Chapter 2546: Battle for the Cloak (67)

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 memory. 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 member of the human race, believes he supplements 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 assumes the world has order and he merely supplements it, while Superman assumes 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 supplementary 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 crime, Batman's mental 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 crimes are also completely different.

Most of the Riddler's crimes follow a certain pattern: he commits a continuous offense, such as kidnapping somebody, planting explosives, or threatening a specific act of crime.

Then he leaves behind a riddle, with the answer being key to his crime—like where the hostage or bomb is located, what the crucial step of the crime 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 crime 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 crime, a clue for preliminary investigation, so he solves them to prevent crime.

But not Superman. He treats these two things separately.

Kidnapping someone or planting bombs means you're harming others, and therefore you're in the wrong. But creating riddles has not harmed 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 crime.

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 game 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 mentally 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 became the Riddler leaving a riddle on the path Superman was bound to take. If that path wasn't a major thoroughfare or unless someone 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 game to Superman. He said that the answer to this riddle could impact a major case. Superman told him to find something 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 game 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 me. 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 frame 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 crime 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 crime 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 crime, it wasn't an excuse to deface the cityscape. Surely, I couldn't just stand by and watch you mess 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 remembered to find me.

But Riddler wasn't a normal person; he was a mentally 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 became 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 crimes, had to redesign the crime 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 seemed 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 same 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 means to combat crime. Yet his sense of justice remained unscathed. Now, with a crime he could actually stop, it was an excellent way to express and alleviate his inner justice, turning the act into more of a pastime for him.

Moreover, the designs by graffiti taggers might at best hold some visual aesthetic value, offering little in terms of deep meaning. But Riddler was different; each of his riddles required careful creation and design, necessitating some serious mental exercise.

When playing games 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 come over and give him another beating, preventing him from creating the next riddle and effectively stalling the game.

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 meant that rather than crafting artworks, Riddler seemed more like he was mass-producing crap.

He knew all too well how terrible those riddles he came up with in such a short time 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 immense drive. It even brings them to a state of self-fulfillment 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 meet their own standards of beauty and creative needs. This can lead them into depression.

Riddler was truly on the verge of depression.