Holy Slender Man, Batman! Scott Snyder just revealed the first official look at Absolute Batman’s take on Mr. Freeze, and it’s terrifying. The new version of Freeze, debuting in Absolute Batman #8, is a radical departure from his classic appearance, swapping out the bald-headed, goggled guise of a scientist in a cryo-suit into a towering, eldritch-style figure.
The first look, which Snyder shared on BlueSky, shows Freeze looming in wintry darkness, sporting elongated limbs, glowing red eyes, and fanged teeth. Vials lining his back hint at a mysterious new power source, a la Bane before him.
When quizzed about the design’s inspiration by a fellow BlueSky user, Snyder responded with a single word: “Frostbite.” While likely referring to the real-world condition, which aligns with Freeze’s necrotic, blackened look, Snyder could also be alluding to the 2016 DC Vertigo series Frostbite by Joshua Williamson and Jason Shawn Alexander. That series explored a world ravaged by a new ice age and a disease that froze people from the inside out—a potentially eerie condition inflicting a new, mutated Freeze.
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The—chilling— reinvention will be a welcome new addition to DC’s Absolute Universe. DC has used this initiative to make way for more extreme, modern iterations of its mythos. Freeze’s debut comes after months of Snyder teasing fans, leading to continued speculation about what villains yet to be glimpsed through an Absolute lens might be next.
If the images Snyder dropped are any indication, Absolute Batman #8 will waste no time pitting this monstrous Freeze against the Caped Crusader. With Absolute Batman introducing a new supervillain, the stakes have never been higher for this even-more-street-level version of The Dark Knight.
