Pages and Panels

This particular shelf spotlight comes to us from some of DC’s modern creative team star duos, writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads. While I wasn’t a huge fan of King’s Batman: The Wedding or Heroes In Crisis, I loved Batman #38 and #61, as well as the work he and Gerads did on Strange Adventures. That combined with the Riddler hype post The Batman film meant I was eagerly awaiting the release of Batman- One Bad Day: The Riddler #1.

The origin of “One Bad Day” is a monologue from the Joker in The Killing Joke, which is a comic that I have a very difficult relationship with. (Read as “I hate it, but recognize the amount of impact and importance it has to the Batman mythos.”) However, I’ll be the first to admit that for my dislike of The Killing Joke, the idea of “One Bad Day” being all that separates Batman’s unhinged villains from regular civilians is one of my favorite elements of their character development- especially when Joker points out that Batman’s bad day led to his role as Gotham’s dark knight. The acknowledgment of their similarities makes the characters that much more interesting, and so I was thrilled when DC announced a series of titles featuring the best of Batman’s villains centered around that idea, I was thrilled. Batman: One Bad Day- The Riddler is the first of eight 64-page single issues to highlight the most iconic baddies facing the Bat, including Two-Face, Penguin, Ra’s al Ghul, Bane, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, and Clayface.

King and Gerads start things off with a story focusing on the Riddler. Rather than following the traditional straight-forward pattern of a riddle leading to murder, Edward Nygma commits a seemingly random murder to get the attention of Batman. As Batman tries to unearth Riddler’s true intentions for changing his patterns, readers are treated to flashbacks that explain where Nygma’s love for mind games and murder originated.

I personally think Tom King’s writing shines in singular stories vs during open-ended runs, and One Bad Day is no exception. Somehow he manages to get me as a reader to sympathize with a villain I just watched gun down a man in cold blood when seeing the events that led to his snapping- his one bad day. It’s also been pretty well established since Batman: Hush that Nygma knows Batman’s identity, but the reveal in this issue played out really well. Riddler’s threats against Bruce’s family and creepy stalking behavior raise the tension and stakes and set up Batman’s response nicely.

My favorite part of this book for sure was Mitch Gerads’s art and color work throughout the book. The choice to open with a first-person point of view of the Riddler’s victim was jarring and engrossing in the very best way. His choice of a muted green-tinged wash for the present day and bright orange for Nygma’s childhood trauma provided a fabulously unhinged emotional response to the splattering of dark blood being spilled. And his splash page of Batman dunking one of Riddler’s henchmen for information is probably one of my favorite of his plays on simplicity and detail in his work. It gives incredible movement to the page and displays what splash pages like that can do in terms of pacing in storytelling. It manages to slow things down for the reader to breathe for a second without sacrificing any of the tension established by King’s story or his previous visuals.

While It’s certainly not a great jumping-off point for someone who’s trying to establish a foothold in the current world of Batman, for fans of Riddler and the Gotham villains, it’s a great start for the One Bad Day concept.

_{Batman- One Bad Day: The Riddler by Tom King and Mitch Gerads hits stands today August 16th, 2022, and is now available in stores or online}