Random Happenstance

I was going to swear this happens more often in DC comics: where the exact same accident happens to give someone else the exact same powers. Oh, like there haven't been forty people bitten by radioactive spiders at Marvel. Anyway, today we've got Killer Frost's first appearance, from 1978, Firestorm #3, "Kiss Not the Lips of Killer Frost!" Written by Gerry Conway, pencils by Al Milgrom, inks by Bob Mcleod.

This was Firestorm's first series, which was cut short by the DC Implosion at Firestorm #5, although he would go on as a back-up feature in Flash before eventually getting another shot in 1982 with Fury of Firestorm. Despite the shortness of this run, along with an origin issue and a terrible (and very Spider-Man influenced) supporting cast, three of his main villains were introduced before the end: Multiplex, Hyena, and probably the best known, Killer Frost. Here, Dr. Crystal Frost was a nuclear engineer, but also a woman in a very male-dominated field. Finding other men "boring, patronizing, and aggressive," she had developed a crush on Dr. Stein when she was his student. Stein didn't reciprocate, though: he had thought Frost had been almost psychotically withdrawn, and had tried to draw her out, but she may have taken it the wrong way. So that's where her head's at when a freak refrigeration accident freezes every molecule in her body! That may be a bit of poetic license there, but okay.

Since this was their third issue, we're still getting to know Professor Stein and Ronnie Raymond: since Stein had been unconscious during the accident that created Firestorm, he would only remember being Firestorm when he was. Every time he and Ronnie separated, Stein thought he had just had a blackout, and after like the fourth one he was starting to worry. Ronnie seems to feel a little bad about that, but not so bad that he won't dump Stein on the wrong end of town, just so Firestorm can hassle Ronnie's bully Cliff Carmichael. (It was supposed to be a reversal of traditional roles: Ronnie was a jock, getting put down by the brainier Carmichael. I was pretty sure he became a super-villain, and sure enough. He was even killed in Suicide Squad, like 93% of Firestorm's villains!)

With two characters making up Firestorm, that freed up the writer to put either one in danger, then they had to pull the other one out of whatever they were doing to help. Yay, drama! They usually weren't sitting around reading or in the bathroom or something. Freezing under Killer Frost's kiss, Stein initiates the change, causing Ronnie to have to ditch in the middle of a basketball game. Since Ronnie was in the driver's seat with Firestorm, he didn't initially struggle, until he realized Frost was freezing him! (His flaming hair appears to go flat when he's an ice cube!) It's a five-page fight, which, like a lot of Firestorm's fights, is probably five pages longer than it should've gone, but he was still figuring out his powers and what worked and what didn't. They also work out Frost's powers are slightly different than the usual ice-powered characters: she didn't make things cold directly, she sucked heat out of things. Putting her in a freezer leaves her powerless, which is sad, except she did kill like half a dozen people already.


Looking it up: it was the second Killer Frost in Crisis on Infinite Earths; I remember her having a scene or two in there.