Surprisingly, despite a killer gimmick with the sub-zero ice gun and everything, Mr Freeze didn't manage to stick around all that long after the Adam West series shone the spotlight on him properly. The character fell out of favour soon after, appearing in only brief appearances during the rest of the Silver Age and post-Crisis On Infinite Earths. Fries didn't get his next big shot at the big time until the producers of the mid-nineties Batman: The Animated Series saw potential in him. As that show bequeathed Harley Quinn unto the comics, so too did they give Mr Freeze the back story he has still to this day, along with the real name of Victor Fries. It was an episode in the Animated Series that introduced Victor Fries, cryogenic scientist (before he was a molecular biologist), and the accident that made him insane and dependent on being cold all the time was no longer simply a mishap of a rogue experimenter, but an attempt to freeze his dying wife until medicine could heal her.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
