Along with the tragic backstory and equally tragic punning name (Fries is meant to be pronounced like Freeze which makes you wonder why he went from Dr Fries to Mr Freeze really), the comics also went ahead and pinched the character's iconic get-up from the Animated Series as well. Which is a nice bit of synchronicity, really. The character design Mr Freeze boasts in the cartoon is everything that Arnold Schwarzenegger's isn't in Batman & Robin sleek, elegant, dark, and simple. All of which are very much watchwords of Mike Mignola's art style, the creator of Hellboy being responsible for Freeze's Animated Series outft. Having never quite made enough off the back of his devilish comic book character to begin with, Mignola did some character design work in the nineties for the like of Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire and was conscripted by DC Animated Universe head honcho Bruce Timm himself to redesign Mr Freeze.
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/
