Killer Frost

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Killer Frost leeches heat to sustain herself. She’s a bottomless heat black body . There’s no known limit to this ability. She once stood near the sun’s photosphere in a temperature of about 6,000 kelvin without any problem.

Early on she was uncontrollably absorbing everything she could, covering the area in ice and snow and wrecking local weather patterns. But she soon learned to absorb little enough heat to operate near other persons. Even at her most restrained, however, her touch is deadly.

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Dr. Lincoln can render herself invulnerable to attacks such as massed small arms fire, apparently by creating a sort of super-dense layer of rime on top of her altered epidermis.

She also can reflexively absorb the heat of anything touching her (in DC Heroes terms, Frostbite). When that is on metallic objects hitting her are likely to shatter before they can inflict damage. She also robust against attacks such as lightning (in DC Heroes terms BODY, Hero Points ), perhaps slightly superhumanly so.

Killer Frost has the usual power suite for ice-theme characters – including :

• Ice slides.
• Ice/cold beams.
• Icing up surfaces to make them slippery.
• Encasing people in masses of ice.
• Hurling sharp ice missiles with abnormal power that may involve telekinesis.
• Erecting ice domes to protect herself and nearby persons.
• Firing frost beams to block most forms of energy beams aimed at her, etc..

She can freeze solid thousands of tons of water in less than a minute.

By the mid-2000s, her control over cold air had refined. She could :

• Blanket the battlefield with strong winds (for instance to make archery useless).
• Launch herself in the air, slow her fall or even hover a bit. Some writers seem to assume that she has full-blown flight, but that is not well-established.

Though Killer Frost’s cold laughs at your puny physics (like with most comic book cold-using characters), she still needs to have heat to absorb. Being exposed to a very cold environment will not harm or paralyse her, but it will deny her the energy to power her cold abilities (Power Loss).

As a guess, a temperature of about minus 20 or 30 Celsius might be sufficient to trigger the Power Loss. There are no examples of partial depowering from less frigid temperatures. Conversely, the presence of massive levels of heat can give her up to 4 APs of Power Reserve, though that usually take such exceptional elements as an active volcano or the containment unit of the Eradicator.

A handful of incidents depict Killer Frost as being vulnerable to fire, but those are in error (whoever said “Winick ?” won a lollipop).

History

Killer Frost did not appear during the first half of the 1990s. She was presumably cured of her condition during that time. When she does return, she is seen imprisoned in Belle Reve in her mutated state, with the Killer Frost dress and jewellery.

It is possible that Dr. Lincoln reverted to being Killer Frost during the early 1990s, and was then arrested. The panel where Killer Frost can be seen has the… smell of a continuity mistake, however, and might be best ignored. For instance she is kept imprisoned with the help of hot lamps shining on her, which is the exact opposite of how her powers actually worked.

No rime no reason

In 1995, Dr. Lincoln was among the dozens who were contacted by the demon lord Neron. He offered them all a Faustian deal. Lincoln was transported to Hell by a magical candle Neron had sent her, and chose to take the deal. At the cost of her soul, she received increased power.

(Whether Lincoln had powers at that point is unclear . So the deal may actually have been to re-empower her from scratch and to a greater degree than before. As noted in the Description section, we’ve assumed that Lincoln also wished herself to be a bit taller, to reconcile her listed height with the way she’s actually drawn.)

Dr. Lincoln was physically mutated by infernal magic. Though she was arguably more powerful it felt more like a curse. Killer Frost felt extremely cold, and desperately needed to absorb more and better heat. She commandeered a plane flying toward Hawaii, hoping that the warm climate would help. She crashed it on arrival so she could feed off the fire.

Apparently her goal was Kīlauea caldera . She likely wanted to live in a volcano under the tropical sun.

As Killer Frost strolled aimlessly through Honolulu she wrecked the local climate. She caused subzero temperatures, snowfalls, and created a layer of ice wherever she walked. Numerous persons suffered from frostbites and hypothermia.

Superboy and his ally Knockout stopped Killer Frost. Knockout seemingly destroyed Dr. Lincoln by throwing a tanker full of liquid oxygen into the fire she was standing on.

She’s as cold as ice

Killer Frost eventually brought her thirst for heat under control — perhaps she did reach the Kīlauea after all — and to keep a rein on her heat absorption. She was soon contacted by Brainwave (Henry King, Jr.) who was recruiting members of his “Legion of Doom”.

Brainwave was obviously insane, and the Legion was defeated by Extreme Justice. Nevertheless, this contract is apparently what launched Dr. Lincoln’s mercenary career by providing her with connections. Even if indirectly, as she acquired most of her contacts in prison.

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Her prison stay ended after she signed up to join a version of Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad, as she had done in the late 1980s. This time Waller put her on a team with Bolt, Copperhead and Sledge, under the command of DEO Special Agent Cameron Chase.

The team was sent deep in the Andes to investigate a former base of the Construct. However, the villains had prepared a plot to get rid of Chase and disappear in Peru. Things went wrong and Killer Frost and the others ended in a pitched battle against Shining Path guerilleros . Nevertheless, they contacted Russian mobsters known to Bolt, who disarmed their Suicide Squad explosive collars.

Killer Frost was reportedly recaptured when the JLA set up a trap for numerous super-villains (with the Martian Manhunter disguising himself as the original Brainwave). However this was but a rumour, and may have been exaggerated. In any case she escaped during a prison transfer, when the special refrigerated truck carrying her crashed off a cliff.

This episode led her to encounter Effigy (Martin Van Wyck), a young man with fire powers. They started a fling, but Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) attempted to arrest them. Their budding romance was doomed anyway, with Effigy being an immature jerk and Lincoln an arrogant know-it-all.

Green Lantern neutralised Killer Frost by dropping a mountain of ice she had created earlier on her. This denied her access to heat – and Effigy promptly dumped her and fled.

In the cold cold night

Killer Frost was later a member of Circe’s all-women villainous army that briefly took over New York City. She rampaged through Hell’s Kitchen. Lincoln (wearing a variant over the original Killer Frost dress and jewellery) took out Inferno and Nightshade, but was apparently taken down by Vixen.

She spent perhaps a week in prison before the Joker organised a massive breakout. The plot relied on dosing most prisoners with a mind-altering venom. Barely holding herself together, Killer Frost rampaged along with several other Joker-ised super-villainesses before she was stopped by Power Girl, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) and Spoiler.

Killer Frost, still Joker-ised, joined with similarly altered allies — Icicle and a small army of heavily-armed thugs — to storm Steelworks. They took advantage of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit and their allies still being busy with other Joker-ised villains.

The mob overwhelmed the Steelworks’s defences through sheer number and crazed determination. They reached the device that interested Dr. Lincoln – a prison that held Kryptonian war machine, the Eradicator. She dosed it with Joker venom. Her hope was to gain a mighty ally who could also provide her with colossal amounts of heat.

However, the Eradicator wasn’t really affected by the Joker’s chemicals. It rebelled, knocking out Killer Frost and Icicle. They were presumably arrested by the MPD.

Imprisoned, Killer Frost again took the Suicide Squad deal. The US military sent her, her old Squad colleague Bolt and several newcomers (Larvanaut, Putty and Eliza) to take out a nest of mutated super-army-ants. Dr. Lincoln was apparently the only survivor of this mission.

Killer Frost remained a frequent member of the Suicide Squad over the years. Missions involved :

• Investigating and mostly destroying an island that had appeared in the middle of the Pacific.
• An attack on Lois Lane that tricked Superman as to who was really leading the Suicide Squad.
• A murder attempt against Amanda Waller while she was in prison after the fall of the Luthor presidency.

Frost also occasionally worked as an assassin, using connections provided by Deadshot – with whom she developed a friendship of sorts.

Coming in from the cold

In early 2003, Killer Frost tried a new direction and started associating with the NYFD. She helped firemen put out blazes by sucking the flames into her body, providing her with heat without being harassed.

Though the firefighters were in favour of Dr. Lincoln’s presence among them, a misunderstanding resulted in conflict with Jade and Troia. Killer Frost was incapacitated. She was carried away by DEO agents and returned to her Suicide Squad “career”.

Dr. Lincoln was among the many Earth-616 and New Earth criminals conjured to defend Krona’s stronghold against the Avengers and the Justice League. During this episode she was reunited with a woman who seemed to be Crystal Frost, perhaps pulled from the past. Given the sheer chronal upheaval involved, it is unclear whether Killer Frost remembers this episode.

Cold grip of death

In 2004, Dr. Lincoln developed a condition similar to the one that had killed Dr. Frost. In her case the sickness was much slower, since she’d not been denied heat for extended periods. Ice crystals were forming in her joints, she couldn’t sleep, she had recurrent migraines and found it difficult to breathe.

One doctor she took hostage came up with a plan. Have the new Firestorm (Jason Rusch), who could manipulate organic matter, transmute her dying cells into healthy ones.

Disguised as one “Laura”, Dr. Lincoln played the role of a suicidal woman so Firestorm would come to the rescue. She then convinced him to help. While Rusch was very reluctant to help as he didn’t trust his powers, she told him that she was going to die soon anyway.

Firestorm agreed to help, observing healthy cells of a nearby woman and transmuting “Laura”’s sick cells to be like those. Killer Frost shed her disguise, feeling healthy and more powerful than ever. Overwhelmed, Jason ended up undoing the changes he had done to Killer Frost’s body, leaving her monstrously deformed by her cancer.

Killer Frost shadowed Firestorm despite her condition. She clubbed Jason Rusch and Lorraine Reilly nearly to death when they reverted to their human form. However arriving police forced her to flee.

Frost monitored her victims’s hospital rooms. Thus, she overheard Rusch mentioning that the original Firestorm had been Ronnie Raymond. She sold this critical piece of data to Cliff Carmichael, a longtime Firestorm foe.

By that point Dr. Lincoln was visibly less deformed, and soon recovered her usual appearances. Her health issues were apparently cured, though she never again demonstrated the enhanced might she enjoyed right after Firestorm cured her. Our hypothesis is that she absorbed enough “quality” heat while fighting Firestorm and Firehawk to sustainably beat her medical problems.

Stone cold crazy

When the Society was assembled to coordinate super-villains, Killer Frost happily joined. She worked from time to time with other Society enforcers, and further developed her network of criminal contacts.

As a Society enforcer, she was employed — along with Mirror Master — to attack Green Arrow and Black Lightning to keep them busy while Doctor Light (Arthur Light) worked. She later was sent to trigger one of the massive prison breakouts the Society orchestrated just before the Infinite Crisis.

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As a Society member, Killer Frost met with Mister Freeze, a genius whose gift for invention outshone even hers. Lincoln could easily manipulate the lonely Freeze, being a woman whose presence allowed Freeze to live free of his protective equipment. She thus had him build her a special gadget.

Walking on the Sun

Killer Frost had always wanted to leave Earth and live on the Sun. But even her Society contacts couldn’t get her a spaceship. Freeze built a solution for her – a sort of rocket pack that could draw Firestorm’s energy and force him to fly to the Sun.

Frost and Freeze ambushed Firestorm, and fitted him with Freeze’s jetpack. She launched the young hero sunward, while clinging to him and wearing a vacuum suit. Somewhat overwhelmed, Firestorm gave her a lift all the way to the inner solar corona.

Incredibly, Killer Frost easily exist in such an environment. Worse, she started draining enough fusion energy to create a small — but slowly expanding — black spot on the very Sun.

Fearing that Dr. Lincoln might eventually destabilise mankind’s favourite G-Type, Firestorm (at that point Jason Rusch and Lorraine Reilly) manipulated the energy drain. They trapped Dr. Lincoln in a block of ice at absolute zero. Ecstatic from the heat, Killer Frost didn’t notice what was going on until it was far too late.

When they got her back to Earth, Louise Lincoln verbally lashed out and rejected Freeze out of sheer bitterness and anger at having been taken away from the Sun.

This is the ice age

Killer Frost was briefly drawn to Ivy Town by paranormal forces. These had her fight chaos and magic as a warrior of reason and order – further hinting that her powers are scientific in nature.

Since other cold-wielding superhumans were seen on her side, it is possible she was also chosen because her ability to diminish molecular entropy was seen as symbolically valuable. Whether Dr. Lincoln remembers this overnight war is unrevealed.

During the late 2000s, Killer Frost was approached by, and agreed to join, two major villainous organisations – the Injustice League set up by the “anti-trinity” (Lex Luthor, Cheetah and the Joker), and the new Society assembled by the prophet Libra, based on theology inspired by Darkseid.

When the Injustice League was defeated by the JLA, its membership was deported en masse by the government to an alien planet. The villains eventually returned to Earth after much hardship.

Description

This entry assumes a height/weight closer to the way she’s actually portrayed rather than the official values. Our hypothesis is that the Neron enhancements also made her taller.

Frost’s hands look like talons – her fingers are a bit longer than average, and there’s a blade of ice prolonging her nails.

Killer Frost can still deform her voice (presumably by super-cooling the air in front of her mouth), but doesn’t always do it.

She prefers revealing clothing, occasionally operating in but a pair of shoes and a bikini. This is presumably so she can absorb and savour more heat through her exposed skin.

Originally, Killer Frost’s hair was a mass of stalactites, her eyes were always glowing a solid red or orange, and she looked like an ice statue.

As she gained control over how much heat she absorbed she became able to have a more human appearance. She has a blue-white skin, blue hair and somewhat strange blue eyes, but in this state she’s obviously an altered human woman rather than some sort of woman-shaped ice creature. Killer Frost tends to alternate between her more human and her more elemental appearances.

Personality

Dr. Lincoln is back to what is thought to be an altered version of her memories. This is the version where Dr. Crystal Frost was her best friend and was murdered by Firestorm, prompting Dr. Lincoln to become the new Killer Frost so Dr. Frost could “live again”.

As discussed in the previous profile this is not thought to be the result of psychological derangement. Rather, it seems caused by infection by an artificial virus. If that is the case, it seems likely that Neron reempowered her by using infernal magic to rebuild the virus and improve on it.

These delusions do not play an important role in her day-to-day behaviour. But sometimes she fondly reminisces about Dr. Frost completely out of the blue, about a random subject. Whether these memories are based on real events is unrevealed.

Dr. Lincoln now displays a character trait that probably actually belonged to Dr. Frost. She’s convinced that she’s superiorly intelligent, and smarter and more experienced than most people she meets. This know-it-all arrogance cripples her socially, especially since she’s also curt and aggressive. She actually *is* intelligent, though, particularly in physics and related matters.

No empathy

The name “Killer Frost” suits her personality just fine. She doesn’t care in the least about who dies around her. She will sacrifice even her allies without a second thought even if it’s just to set a diversion up.

Lincoln is usually completely unmoved by what happens to other persons. She has all the empathy of a glacier. She considers that killing a few random bystanders in front of the heroes in the vague chance it might unnerve them is a good idea.

Heat

Killer Frost seems chiefly driven by her appetites (and her mercenary work is presumably to pay for those). The main one is to feed off heat – obviously a very pleasurable sensation to her, to the point of being addictive.

There apparently exists different qualities of heat, not just intensities. For instance, the heat given off by living being seems much more pleasurable. Dr. Lincoln vaguely wishes to find a person she can touch without killing and can give her as much heat as she wants, though so far it hasn’t worked out. Firestorm would be an ideal source of high-quality heat.

As a result of these appetites, Killer Frost can usually be distracted and delayed by “tasty”, exotic sources of heat. In DC Heroes terms she might waste a Dice Action to use as much Energy Absorption as she can to drain a source of heat she likes.

She occasionally flirts with men, but this is mostly a way to make fun of them. Most people know that her embrace would be fatal. Still sometimes she is serious, missing physical contact and vaguely hoping that some guy is going to fall for it.

She seems torn on the subject of men. She incoherently alternated between resenting them just for existing, wanting to flirt, trying to manipulate those who could credibly experience physical intimacy with her, verbally or physically lashing out at them, etc.. One of her remarks to Firehawk indicates that she’s no longer as interested in draining the heat from women, though.

Quotes

“So, who are you and why shouldn’t I turn this place into a glacier ?”

“Whatever.”

“That’s the funny part. I don’t [demand] anything. Just wanted to see if I could make you cave.” (kills off her hostages)

Knockout: “Couldn’t they have soundproofed the [torture room] ? Those poor bastards. I can’t stand to listen.”
Killer Frost: “Really ? I find [the screams] soothing. I was thinking of requesting a mix tape.”

“Hello, boys. Cold front came in pretty quick.”

(Launching a prison breakout) “Really, warden, why be so stubborn ? I should think you’d be glad to empty your prison of its thieves, murderers and child actors.”

“I’m here to kill you. Is now a bad time ?”

(Hammering on Superman along with other Injustice League members) “This is my favourite part. Where we pile on.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: DC Universe.

Writeup completed on the 11^th of July, 2011.