Captain Cold

Captain Cold
Captain Cold. Art by Brian Bolland.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Showcase #8 (June 1957)
Created by	John Broome Carmine Infantino
In-story information
Alter ego	Leonard Snart
Team affiliations	Injustice League Rogues Secret Society of Super Villains Suicide Squad
Notable aliases	The Man who Mastered Absolute Zero, Leonard Wynters
Abilities	Possesses a freeze gun that allows him to freeze objects to absolute zero Extensive knowledge of cryonics

Captain Cold, real name Leonard Snart, is a comic book villain created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino as one of the archenemies of Flash. He is a leader of the Rogues. A fan favorite, Captain Cold has served as a bitter enemy to the Silver-Age Flash Barry Allen, both enemy and grudging friend to the modern-day Flash Wally West, and one of the killers of the fourth Flash Bart Allen.

Cold was the second supervillain to face the Silver-Age Flash in Showcase #8 (February 1957).

IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains Of All Time List ranked Captain Cold as #27.

Personality

Cold takes his position as head of the Rogues very seriously. He employs a no-drugs rule (evidenced by his brutal beating of Mirror Master for his cocaine habit), docks pay for senseless violence (a 90% payout cut for the new Trickster's antics with stray dogs and T-bombs), and will kill only on certain occasions (he killed the Top for setting the newer rogues against him and his set of rogues), leading the Rogues in their 'code of honor' and refusing to kill women or children.

Captain Cold was not entirely as cold-hearted as his name suggests. He deeply cared for his sister, aka the Golden Glider, and lookes out for the well being of his fellow Rogues at all times, going so far as to arrange a secret funeral for Captain Boomerang. Even after killing the supervillain Chillblaine in revenge for his sister's murder, he was sitting at his coffee table drinking alcohol, and unable to open the door for his usual prostitute, realizing that his "heart's not always cold."

Although generally portrayed as rough around the edges at best, and known for his blunt attitude towards women, Cold has been shown to have a surprisingly moral streak at times. When circumstances have forced him to team up with the Flash, he has kept his word and avoided opportunities to stab Flash in the back even after the immediate crisis has been dealt with, admitting in private that he respects his enemy even if he operates on the other side of the law from him.

Fictional character biography

Leonard Snart was raised by an abusive father and took refuge with his grandfather, who worked in an ice truck. When his grandfather died, Len grew tired of his father's abuse and set out to start a criminal career. Snart joined up with a group of small-time thieves and in planning out a robbery, each was issued a gun and a visor to protect their eyes against the flashes of gunfire. This visor design would later be adapted by Snart into his trademark costume. In recent years he has added a radio receiver to them which picks up the police band to monitor local law enforcement. Snart and the other thugs were captured by the Flash and imprisoned. Snart decided to go solo, but knew he had to do something about the local hero, the Flash.

Snart read an article that theorized that the energy emissions of a cyclotron could interfere with the Flash's speed. He designed a weapon to harness that power and broke into a cyclotron lab, intending to use the device to charge up his experimental gun. As he was finishing his experiment, a security guard surprised Snart. Intending to use his gun only to scare the guard, he inadvertently pulled the trigger and discovered that his weapon had been altered in a way he had never imagined. The moisture in the air around the guard froze. Intrigued by this twist of fate, Snart donned a parka and the aforementioned visor and declared himself to be Captain Cold - the man who mastered absolute zero. Snart then committed a series of non-lethal crimes, on one occasion placing the city in suspended animation in an attempt to force Iris West to marry him as he had fallen in love with her when he saw her in the prison, but the Flash got through a wall of ice and was able to reverse the process. He later fell in love with a newscaster, and competed with Heat Wave (in his first appearance) over her in a crime spree, but they were both beaten by the Flash. But after Barry Allen's death, during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Captain Cold became a bounty hunter with his sister Lisa, the Golden Glider.

During the events of Underworld Unleashed, Captain Cold lost his soul to Neron but Wally West brought it back to the land of the living. He soon returned to crime, this time a member of Wally's Rogues Gallery. The Rogues had first been assembled when another Flash foe, the super-intelligent Gorilla Grodd had broken them out of jail to distract the Flash. The Golden Glider had abandoned her bounty hunter career and had started partnering with a series of thugs who she dressed in a costume, armed with a copy of Captain Cold's signature Cold Gun, and called Chillblaine. Already distraught over the death of her lover, the Top, it seemed that the supposed death of her brother pushed her over the edge. But the last Chillblaine was a little smarter and more vicious. He murdered the Golden Glider, prompting Captain Cold to hunt him down, torture him and kill him by freezing his outer layer of skin and then pushing him off a high rise building. Not long after that, Snart was framed by a new incarnation of Mister Element. He used his Element Gun to simulate Cold's gun, using ice and cold to murder several police officers before Captain Cold and the Flash discovered who was actually responsible. With the death of his sister, and having killed Chillblaine and Mr. Element in vengeance, Cold has again become an unrepentant criminal. However, during a confrontation with Brother Grimm, Cold actually worked with Wally West to defeat the powerful magic user, although this was mainly because he and Mirror Master had been betrayed by Grimm and wanted revenge.

Most recently Captain Cold was declared the leader of the Flash's Rogue's Gallery. His skill and experience have made him a strong leader to the likes of the Weather Wizard, the new Trickster, the new Mirror Master, and the new Captain Boomerang. Len seems to have taken the young Captain Boomerang under his wing, after the elder Boomerang was recently killed. Tabloids rumoured that Captain Cold's sister, the Golden Glider, was Boomerang's mother, making him Captain Cold's nephew. This turned out to be false, however, as the new Boomerang's mother has been revealed to be Meloni Thawne, who is also the mother of Bart Allen. Despite his more ruthless nature as of late, Captain Cold's heart is not completely frozen, evidenced by having sent flowers to honor Sue Dibny, murdered wife of the Elongated Man.

Traditionally, Captain Cold is driven by three things: money, women, and the desire to beat Barry Allen. Although not the lech that Captain Boomerang was, Len Snart has an eye for the ladies, particularly models. When Barry Allen died, Captain Cold drifted for a while, jumping back and forth over the lines of crime and justice. He was captured by the Manhunter and served time in the Suicide Squad, worked with his sister as a bounty hunter (Golden Snowball Recoveries), and, with his longtime friend and sometimes nemesis Heat Wave, encountered Fire and Ice of the Justice League. He has teamed up with various villains over the years other than the many Rogues. These include Catwoman and the Secret Society of Super Villains. His favorite baseball team is the Chicago Cubs. "Plays 'em regular and dumb," according to Mark Shaw, The Manhunter.

One Year Later

One Year Later, he and several other Rogues are approached by Inertia with a plan to pull off the Flash (then Bart Allen). Though Inertia was defeated, Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Heat Wave, Mirror Master and Abra Kadabra killed Bart with a combined barrage of their elemental weapons. He, Heat Wave, and Weather Wizard, seemed to express guilt, however, after learning the identity of the Flash and how young he was.

Salvation Run

Captain Cold is one of the exiled villains featured in Salvation Run along with his fellow Rogues: Heat Wave, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, and Abra Kadabra.

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge

Main article: Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge

Captain Cold and the Rogues briefly joined Libra's Secret Society of Super Villains. In Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge story, however, Cold and the rest of the Rogues reject Libra's offer, wanting to stay out of the game. Before they can retire, they hear of Inertia escaping and decide to stick around long enough to get revenge for being used. Cold and his groups are challenged by a new set of Rogues, formed by Libra to be their replacements. The new group, having kidnapped Cold's father, challenge the Rogues, and are defeated and killed. Cold goes to his father, talking to him about the abuse he suffered, and the fate of his sister. After the elder Snart insults him and his mother, calling them weak, Cold punches him, but finds himself unable to kill him, instead getting Heat Wave to do it. The Rogues have their confrontation with Inertia, despite interference by Zoom and Libra, and kill Inertia. Libra then reveals that he needs the Rogues because Barry Allen has returned from the dead, and the Flashes are potential threats to him and Darkseid. Though shocked by the news that Allen is alive, Cold still rejects his offer of membership. After regrouping, Cold and the other Rogues agree not to retire, claiming that the game is back on. In "Final Crisis" #7, someone that looks like Captain Cold appears as a Justifier and is seen fighting the Female Furies alongside the other Justifiers under Lex Luthor's control.

The Flash: Rebirth

Main article: The Flash: Rebirth

In "The Flash: Rebirth" #1, Captain Cold is seen with the other Rogues, reading about Barry Allen's return and remarking "We're gonna need more Rogues." In the final issue of the mini-series, The Rogues are still debating Allen's return with Cold saying it's time to pull out their contingency plan that Scudder came up with stating, "In case The Flash returns, break glass."

Blackest Night

Main article: Blackest Night

The Rogues realize that the bodies of various dead Rogues are missing and prepare to fight them. Captain Cold knows that his sister, the Golden Glider, is among the reanimated Black Lanterns but is still ready to lead the Rogues against the zombies. He is confronted by the Black Lantern Glider, who attempts to use his feelings of love for her against him. However, Captain Cold manages to suppress these feelings long enough for him to fight back, freezing her within a block of ice. He subsequently kills Owen Mercer by throwing him into a pit with his Black Lantern father when he learns that Owen has been feeding people to his father in the belief that consuming flesh will restore him to life, informing Owen that Rogues don't kill women and children.

The Flash (Vol. 3)

Captain Cold and The Rogues visit Sam Scudder's old hideout and unveil a giant mirror with the words In Case of Flash: Break Glass written on it, and release beings from a Mirror World upon breaking it and Cold and the Rogues battle Professor Zoom's enemies, a branch of the police themed after the Rogues..

Powers and abilities

Like the majority of The Flash's Rogues, Snart has no real super power. He instead relies on his cold guns and instincts. Over the years Snart has modified his weapons to allow a variety of effects such as:

• A cold beam that freezes anything it hits instantly.
• Creating a cold field where people and objects literally stop in their tracks. Cold uses this ability to slow down The Flash's movements.
• Bathing his opponent in a wide beam of ice designed to freeze the skin of the target so they stay conscious and do not go numb to the pain. Cold used this to kill Chill Blaine who murdered Cold's sister to make him suffer as much as possible.
• Creating a slippery field of ice which can slow down the Flash.
• Forming sharp stalagmites on the ground to impale his enemies. Used to kill Chill Blaine after freezing the outer layer of his skin so he could inflict as much pain as possible.
• An "Ice Grenade" which was stated to "turn this place into an iceberg". Used to freeze everything in a large radius, used to freeze the whole of Iron heights during the events of Blackest Night.
• Creating "Mirages" out of Extreme cold like intense heat can cause mirages.

Fellow ice-based villain Mr. Freeze has noted that Cold is the only cold-themed villain in the DC Universe to have mastered 'absolute zero' with his weapons.

Costume

Like his fellow Rogues, Captain Cold's costume was developed by Paul Gambi, personal Tailor to the Rogues, allowing Cold to withstand the rigors of his Cold abilities. For 50 years his costume has stayed virtually the same. Slight variants include:

• A white holster instead of the traditional yellow
• A visor with a single eye slit rather than the traditional individual eye slits (during his work with the Suicide Squad)
• A parka instead of the traditional spandex material
• The white "frost" on his parka painted or sewn onto it, but some variants have it as an additional piece of white cloth that loosely sits over the top of the parka
• The freeze gun is a magenta colored pistol with one main barrel and two to four tubes also emitting from it. Although it has been drawn in a multitude of ways by DC artists, this basic original design has always been kept.

Other versions

Justice League Adventures

Based in the DC animated universe, Captain Cold is part of a group of ice-themed villains called the "Cold Warriors" that tried to overthrow a small African nation. The Cold Warriors appear in Justice League Adventures #12 (December 2002).

DC: The New Frontier

Captain Cold appears in Darwyn Cooke's critically acclaimed series DC: The New Frontier. Here he robs a Las Vegas casino where some DC heroes and others are attending a boxing match between Cassius Clay and Ted "Wildcat" Grant. Captain Cold bursts in and freezes Iris Allen's hand attached to a phone, Barry Allen hears the call from his home in and turns into the Flash, and stops Captain Cold from freezing Vegas in cryogenic detonators. While trying to escape, Flash crashes the copter with the henchwoman in and takes him down, Flash rewired his gun and it frozen him inside.

DC Super Friends

Based in the DC Super Friends universe, Captain Cold is part of a group of ice-themed villains called the "Ice Pack" that encased a city in ice and snow. The Ice Pack appear in DC Super Friends #16 (August 2009).

25th Century Captain Cold

A futuristic version Commander Cold is a heroic Captain Cold as part of the 25th Century cops known as The Renegades from Professor Zoom's future.

Flashpoint

In the Flashpoint event, set in an alternate timeline, Captain Cold is a hero going by the name Citizen Cold. He retains his current wardrobe and weaponry. He is Central City's main hero, with a museum similar to the Flash Museum. It is hinted that his heroics are a cover to hide a terrible secret. His Rogues Gallery is similar to that of the Flash. He has killed some criminals. He was contacted by Cyborg to join in the fight against Aquaman and Wonder Woman. When Batman refuses to join, Citizen Cold declines as well. After Citizen Cold defeats Mister Freeze, he returns home and sees a news report that his sister, Lisa, has been arrested for killing their brutal father. When Wally West discovers Citizen Cold's true identity, that of a former low-level criminal, Citizen Cold confronts him before he can reveal this information, and freezes Wally in a block of ice. Later, Citizen Cold invites Iris West to dinner, but it is interrupted by calls that his sister Lisa has been kidnapped by the Rogues. Citizen Cold tries to rescue Lisa, but the Rogues attack him for revenge on what he did to them. Citizen Cold is too late and Lisa is killed. Citizen Cold is injured while escaping and collapses outside his car near Iris. Iris then brings him to her home. After he recovers, he gives her a key to his penthouse, and an offer to join him when he leaves Central City. He then goes after the Rogues, killing them all for what they did to his sister. When he returns home, he is confronted by Iris and the Pied Piper, who had revealed to her his murder of Wally. Citizen Cold attempts to kill Pied Piper, but Iris uses one of his own weapons to freeze him in a block of ice, just as he did to Wally.

In other media

Television

• On the ABC animated series Challenge of the Super Friends, Captain Cold is one of two Flash villains (along with Grodd) that appear as members of Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom. Dick Ryal and Michael Bell provide the voice of Captain Cold in different episodes. This version of Captain Cold was depicted as having pale blue skin. In the second episode he has somehow made contact with a Venusian race the Fearians. In one episode when he grows to 100 feet tall his freeze ray is able to freeze all the Superfriends, even Superman.

Captain Cold on The Flash TV series

• Captain Cold has also appeared in live action form, in the CBS television series, The Flash. He was played by actor Michael Champion. Here Captain Cold (costumed in a trenchcoat) was an infamous albino hitman (much like his post-Crisis incarnation where he is a bounty hunter) who used a nuclear-powered freeze weapon to kill his victims. He was hired by Central City Crime Boss Jimmy Swain (Jeffrey Combs) to kill local mob bosses and then the Flash. Initially successful in freezing his adversary, he later was confronted by the Flash once more when he recovered from the attack. When Captain Cold was arrested, he managed to escape with a special freezing tool in his glasses to break his cell lock and special freezing grenades to disorient the police as he escaped. In their final showdown, the Flash used a specialized heating belt to regulate his body's temperature and a mirror to reflect the freeze blast back at Cold, freezing the villain.

Captain Cold as he appears in Justice League

• Captain Cold appeared on an episode of Justice League Unlimited called "Flash and Substance" in February 2006, voiced by Lex Lang, where he teamed up with Captain Boomerang, the Trickster, and Mirror Master to defeat the Flash in the Flash Museum. Captain Cold's personality in the animated show emphasizes his blue-collar, middle-age approach to being a costumed villain: he moans about his wife nagging him for the mortgage payment (in the comics, he has never been married), and he drinks milk to ease the pain of an ulcer. He was defeated when Orion froze him with a water hose as he fired his ice gun.

• Captain Cold is featured in Batman: The Brave and the Bold voiced by Steven Blum. He and Mirror Master are mentioned in "The Golden Age of Justice!" having fought Batman. In "Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster!", he assists Heat Wave and Weather Wizard in a crime spree.

• Captain Cold appears as a villain in Young Justice. He features in "Independence Day" robbing a jewellery store before getting taken down by Flash and Kid Flash. In "Terrors", Captain Cold (with his growl by an uncredited Crispin Freeman) is seen as an inmate at Belle Reve and assisted Mr. Freeze, Killer Frost, and the Icicles in a plot to break out of Belle Reve.

• Captain Cold makes a cameo appearance in "Prophecy", the second to last episode of the series Smallville. He is shown as one of the members of Marionette Ventures, a cadre of supervillains organized by Toyman. He is portrayed by an uncredited actor and has no onscreen dialogue.

Film

• Captain Cold appears in the direct-to-video movie Justice League: The New Frontier voiced by James Arnold Taylor. He attempts to rob a casino in Vegas before The Flash stops him. This version is depicted as bald and wearing an all white cloak similar to the comic version (in which his appearance was based on Grant Morrison^{[citation needed]}).

• Captain Cold also appears in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, voiced by Michael Gough, but was uncredited. In the movie, Captain Cold along with Killer Frost, Icicle, and Mr. Freeze are part of the villains who seek to go after the bounty for Superman. They attack and defeat Batman, but before they can finish him, Superman defeats them with his heat vision.

Video Games

• Captain Cold appears as in Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame voiced by Steven Blum.

• Captain Cold appears in DC Universe Online voiced by Ryan Wickerham In the hero campaign, Captain Cold (alongside Heat Wave, Mirror Master, and Weather Wizard) is a boss in the Stryker's Island alert. In the villain campaign, Captain Cold is located in the power core area of the Hall of Doom offering missions to higher level villains. In the tie-in comic book "DC Universe Online Legends", which begins in a possible future, Captain Cold dies attempting to defend the Kryptonite-poisoned Superman from Lex Luthor.

Miscellaneous

• Captain Cold had made two appearances in the animated-continuity comic Justice League Adventures.

See also

• List of Flash enemies

External links

• Alan Kistler's Profile On: THE FLASH - A detailed analysis of the history of the Flash by comic book historian Alan Kistler. Covers information all the way from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen to today, as well as discussions on the various villains and Rogues who fought the Flash. Various art scans.
• Hyperborea entry for Captain Cold
• Crimson Lightning - An online index to the comic book adventures of the Flash.