firestorm and the Teen Titans. 

While those numerous comic appearances have helped to increase Mister Freeze’s profile, many fans will still point to Batman: The Animated Series as the definitive take on the character. Batman #121 therefore becomes one of those first appearance key issues prized not for the character as they appear, but as they would become. It represents the beginning of a more than thirty year journey, and the end result of that journey – an iconic, fully-realized villain – means enough to Batman fans to make it one of the most valuable Batman issues of the past seventy years, and one of the biggest keys of DC’s Silver Age.

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