Batman Comics: A Dark Knight Dub
Isaac Gross for The Riddler / Edward Nygma
Known for his purple domino mask and green question mark-covered costume, either as a skintight catsuit or a business suit and bowler hat, and his special question mark-shaped cane, the Riddler is obsessed with riddles, puzzles, and word games. He delights in forewarning police and Batman of his capers by sending them complex clues. The Riddler's criminal modus operandi is so deeply ingrained into his personality that he is virtually powerless to stop himself from acting it out. He cannot simply kill his opponents when he has the upper hand; he has to put them in a deathtrap to see if he can devise a life and death intellectual challenge that the hero cannot solve and escape. However, unlike many of Batman's themed enemies, Riddler's compulsion is quite flexible, allowing him to commit any crime as long as he can describe it in a riddle or puzzle.
Life's full of questions, isn't it, Batman? Though, naturally, I prefer to think of them as riddles.
What fun would that be? The whole point of the game is to outsmart the competition... with the danger that they'll outsmart you!
[Talking about The Joker]
My answer is simple. He can't kill Batman because he's a fraud. You see, I solve puzzles. And what's a bigger puzzle than the Joker? So I solved him. Everyone projects such tragedy on you. Guessing at your start. Your cruel father. Your poor wife. Your dead child. What terrible something made you white and green and mad. But we both know that's a little bluff, isn't it? There's no pain in you, no suffering. Not really. Not yet. No, no, this, you...this--it's all an act. You're not white and green and mad. You're just white and green. You laugh. And you kill. You joke. You say whatever. I get it. But under that façade of yours, you're just a plain, normal man. There's no father, wife, kid, insanity. There's just average, boring you.
I didn't add my take of the character in the audition description, so I will in this comment:) I really like this monologue of the Riddler speaking to Joker; it really personifies my perspective of who the Riddler is. While as a Villian, he often seems to be in the shadow of Joker, but I see the Riddler as the real psycho genious; in the monologue he shows that he sees through the Joker tho even in doing so reveals that he himself is the more disturbed of the two. No one wonders about the riddlers past, and it doesn't matter because his theatric power lies in his puzzles which his victims must solve to survive, whereas the Joker's jokes and puzzles are peripheral additions to his crimes. The Joker makes everything about himself: the mystery, the jokes, he wants the attention; Riddler is looking for a real intellectual game.