The Riddler’s new costume is the best and worst for Batman comics yet

The Riddler got a fashion refresh detective comicsand I couldn’t be happier for him.

It can be difficult to iterate on the Riddler. Many Writers and artists have attempted to modernize the flamboyant, green-clad, smartly sheltered quizzer into something more in keeping with modern fashion—both in terms of the attire and the changing moods of the comic book supervillains. He has question mark scars and scantily clad henchmen with theme names. At one point, he just started wearing black lipstick and a black suit with the shirt down willfully unbuttoned to show his Question mark neck tattoo. But none of those looks ever last.

So why am I so into this new? Because Mariko Tamaki and Nadia Shammas have finally found the best reason for the Riddler to wear a bowler in 2022: he’s an unbearable menace who delights in being intentionally terrible. Thatshows your understanding of the character.

What else is happening on the pages of our favorite comics? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of books our comics editor has enjoyed over the past week. It’s part society pages about the lives of superheroes, part recommended reading, and part look at this cool art. There may be some spoilers. There may not be enough context. But there will be great comics. (And if you missed the last issue, read this.)

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God. The closeup on his awful mustache! I hate it! He’s forcing Gotham to listen to his daily morning show (streamed on radio and live video) in which he only preaches in plausibly denial terms about the latest series of murders he’s clearly responsible for! It’s perfect and I hope it lasts forever!

For the many people who hold Al Ewing and Lee Garbett Loki: Agent of Asgard If you care, you should know that you get a whole short story to go back to your version of him Thor #750!

The Justice League… is dead. What we knew was going to happen in this week’s milestone justice league edition to pave the way for DC’s upcoming crossover event series Dark Crisis, which revolves around their buddies and friends picking up pieces of Earth’s defenses against newly agitated Super Villains. Nevertheless: pariah? Pariah, the guy whose Promethean punishment is to watch every crisis event for the rest of the time, is the guy who killed the Justice League?

Honestly, good for him.

saber tooth, the comic about Sabretooth, surprises me every issue with what it’s actually about. Do we The good place but with the least collectible villain of the X-Men? Let’s do an Alcatraz escape, but with Krakoa? Are we doing a book about the difficulties of being a little mutated character on what may be a paradise island, but where all power is undemocratically concentrated with those with the most useful mutations and the people who know them?

Whatever the answer, in the meantime, the book does my favorite thing about X-Men: It introduces me to a bunch of characters I’ve never read about before and makes me fall in love with them.