DC Comics opens header with Batman, but this time the important thing is not the hero but his antagonists. And we will discover that they are always more than they seem.
The new Batman series could not start with a better creative team than the one made up of two of the publisher’s star authors Tom King and Mitch Gerads. The creative couple has left some stories that are already among the best in recent years. On this occasion they meet to recreate a villain who had lost steam: the Riddler. We will know the reason for his riddles and his growth, now there are no clues to solve the riddles.
Edward Nigma has never been considered the most dangerous and bloodthirsty of Batman’s villains. Almost a joke at times the Riddler has gone through many phases, head of the criminal syndicate, detective solving mysteries or supplier of information to third parties. But his reputation never matched his abilities. That’s over.
The enigmas and the competition of egos have given way to a fierce determination to get what he deserves, respect. He wants to be as big and menacing as the Joker or Bane are by their own means and that’s the answers. Because a Riddle is a question, and the one who asks it knows the solution, and if you know the solutions, you dominate the game. Even Batman isn’t immune under his mask to the answers Edward has. The game has changed and the stakes have risen, should the Batman change too?
An origin story
Batman, A bad day. The riddle It’s an origin story as well as raising the villain’s level of danger. He’s never been so dangerous. And it’s all due to the twist in his personality that Tom King has developed. A childhood marked by the blood that runs through his veins, a fault that only excellence could erase and no one could stop him, not even for his own good. After continued defeat something awakens Edward to a new reality, he has the answers, and he runs the game.
King endows the villain with a weapon that he has always had and did not know how to take advantage of: information. Multiplying the threat from him. In a parallel narrative with flashbacks to the villain’s childhood we see the growth of the new Riddler, rising above the games he previously played. Y Batman is his main victim, only because he defends the city, and Gotham has always hated Edward.
Accompanying King is one of the artists who obtains the best results from his texts, Mitch Gerads. The bearded cartoonist returns to King’s classic nine-panel compositions to develop dialogue and maintain a leisurely pace, but he also breaks away with large horizontal panels that stretch time and create the sensation of faster narrative to counterbalance the pace. of flashbacks with reality, faster, more relentless and changing than a fixed past written in stone. Highlight the great color that uses different tones for the two time lines and leaves an almost autumnal nostalgic air compared to the cold winter of the present, darker.
This new series will feature new authors and protagonists with each installment
Presented new possibilities for Batman’s antagonists. Contrasted authors put all their art and talent so that this series is an island in a sea of heroes, where the important thing is the bad guys and because they are bad, but without pitying them or justifying them, they are villains and their pain does not forgive their crimes .
BATMAN: A BAD DAY – THE RIDDLE
Title: : BATMAN: A BAD DAY – THE RIDDLE
URL : Milcomics
Author : Tom King, Mitch Gerads
Format : Paperback
Publication date : 2023-01-01
ISBN : 9788419586285
Description : Tom King and Mitch Gerads, the Eisner Award-winning creative duo responsible for Mr. Miracle, Sheriff of Babylon and Strange Adventures, team up again to immerse themselves in the mind of one of Batman’s smartest foes: The Riddler. It all starts with the villain taking another man’s life in broad daylight. It is the starting gun of an epic psychological thriller in which nothing is as it seems.
SOMETHING (JC Royo)
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