Edward “The Riddler” Nygma !
Batman Comics / Mostly HC (previously written)
Gotham has, itself, a bit of a mockery of Times Square. On main in uptown, the screens that display alternating billboard advertisements hang overhead, and the neon lights from ritzy boutiques illuminates the flanks of either side of the street, creating the illusion of a tunnel of light and sound and movement that only big cities can accomplish. When he was a boy, Edward would stare up at the screens and imagine one day he’d be on them. Maybe he’d be one of those people they hire for ad campaigns. Maybe he’d be a politician. Maybe he’d be king of the world, someday.
It was a stupid dream, really. Moronic, actually.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and those who know better! Citizens of Gotham!” Twenty years later, those same screens display the face of a man clad in a bright green suit -- face hidden behind a domino mask and punctuated by a haughty smirk. “Do you feel yourselves melting from the hum-drum of daily life? Does your brain turn to goo when you turn on the telly? Is the world falling to absolute shit all around you? All the morons in the world got you down?”
The screens flash, a glitchy quality to the broadcast betrays it to be illegal -- unintentional. Somewhere, someone is losing their job for letting the company’s internet security be breached. Good.
“Well, good news! You don’t have to go to Walmart to buy a new toy that will make everything better! No, no, my beautiful, ignorant sheeple! All you have to do...”
The screens quickly cycle through a series of images: metallic cages, robotic constructs spray-painted green, cogs and wheels grinding bone into nothing. And then, the final image: a timer, counting down.
Pulsating in the background behind the timer is a stylized green question mark on a fuschia background, and as the laughter peters out, the audio is replaced by a loop of that same voice repeating the phrase, “Too bad, so sad!” as the screen cycles through a column of text again and again.
With potent, flowery words speak I
of something common, vulgar, dry;
I weave webs of pedantic prose
in effort to befuddle those
who think I while time away
in lofty things above all day,
the common kind that linger where
Monadic beings live and fare.
Practical I may not be,
But life it seems is full of me!