The Riddler, misunderstood & misused genius

 

For a crazy edition of, WOW, Wacked Out Wednesday, I want to talk about one of the most iconic members of, The Rogue’s Gallery, the man of 1,000 riddles, Edward Nigma, The Riddler.

The Batman, I believe, has the best list of villains and rivals of all heroes, the wild array of criminals, lunatics and monsters is astounding. (With Spider-Man in 2nd)

For years, if not decades fans have been describing Riddler as just a Joker wanna-be and/or ripoff, and I think a lot of times, they have been correct but not all.

This character has always had far more potential than he’s been given.  His latest rendition, Hush, is really terrible.  I think this is more what the character would become to jump off the comic book pages and come after all the hacks who have overlooked and misused him for all this time.

The Jokers obsession/core was always to get a laugh out of Batman, make him the punchline or to just set a crazy enough trap to kill him, he never seemed to give a crap who was under the mask.  Maybe Joker thought, that if he unmasked Batman to be just a regular guy, that would ruin the punchline, and not make it as fun.  So, how to make Riddler differ, how to set him apart?

We’ve seen some incredible renditions of the character, from John Aston (Gomez Addams) to the incomparable Frank Gorshin in the Adam West series of the 1960s.  If you’ve ever seen Gorshin play a heavy from the mob, you know that when he wanted to, he could play a character that could chill you to the bone and scare the hell out of you.  But the goal of that version was camp and comedy, and he also pulled that off brilliantly.   I would LOVE to have seen Gorshin as a real Riddler to challenge Batman, he’d have really freaked out the audiences in theaters.

In the 1990’s we got re-introduced to the character in, Batman the Animated Series, and this was a huge step for the character, he was far more cerebral and obsessed with puzzles of all kinds, which gave him his connection to riddles, and outwitting Batman, but there were a lot of characters trying to outwit Batman.  

This one was far less manic than other renditions, and it was a very popular version, because he was more of a thinking villain, rather than the ravenous type that he would usually go against.

It was actually in the 1995 disastrous film, Batman Forever, that they kinda touched on a part of Riddler that we should have seen long ago.  Jim Carrey was cast (Burton originally wanted Robin Williams, for his adaptation) and did an amazing job, but really was a bit too Jim Carrey for a villain that should have been more controlled.  In this film, it becomes a bit of an obsession for Nigma to find out the true identity of the Batman, and that is what the core of the character should have become far before 1995.

I believe that it is THIS obsession that could have defined the character and given the Batman more of a Chess opponent in Nigma than we saw with all the cackling and unhinged types, a master gamesman who really could have been an intellectual equal to Batman.

One of the main problems with this, is finding writers who could have had the intellect to work with such a character, it was always easier to just make him like the others, or a watered down Joker, than for someone to step up and really give us  a battle of wits between these two.

Even if they have done this in the comics, its either not stood out enough for people to make a big deal about it or maybe it’s that I haven’t had time to read the comics in so long.  And, as I inferred earlier, I’m not a fan of “Hush” at all, it’s a really lazy and predictable way to take the character that deserves better.

Personally, I’m a big Riddler fan, he certainly made green & purple a great color combo, I like the characters looks and the bits and pieces that someone should have put together (see what I did there 😉) decades ago.  A chess match that could still be going on today, between, The Detective and The Gamesman…