Detective Comics #1114: A Cold Love Story

Bad Seeds is an unconventional event. The tie-in issues–even the most action packed ones–are largely character oriented affairs. Detective Comics #1114, the issue with the biggest plot advancement yet, remains true to that style. As Batman seeks to ally with Mr. Freeze to save Gotham City from the expanding green before sunrise, Taylor turns the story into a very unconventional romance between Nora and Victor Fries.

Detective Comics #1114 opens with a single page that delivers a very abbreviated history of Nora and Victor–a dancer beset by tragedy and a scientist who loved her too much to let go. Batman’s internal monologue reads more like narration here as Taylor essentially tells readers what they need to know. The writing is minimalist but effective. Estouco’s coloring helps drive home the sentiment. Almost everything is done in shades of sepia. But Estouco uses a bright, icy blue when it comes to Nora’s dress, the status pod she’s kept in, and the frozen look of both Victor and Nora at the end. It’s an effective opening, immediately capturing the sentiment behind much of what follows.

This issue’s second page picks up right where Batman #14 left off. Batman’s brief fight with Nora Fries concluded, he now has to save Mr. Freeze’s life by patching a crack on his suit and then convincing the villain to help him save the city. Taylor reinforces Detective Comics #1114’s emotional core when Batman remarks internally that saving Gotham requires him to be a marriage counselor for Nora and Victor. Ultimately the final solution to making Batman’s plan work requires Victor and Nora to cooperate with each other and in the process it reinforces their original emotional bond.

Henry’s art fleshes out Nora and Victor even further. During action sequences their expressions aren’t significantly different from Batman’s. They’re a little subdued by comparison and there isn’t nearly as much open mouth teeth clenching, but the emotional language behind them is basically the same. Nora and Victor interacting with each other is different. The detail Henry adds around their eyes, to their foreheads, and along Victor’s cheekbones conveys more complex emotion than shouting their way through an action sequence. Estouco does an excellent job using darker shades of blue along the various lines Henry uses to add even more dimension. Batman’s expressions throughout the issue are more extreme, but Nora and Victor’s feel deeper and more intense based on the art.

The final page is a very nice reflection of the first. Batman’s internal monologue, once again serving more as Taylor addressing the reader, brings the story all the way back to the dancer and the scientist who were in love. Henry’s art and Estouco’s coloring recall the sentiment of the first page but feel fully alive in the present as opposed to that tragic loss.

The larger plot in Detective Comics #1114 is somewhat simple. Batman and the Frieses have to cross Gotham to a secret lab. Along the way they have to fight a little bit of plant life before Batman has to eventually hold off a giant tree monster while Mr. Freeze enacts the plan that will send Gotham into an artificial winter. This works out well enough, but the meat of the issue is the character drama between Victor and Nora.