Detective Comics #1013: He’s the Firestarter, Batman Firestarter

Batman and Mr. Freeze have a complicated relationship. Oftentimes, Batman will do whatever he can and use whatever resources he can to help Victor save his wife. Though, it makes sense that in recent days, especially concerning his current rivalry with Bane and the BRUTAL beating Batman gave Freeze in issue 51, that Freeze might have become more resistant to Batman’s help. Not only that, but more cold and calculated with his approach.

After Batman beats the information out of Victor’s thugs, the Dark Knight tracks down the Chilled Criminal in a new, badass suit designed by Doug Mahnke. I cannot stress enough just how cool this new costume is. It looks like a cool mix of Nightwing’s New 52 red emblemed costume with Firefly’s gun and the absurd ears that Azrael wore when he was Batman. It’s an astounding and beautiful thing given it’s own single splash page to take in the coolness.

The page makes a nice circle starting from the cold entrance being burned away so that the focus shifts upward from the flamethrower to the costume. The lighting is perfect, the flames whoosh outwards, inks give everything the perfect shadows and there are even reflections of the pyro in the glassy looking mask. I doubt this costume will appear outside of this issue, but it was a very welcome addition to the already stellar art of this book.

Batman fights off the resurrected corpses of the various men and animals that Victor had kidnapped over the few weeks as Mr. Freeze makes his escape with Nora in tow. Freeze figures that with Batman already on his tail that he’s run out of time and uses the serum to resurrect Nora once they’re safely away from Batman and as soon as he does, she screams for him to stop.