Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #514: Nora Fries

Last entry, I highlighted a new-ish villain from a somewhat recent Detective Comics run, and the run after that did something with a character that has been on the periphery of Batman’s world for a while now, but who got her start as a silent character on Batman: The Animated Series.

Yes, I am referring to Mr. Freeze’s wife Nora.

First appearing in the episode “Heart of Ice”–probably the highlight of an already legendary Batman cartoon series–Nora was basically the reason Mr. Freeze did anything.  Mr. Freeze, originally Mr. Zero, was basically just a guy with a cold gun for the longest time, a C-list or B-list Batman foe that was basically Batman’s version of Captain Cold.  Or Captain Cold was the Flash’s version of Mr. Freeze.  It doesn’t much matter.  Mr. Freeze was just a gimmick bad guy, but there were a lot of them running around for the longest time when bad guys just did things because they were bad.  But the thing that made BTAS the great show that it was, in part, was the way it dug deep into the psychology of most of the villains, and man, did they get Mr. Freeze right.

Essentially, Mr. Freeze was once Dr. Victor Fries, and while trying to treat his wife with a rare illness, he put her into something like cryogenic freeze, but then his greedy boss got involved, and the resulting accident turned Dr. Fries into the cold-dependent Mr. Freeze.

Nora, she stayed in her tube, and even as Freeze had more episodes and a direct-to-video movie that cured Nora, she never actually got to speak.  Victor went bad to save her, and that’s what matters most here.

However, the Nora story was good enough to be included in other ways, most notably as part of the backstory for Freeze in the horrible Batman and Robin, and she actually got some personality and dialogue on the campy TV series Gotham.  But this is for comics, so did she get there?

You bet she did!  In the special issue Batman: Mr. Freeze in May of 1997, she appeared on the printed page from series creators Paul Dini (writer) and Bruce Timm (artist), re-creating the origin from BTAS.  But that’s not all!  See, there’s been some shenanigans with Nora Fries.  A Batgirl storyline in 2006 had Nora revived in a Lazarus Pit, but she became the fire-blasting villain Lazara until Freeze froze her again.  The New 52 version altered Mr. Freeze’s origin where she went from his beloved wife to a woman he was stalking which, yeah, boo!  Her classic origin was revised in Detective Comics in 2019 where Lex Luthor, empowered by cosmic entities as “Apex Lex,” gave Victor a cure for Nora, but it was based on his Bizarro serums, so Nora came back a little…off.  She had the same cold-condition as Victor, and when he led her on some robberies to set them up for a trip to Alaska, she soon dubbed “Mrs. Freeze.”  However, this Nora was far too bloodthirsty and mean for Victor, and he ended up helping Batman try to bring her in.  However, Nora felt that Victor was too controlling–hard to argue with that, actually–and she injected him with something that required putting Victor into cold storage while she ran around loose until she was herself murdered while working with the Penguin.

So, that’s Nora, a woman of many incarnations.  But my favorite?  The one from the adult animated Harley Quinn series voiced by Rachel Dratch.  This Nora was cured by Victor with a blood transfusion, but he died in the process.  As a result of missing years from the cryo-tube Victor kept her in, this Nora decided to make up for lost time by becoming something of a middle-aged partygirl, one who spends time dating the likes of Maxie Zeus, Captain Cold, and even Swamp Thing.

Man, Maxie Zeus?  What a loser!  Also, a good entry for this series now that I think about it.