One of the most consistently underrated Batman villains of all time, Calendar Man is, in reality, a fascinating character with an M.O that allows the Dark Knight to actually play detective instead of simply punching people in the face and jumping through windows (two things he does in almost every Batman comic ever written). Like most of the characters on this list, when written poorly, the Calendar Man is a gimmick character with no real threat level whatsoever. In fact, in these instances, he vies for position with joke-villain The Condiment King or (the sadly very real) Kite Man for the title of lamest Batman villain ever. On those days, it is very easy to imagine creators Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff (yes, him again) scouring the office for villain ideas under the looming threat of an oncoming deadline. Hey Bill, what about lamp man? one can imagine the conversation going, Or...The pencil? No, no...Its gotta be...Um, ah, Calendar Man! Yes, thatll do! Julian Gregory Day (see what they did there?) commits crimes according to the day of the week or the time of the year. Much like Two Face, his crimes vary in severity depending on an external factor. Over the years, Calendar Man has been inconsistently portrayed as an inept villain, a sad obsessive-compulsive mental patient or an articulate, Hannibal Lector-like sociopath. I think that he can be any one of these things and much, much more, depending, of course, on the day. However, when this character shines, he shines brightly, like in Jeph Loeb and Tim Sales Long Halloween and Dark Victory stories, where he is portrayed as a criminal genius who is ahead of the game to such a degree that he appears to have figured out all the upcoming plot twists (long before anyone else even realizes that there are any to be figured out). In a wonderful 1979 story by Len Wein and Walt Simonson, CM dresses up as the Gods after which the days of the week are named in order to commit acts of theft (on Saturday he channels Saturn and on Wednesday, he becomes Wodan, for example). He very nearly gets away with it, too. In the 90's, Alan Grant and Tim Sale used him in a story called The Misfits which teamed him with a bunch of C-List villains aiming for a shot at the big time. In that story, he ultimately loses because he refuses to take Batmans life, but in Chuck Dixons 80-page special All the Deadly Days, Day is so upset at having been in solitary confinement during the millennium celebrations that he goes totally apeshit and downs a passenger jet with a rocket launcher, literally killing hundreds. Like I said, he could go one way, he could go the other. It depends entirely on the day. This unpredictability, coupled with a potentially endless source of story material and a genuinely unique and interesting psychosis, can combine to make Calendar Man a fascinating and highly adaptable character. Recently, he has been seen in the role of a bizarre newsreader in DCs Channel 52 segment. Channel 52 is a quirky, back-pages romp aimed at informing readers about whats happening in the publishers other books. Frankly, The Calendar Man deserves a lot better.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ