This week marks the 25th anniversary of the premiere of Batman The Animated Series, inarguably the greatest depiction of Batman ever put on film. Tim (my co-host) and I will be doing a big episode on the show for our next podcast “The World’s Best Podcast with Paul & Tim”.
Batman The Animated Series is not only one of my favorite television shows of all time, it’s a masterpiece of storytelling. At the heart of Batman’s story is tragedy and in nowhere is that more apparent than in many of his villains. Who, like Batman himself, had one tragic day change their lives forever. It’s this type of nuanced storytelling, not making the lines between good and evil so clear, that made this show so groundbreaking and emotional. There characters and stories are so well realized that you’ll often find yourself caught off guard at the depth of the show. So every day I’m going to try to put a little something together focusing on some excellent aspect of the show.

Of all of Batman’s “villains”, none has a more emotional back story than Victor Fries. Today I have a  great video from YouTube that highlights the heartbreaking origin of one of Batman’s best villains, Mr. Freeze. Everything in this clip is from the Emmy winning episode, “Heart of Ice”, one of the shows best episodes. This fantastic episode is honestly one of the best Batman stories I’ve ever seen. Now take a look at the tragic life of Dr. Victor Fries and his beloved wife Nora:

Wow… and that’s just a few pieces of the episode.  What makes this storytelling that much more impressive is that (at least on paper) this was a cartoon for kids. Yet, it almost seems like they never told the writers that. I think the writers approached the project as not just a series “for kids”, but just a great television series period.

I’ll have more articles highlighting different fantastic aspects of this series in the days to come, so keep checking back here and on Facebook. As always thank you so much for reading!

– Paul