Real Name: Possibly Fred Hammer

Identity/Class: Giant semi-humanoid;
    possible mutate, member of a Hidden race, etc. (see comments);
    (Pre-Modern era, see comments)

Occupation: Predator

Group Membership: None known

Affiliations: None known

Enemies: Lucille Tobin, Jeffrey Tobin, other human beings

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: Ice Monster (in the story), Fred Hammer

Base of Operations: A cave on the hills above Wintersville, USA

First Appearance: Journey into Unknown Worlds#17 (April, 1953)

Powers/Abilities: The Ice-Monster had a body of ice, and he could emanate cold from his body.

    He could alter his size, and he could shape-shift himself, resembling an ordinary human being.

    The cold he produced could freeze a human being, entrapping the body in a block of ice in few seconds.

    His strength was probably greater than the one granted by his size; apparently he could easily break through a block of ice almost a feet thick.

History:
(Journey into Unknown Worlds#17 Cover (fb)) - In the 1950's, the Ice Monster, near the snowy mountains around Wintersville, appeared in a giant, frozen-bush, mustached, humanoid form and assaulted a man and a woman, in daylight. The man was frozen in a block of ice. Their fates remain unrevealed.

(Chamber of Chills#12/Cover (fb)) - Assuming another form, completely made of ice, smaller but still quite taller than a man, the Ice-Monster attacked a couple of tourists, during a snowy night. He smashed a small glacier into pieces, wielding a huge spike of ice against the man. Their fates remain unrevealed.

 (Journey into Unknown Worlds#17 (fb) - BTS) - Several times people living in the little town of Wintersville told that they spotted the Ice Monster in the surroundings. They particularly feared the area near the hill of Tobin's Inn, and many of them thought that the Ice Monster was Jeffrey Tobin.

(Journey into Unknown Worlds#17) - The Ice Monster assumed the human form of Fred Hammer.He seemed like one of the many tourists that w ent to Wintersville to enjoy themselves and to ski. He went there by night, and explored the place.

    The few people that replied to his knocking did not open their door for him. They were too frightened by the Ice Monster to let a stranger inside their houses by night. A woman suggested to him that the only place he could find a room was the Tobin's Inn.

    Once there, he was welcomed by Lucille Tobin and her husband Jeffrey. That same night, Lucille confessed to Fred that she fell in love for him. He went along with her desires and did nothing to stop Lucille from killing her husband with a block of ice.

    Fred apparently kept on following Lucille's plan, driving the sleigh to the town, where they would have charged the Ice Monster with Jeffrey's death.

    However, Fred swayed from the road for the town, going up the hill, instead of down. He brought Lucille to a cave, where he revealed his monstrous, icy appearance, still telling that he wanted her. Her fate remains unrevealed.

Comments: Created by Carl Wessler and Gene Colan under Atlas, the 50's comic company alias used between Timely and Marvel.

    "Ice-Monster" is only used on the covers, in the story "ice monster" is used.

    During his exploration of Wintersville, Fred Hammer seemed a stranger with regards to the village habits. The clothes he wore could have been seized from one of the victims, but his thoughts, seemingly belonged to an ordinary human being:

1. Was he human in origin?
2. Did he arrive there from another place?
3. Had he been in a sort of suspended animation or imprisoned? Or in a status that had lasted for a very long time, then awakened, or broke free, finding himself in a world very different from what he knew before?
4. Was he able to assume the form of human beings he had previously in contact before? Was he able to acquire fragments of his victim's thoughts and memories?
   

    The Ice-Monster's powers could derive from a lot of sources. He could:

• be a Jotunheim Ice Giant or and Ice Dwarf with shape-shifting powers;
• be a demon of Boreas;
• be a kin of the Germanic Ice-Monster or of the Ice-King;
• a Deviant, an Eternal, an Inhuman, a human mutant, and so on;
• fulfill other possibilities already hypothesized in the Ice-King profile.

    "Fred" sounds exactly like a dialectal form of the Italian word "freddo" which means "cold".

Profile by Spidermay.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Ice-Monster should be distinguished from:

• Ice-Monster -  creature dwelling outside Germanic village that encountered Hugo Bogg, who impersonated him--Amazing Adult Fantasy#11/4
• other "Ice" or "Hammer" character, group, item, event, race or place.

The Tobins have no known connections to any other character with a similar name.

    Jeffrey and Lucille Tobin, husband and wife, were normal human beings that lived on the hill above Wintersville, in their Inn.

    Lucille didn't like Jeffrey, and, probably Jeffrey didn't care much for her.

    When the Ice-Monster appeared in the hills around the town, people began to believe that the Ice-Monster was Jeffrey Tobin. Lucille didn't care for the monster, but she cared about what the town said, because the bad reputation would have kept the visitors far from the Inn. She knew that her husband was not the monster.
    Jeffrey, on the other hand, didn't like to speak about the monster, nor did care about what the villagers thought.

    The night that Fred Hammer reached the Inn, the Tobins welcomed him, but Lucille saw, in Fred, a chance to change her life, a chance to leave her husband. She confessed her first-sight love to Fred, who didn't deny her.

    Then, she enacted her plan. When Jeffrey was outside the Inn, she broke a great slab of ice under a window. The heavy piece fell on Jeffrey, killing him. Her plan continued when she made up some false giant footprints in the snow around the inn. She told Fred that they had to tell the police that the Ice Monster had killed Jeffrey.

    However, during the way for the town, Fred kidnapped her, bringing her to a cave on the mountain. There, he revealed his true aspect to her. Lucille started understanding what Fred meant when he told her that he wanted her.
    Her fate remains unrevealed.

--Journey into Unknown Worlds#17

 

Wintersville

(Journey into Unknown Worlds#17) - In the 50's, Wintersville was a little town on the mountains, where tourists went to ski in their free time.
    There was a ski run that started from the road that le up the hill of Tobin's Inn, turned at Bear Rock, and went down the valley for five miles.

    When the Ice-Monster started appearing near the town, the life in the town changed. It passed from being a happy place where people could go to enjoy the holidays to a place where people was scared to walk on the streets after sunset.

    Tourism decreased.

(Chamber of Chills #12 Cover / Journey into Unknown Worlds#17) - Some tourists disappeared.

(Journey into Unknown Worlds#17) - Some people in Wintersville saw the Ice-Monster, and many of them thought that Jeffrey Tobin, of the Tobin's Inn, was the monster. They started considering the Inn and the hill where it stood to be a dangerous place.

    So, when Fred Hammer walked among the desert streets of the town, nobody welcomed him, nor offered him a room.

--Journey into Unknown Worlds#17

First posted: 03/08/2026
Last updated: 03/08/2026

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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