Previous Post I'm not sure you're quite right about the Riddler wanting to be the smartest man in the room - nearly but not quite. It's not about him wanting to be one-up, it's about him wanting to put the other guy one-down. It's about making the big guy look stupid. He's the kid in the class who pins the note on the back of the bully. Dr Doom wants to be the smartest and has to prove it. The Riddler just wants to fool the smartest to show they have feet of clay. He's got "little man" syndrome even worse than the Penguin, except he doesn't want to climb on top of everyone else, he wants to trip everyone else down into the mud - a pratfall to prick the elite. And let's not overlook that his need to riddle has been presented as a pathology. He wants the thrill of teasing the tiger. He wants the rush of "nearly got caught". It's a form of mental extreme sport. Riddler as detective feels a bit wrong to me. The Riddler's not about SOLVING riddles as much as SETTING them. He's the DM, not the player. He constructs webs to tangle others, he doesn't venture into others' webs himself. A "legit" Riddler solving crime does it by setting traps. He's the security consultant catching the Shadow Thief when STAR Labs gets targetted. He's the consultant Waller uses to snap the trap back the other way when HIVE's trying to infiltate Checkmate. He's the guy who sets up the scam to convince Luthor of Superman's secret identity being Hal Jordan. And in every single instance he's building in a chance for his adversary to get away if only they're really as good as advertised; he never believes they are. I think the Riddler's not about the solutions, he's about the mysteries. He doesn't give the answers to his own riddles. Why would he give away answers toother people's puzzles? He might find them out for his own personal satisfaction but then he might just walk away and leave people wondering. Finally, there's a big streak of childishness in the original conception of the Riddler. He's about "I have a secret". He's about "I know something you don't and I'm going to tease you with it". He's about "Nyah nyah can't catch me!" Maybe that's why in the oldest Riddler stories it's always Robin (Grayson) who's so good at decoding the Riddler's clues. That's not a criticism of the Riddler (after all, Joker is another villain whose earliest behaviour was slapstick childish) but it does mean that any really serious backstory for Ed Nygma has to tell us what made him like that. IW

Reading Kirk's post was the first I had heard about the Riddler being a detective, and I agree that it sounds problematic at best, based on the arguments you both raised. What struck me while reading Kirk's idea was how a gang-leader who tricks people reminded me of the cable show "Leverage". It's about a former insurance detective who assembles a group of grifters, cat burglers and tough guys to run elaborate scams on the untouchable criminals of society, hired out by the little guys who were wronged and have no other options.

Really, rather than making the Riddler totally legit, that seems like a better way to go... Simply shifting the target of his schemes to humiliate and extract some measure of justice out of corrupt politicians, crime lords and business mogols that will never likely be behind bars.