The Batman’s Paul Dano made a comic book based on his personal backstory for The Riddler

Lots of actors make up backstories for their characters that never make it on the screen; few have gone on to then commit that backstory to the page. But Paul Dano has the benefit of playing a character that belongs to a company hungry for IP, so in a moment of blessed corporate synergy, he’s releasing a tie-in comic book for The Batman about The Riddler’s origin story.

Dano speaks about this journey with GQ, noting that part of his process for any role is figuring out how his character “gets to page one.” From that notion was born The Riddler: Year One (“partially inspired” by the Frank Miller classic Batman: Year One). The Batman director Matt Reeves was apparently so impressed with Dano’s thoroughness that he connected the actor to DC Comics, and the rest is history.

Despite having apparently done a lot of the leg work for the film, GQ reports that Dano spent a good six months of this year immersed in his Riddler book, which is “an emotional horror story about trauma.” (Cue Jamie Lee Curtis voice.) A lot of that time, The Fabelmans star explains, has been dedicated to “getting really dorky about sequential art and color theory.” He compares the experience to directing a film (his behind-the-camera debut was 2018’s Wildlife, co-written with partner Zoe Kazan). “This image we shot, I could love it, like tangibly… This comic feels like my next film.”

A fair amount of celebrities have penned comic books, like Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and Umbrella Academy fame or Kevin Smith’s work at both Marvel and DC. Few have been able to explore their own character on the screen and the page. Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon got to write for Xander and the whole Scooby gang in the comic spin-off of the television series, but it’s definitely a small club to which Dano now belongs. We’ll see how he did when The Riddler: Year One hits shelves on October 25, 2022.