Speaking of his own experience in this drama, the Riddler couldn't help but shed bitter tears. Once Bruce involved Superman, he just let it be, expecting him to vanish during the lengthy main storyline—only goes to show that the Joker virus really did fry the brain that belongs to Batman.
Superman may have lost his superpower, but not his mory. His personality hasn't changed; he is still Clark Kent. How could he possibly do nothing?
In order to prevent Superman from intervening in the main plot, the Riddler's task was to keep him occupied. Theoretically, the Riddler should have no problem dealing with a greatly weakened Superman, and indeed, he managed to keep Superman busy.
But oh, how torturous the process was.
While Batman and Superman share similarities, what consistently leads to their frequent disputes and confrontations are their differences in personality and ideology.
Batman, as a mber of the human race, believes he supplents the legal system of human society. Criminals who are either beyond the reach of the law or not fully punishable by it are his targets.
Superman, as a non-human, sees himself as an alternative system to human society, which he calls the justice of Superman. He judges what is right or wrong based on his own set of values and acts if correction is needed.
Counterintuitively, Batman assus the world has order and he rely supplents it, while Superman assus the world is chaotic and views himself as the Savior.
As a result, they can never fully agree. Ideological conflicts lead invariably to contention.
In practice, Batman focuses on establishing a supplentary order—the so-called deterrent force of the Dark Knight—to intimidate and punish supercriminals attempting to operate outside normal order. Superman, on the other hand, represents his own order. He supports what he deems right and punishes what he finds wrong.
Thus, when fighting cri, Batman's ntal process is "you are a criminal," while Superman's is "you did wrong"—one is materialistic based on social norms, and the other is idealistic based on personal moral conscience.
Therefore, their approaches to dealing with the Riddler's cris are also completely different.
Most of the Riddler's cris follow a certain pattern: he commits a continuous offense, such as kidnapping sobody, planting explosives, or threatening a specific act of cri.
Then he leaves behind a riddle, with the answer being key to his cri—like where the hostage or bomb is located, what the crucial step of the cri is, where he is hiding, and how Batman can catch him.
The Riddler ensures that his riddles are seen by Batman. Upon seeing the riddles, Batman knows the Riddler is committing a cri and proceeds to solve the riddle and catch him.
Batman considers the Riddler's act of creating riddles for him to see as part of the cri, a clue for preliminary investigation, so he solves them to prevent cri.
But not Superman. He treats these two things separately.
Kidnapping soone or planting bombs ans you're harming others, and therefore you're in the wrong. But creating riddles has not hard anyone; so make as many as you want—you're not doing anything wrong, and why should I hold you accountable for that?
If your riddles affect the city's appearance or cause inconvenience to others, then you should simply pay the price for that mistake, regardless of whether you're covertly orchestrating a larger cri.
If I catch you vandalizing, I'll just give you a verbal warning, maybe community service, or at most take you to the police station. When I catch you kidnapping or bombing, that's when I'll deliver justice.
In a normal world, the Riddler would likely find such a ga too dull and uninteresting. But in the Dreamworld, where he has a mission to keep Superman occupied, that won't do.
He has to make Superman track down case clues based on his riddles, just like Batman. Otherwise, if Superman sees vandalism and just gives a warning, how could that hold him back?
If you ask the Riddler for a solution, he really doesn't have one. Different from Penguin Man and Two-Face, he doesn't have an extensive real-life résumé; he's mostly an unemployed drifter and doesn't possess practical skills in fields like chemistry the way Scarecrow does, allowing the latter to engage in scientific research and academic pursuits when necessary.
The Riddler is probably the only one among all of Arkham's criminals who could have fast-tracked into studying journalism as a pure humanities student.
This made him very passive in such situations, lacking enough social experience to exploit societal rules or sufficient professional skills for covert sabotage.
More tragically yet, the Riddler is genuinely ntally ill. The act of creating riddles is a manifestation of his compulsions, and severe obsessive-compulsive disorder prevents him from changing his behavioral patterns, leaving no room for flexibility.
So, the situation beca the Riddler leaving a riddle on the path Superman was bound to take. If that path wasn't a major thoroughfare or unless soone complained to Superman about it directly, he would simply ignore it.
If the riddle was indeed too obtrusive and impacted the cleanliness of a wall, Superman would choose to erase or cover it himself, doing the work of a volunteer city sanitation worker.
But it obviously couldn't keep him occupied for long, so Riddler had no choice but to show up himself and explain the rules of the ga to Superman. He said that the answer to this riddle could impact a major case. Superman told him to find sothing better to do, like fetch a bucket of water and scrub the paint off the floor.
With no other option, Riddler had to carry out a kidnapping first, then left behind a riddle, placing the hostage behind it. He then reappeared to explain to Superman that if you cracked the riddle, you could unlock the hostage's handcuffs and rescue them. That's how the ga was supposed to be played.
Superman said, "Do you think I'm an idiot? You kidnapped the person, and now you're standing right in front of . Why would I need to solve any riddles?"
Riddler got a beating.
Indeed, even if Superman had been weakened to this extent, he was still muscular compared to the average person—his skeletal fra made that clear. How could Riddler, who was considered skinny even among average folks, stand a chance against such a sturdy man? Even at his thinnest, Superman still towered over him—Riddler simply couldn't beat him.
Realizing this approach wouldn't work, Riddler finally decided to separate the cri scene and the riddle, leaving behind a loudspeaker instead. This way, he could guide Superman to pursue him, as Superman obviously couldn't just ignore a cri in progress, could he?
Superman indeed planned to intervene, but first, he still had to wipe off the riddle.
After all, two wrongs don't make a right. No matter how major the cri, it wasn't an excuse to deface the cityscape. Surely, I couldn't just stand by and watch you ss up the city and do nothing about it?
If the criminal were a normal person, then you might as well wipe it, right? In the end, you'd still have to use the clues from the riddle you rembered to find .
But Riddler wasn't a normal person; he was a ntally ill man with severe OCD. There's no part in this whole affair where you grab a mop and huff and puff while wiping away riddles, so you just can't wipe it away, and Riddler shows up again—only to get beaten up again.
As I said before, Superman, who could be friends with Batman, wasn't normal either. Stubborn people attract other stubborn people, and thus this beca a clash between two headstrong individuals.
Riddler drew, Superman wiped. While Superman was wiping, Riddler wouldn't let him, and Superman insisted on doing it anyway, leading to a stand-off.
In the end, the arm couldn't twist the thigh. Riddler took his beating and, unable to carry on with his subsequent cris, had to redesign the cri process, redraw the riddle, and as Superman went about wiping it off... Riddler wouldn't let him.
So the question arose, which is more exhausting—drawing riddles or solving them?
Based on the performance of street taggers, it seed wiping off riddles was more tiring because graffiti is a hobby, while cleaning it up is a job. Although creating those many patterns isn't easy, erasing or covering them up is quite difficult as well.
But it wasn't the sa with Riddler and Superman. In the real world, crafting riddles was a hobby for Riddler, but in the Dreamworld, he was on a mission, forced to redraw riddles over and over again because Superman just wouldn't get a clue—this was work for him.
And Superman, having lost all his powers, indeed had no more effective ans to combat cri. Yet his sense of justice remained unscathed. Now, with a cri he could actually stop, it was an excellent way to express and alleviate his inner justice, turning the act into more of a pasti for him.
Moreover, the designs by graffiti taggers might at best hold so visual aesthetic value, offering little in terms of deep aning. But Riddler was different; each of his riddles required careful creation and design, necessitating so serious ntal exercise.
When playing gas with Batman, he could spend two months devising an intricate riddle accompanied by a case with a solution, taking pleasure in watching Batman solve the puzzles and investigate.
With Superman, however, as soon as Riddler recovered from his beating, he had at most two hours to think up another riddle; otherwise, Superman would start moving towards the main storyline. He couldn't afford to draw slowly either, lest Superman co over and give him another beating, preventing him from creating the next riddle and effectively stalling the ga.
The difference in quality between two months and two hours to produce a riddle is obvious. Riddler was not a pig from the production team; expecting him to create an original riddle within two hours, contemplate a relevant case, and then paint it on a wall was too much even for an art school student. It nearly killed Riddler from exhaustion.
Yet, that wasn't the worst part. The thing was, Riddler's personality leaned more toward that of an artist rather than a literary type—abstract, neurotic, subsisting on aesthetics.
Such a tight schedule for creation ant that rather than crafting artworks, Riddler seed more like he was mass-producing crap.
He knew all too well how terrible those riddles he ca up with in such a short ti were, and how flawed and shoddily made the drawings turned out.
An artist's persona can derive joy from the creative process, experiencing the satisfaction of seeing their work progress towards perfection, which provides them with an imnse drive. It even brings them to a state of self-fulfillnt and harmony, utterly unperturbed by external factors—this is often why laypeople think many artists are a bit mad.
And the most devastating blow to such personalities is to force them to mass-produce low-quality, flawed, hideous, and useless assembly line products, unable to et their own standards of beauty and creative needs. This can lead them into depression.
Riddler was truly on the verge of depression.
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