Let us be clear about something: comic books are inherently goofy. Some of the most iconic comic book superheroes of all time are described as a laser-shooting, flying man whose only weakness is a rock, a superhero who acquired his powers from a radioactive spider, and a billionaire who is willing to get his hands dirty and part with his money.
But every now and then, comic book creators take a deep plunge into the realm of absurdity and create characters so strange that you can not even look at them without laughing out loud. DC is the undisputed king of ridiculousness and has produced a slew of supervillains with one-of-a-kind gimmicks that make them unmarketable beyond their first appearance.
You have probably heard of Codpiece, the supervillain who is so self-conscious about his masculinity that he turns it into a missile launcher. Then there is Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, whose superpower is exactly what you think it is, and who was played by James Gunn’s Suicide Squad’s adorable Nathan Fillion.
Snowflake, a figure who can channel white flames after nasally eating Whitney Houston’s killer, was wisely discarded after proclaiming the white material to be his God. There is a joke about a tortured artist in there somewhere, but we are not going to dig into that in this video. We shall be dealing with one of the looniest Toons-Esque villains the World’s Greatest Detective has ever faced, and he has fought Kite Man before.
Calendar Man first appeared in Detective Comics #259 in 1958 and was created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff to fit in with the Silver Age comic book’s undertone of silliness. He vanished after that appearance, like the other characters we described, but he reappeared twenty years later, troubling the Caped Crusader once more in Batman #312.
Since then, he has been working to redeem his comedic past, becoming a cold-blooded psychopath in recent years. Calendar Man is one of the silliest villains Batman has ever met. Let’s have a look.
Tragic Origin of Calendar Man
Not much was explained about his backstory when he was introduced to Batman’s rogue’s gallery but over the years, his origins have been fleshed out across the various appearances he’s made in TV shows, games, and of course, comic books.
When we take them all together, it paints a composite picture that gives us the insight we needed to truly understand Calendar Man’s quirky obsession with dates and calendars; and it’s a Shakespearean tragedy if we ever saw one. As human beings, one of the most important stages of development for us is our formative years.
We create our understanding of the world and the people in it from scratch during these years, and with that comes the perception of ourselves. Children who receive constructive criticism and positive reinforcement in the form of social acknowledgment grow up to be confident, receptive, and driven individuals who make society better.
The genesis of this confidence lies in a child’s interaction with their parents because parental support and affection form the emotional basis of our formative lives. Losing that love, or finding out that it was fabricated can have a drastic effect on their young psyches, and that is exactly what happened to a young Julian Gregory Day; and yes, the pun that is his name is not lost on us.
As a youth, Julian’s father promised he would be home for the holidays. An excited Julian took a bus to the bus stop and waited for his father to fulfill his holiday wish from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day. When the police took him in on New Year’s Day, he was almost dead from exposure. Broken in body, spirit, and mind, Julian began to assign almost literal meanings to each day. In addition, he began to suffer mood swings related to the days.
He ended up giving his cold, distant mother the Robin King treatment on Mother’s Day, ripping out her heart in a fit of blind rage. Then, he tracked his father down on the East Coast and killed him on Father’s Day, dismembering his body and using it as bait to catch fish. By the time he killed the rest of his family on Thanksgiving, he had established an irreplaceable connection to days, weeks, months, and special dates that mark a specific occasion.
As the final vestiges of normalcy left his mind, he assumed the costumed identity of the nefarious thief Calendar Man and embarked on a personal, Riddler-Esque quest of vengeance against Gotham’s Protector. He doesn’t have any superhuman powers, but he has honed his highly organized mind into a lethal weapon that has managed to hoodwink the World’s Greatest Detective on more than one occasion.
His genius-level intellect allows him to create advanced machinery to assist in his elaborate, thematic schemes. It also makes him one of the sharpest minds in Batman’s rogues gallery; the reason he’s like a more ridiculous version of Riddler, which shouldn’t be possible, is because his extensive knowledge of the calendar allows him to manipulate events to his liking.
He often sends across his plans to his adversary before executing them, which is the direct anti-thesis of Riddler’s M.O., but at least he manages to be cryptic enough to make catching him a goddamn hassle.
After Scott Snyder and Tom King’s run on DC: Rebirth, Calendar Man’s genetic structure has been altered to make his aging process resemble the change of seasons. Basically, by the time winter comes around, his young body shrivels up into a corpse which then turns into a cocoon that allows him to “resurrect” come spring. It’s both creepy and a great homage to his origin.
Why Calendar Man is Obsessed With Dates?
We know that Calendar Man’s whole shtick is obsessing over dates and constructing elaborate felonies surrounding them, but there’s a reason for that. As you can tell, Julian Gregory Day hadn’t had a particularly bright childhood. We spoke about acknowledging during formative years being an essential component of healthy growth, but young Julian went ignored even in his own household.
It was so bad that no one remembered his birthday, including his parents. It was as if he never existed. So when Julian’s life turned upside down during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, it left a deep scar on his psyche, which he sealed with cold-blooded murder. In Batman/Superman #22, it was revealed that the reason Day is so fixated on dates is that it allows him to organize his own shattered psyche in alignment with the day.
It keeps him from breaking apart and ending up right back in Arkham, where he resurfaced during the acclaimed Batman: The LongHalloween storyline. You can see a progression in his mental decline and character development as well. In Detective Comics #259, Day used the seasons of the year as the foundation for his criminal activities. In Batman #312, he turned that into the days of the week.
Holiday-themed felonies weren’t too far away, as Calendar Man hit up every slasher film set, from Christmas to Labour’s Day. In subsequent appearances, he’s shown the ability to toy with Bruce’s mind by making the dates dance on his fingers, manipulating events to his advantage, and showing the scary ability to be able to deliver on his threats despite advertising them to the whole world!
By the time he tattooed the months of the year across his forehead (or roman numerals, depending on the issue), his innate need for control had consumed him and turned him into a vital figure in Gotham City’s criminal world, earning him the ire, and eventually respect, of Batman.
Calendar Man in Various story arcs
We have to admit that when we saw Calendar Man’s Spring-themed costume in his debut appearance, we never expected to see him again. At least, not in a meaningful storyline that had some actual consequences for DC’s continuity. Miraculously, though, Calendar Man holds the singular distinction of being the only low-tier comic book villain to become a cult icon in the most positive sense of the phrase.
The rehabilitation of the calendar-caped criminal’s character began with the immaculate Batman: The Long Halloween storyline created by Jeph Loeb and Time Sale. In it, we see the World’s Greatest Detective investigate a string of murders that were committed on various festive occasions by a serial killer dubbed Holiday.
Batman’s inquiries eventually lead him to Arkham where he interrogates one of the obvious suspects in any date-related crime; Calendar Man. Jeph Loebs manages to make a character that was wearing flower costumes and putting a flaming costume on coming across as psychotic as The Joker.
From his room filled with paper cut-outs of important dates, Calendar Man became Batman’s consultant on the Holiday case, giving him tiny morsels of information while holding back the identity of the killer. This Silence of the Lambs-inspired version would return with a vengeance in the follow-up storyline Batman: Dark Victory, where after helping get Holiday transferred to Arkham Asylum and being revealed as a henchman of Two-Face, Calendar Man plots his revenge against the man who tried to steal his identity.
A vengeful Julian buys fear toxin from the Scarecrow and uses it to lace a cigarette, which he offers to the unwitting Holiday. The toxin starts driving him insane, as he starts hallucinating that his dead father is speaking to him. He throws his gun at the bathroom mirror only to reveal Calendar Man behind it, toying with Holiday’s already-declining sanity. Julian also goes on to join a low-level group of “joke” villains who are out to reclaim their status called The Misfits.
They actually manage to kidnap Bruce Wayne on one occasion, after making a fake bomb threat to Wayne Enterprises which lures Bruce to the building. But alas, all the rehabilitation in the world can’t change his fate, because as we all know, if you’re a Batman villain, you’re gonna end up in Arkham again sooner or later, which is exactly what happens to Julian Gregory Day.
In the Batman Beyond comics, Calendar Man becomes the third victim of that universe’s Hush; a failed clone of Dick Grayson. The former boy wonder tries to take out Commissioner Gordon with an exploding birthday card but ends up shoving it down Calendar Man’s throat, blowing him inside-out.
Superman’s Most Powerful Enemy Made Calendar Man A God
Mr. Myxzptlk or Mxy (sorry for butchering the pronunciation there) is one of the most powerful enemies that Superman has ever encountered. He’s an impish being that exists in the Fifth Dimension and is, for all intents and purposes, a God in our dimension. He has the power to warp reality itself and, being a Fifth Dimensional being, cannot be killed on Prime Earth, or any other Earth for that matter.
The only way to defeat him is by tricking him into saying his own name in reverse, which banishes him back to the fifth dimension; though that exile only lasts for 90 days, so it isn’t usually long before the mischievous little deity is back in the third dimension messing up stuff with his powers for shits and giggles. During one such visit to the third in Batman/Superman #22, he plucks Calendar Man out of Earth and brings him into the fifth dimension.
Mxy tells Julian that he’s dead but he can come back to life and become more powerful than ever if he discovers Mxyxptlk’s secret. There’s just one condition: Julian must tell him what puts the “calendar” in the “man”. After listening to Calendar Man’s one-panel version of his origin story, Mxy gives him a magical hat that allows him to literally break the 4th wall.
When he puts the hat on, Calendar Man can literally peer out of the comic book’s panels and see the story of the issue for himself; both what’s happened and what’s about to happen. This effectively turns him into a god, and he uses his godlike abilities to immediately confront his greatest enemy: Batman.
Calendar Man uses the power granted to him by the hat to his advantage and manages to elude Batman and Superman, even unleashing a barrage of punches on the duo in one of the most hilarious comic book panels of all time.
Unfortunately, his legacy as a joke character catches up to him and he’s eventually defeated by our heroes in a fittingly comical fashion. Still, for those few pages, Mr. Myxzptlk turned Calendar Man into a god, which is more than what most Batman villains can say about themselves.
Alternate Versions Of Calendar Man In Various Forms Of Media – Explored
Despite being treated like a punchline by practically every hero and villain in DC, or perhaps because of it, Calendar Man has found much success in other forms of media. In Batman: The Animated Series, the character was revamped to align with its gender reversal and was introduced as Paige Monroe, a leading model, and spokeswoman in Gotham City.
Insecure about her position in society, she opts to undergo plastic surgery that would enhance her physical beauty so she doesn’t lose to the younger faces. Though the surgery was successful, Paige failed to perceive its success and was convinced that her face was now hideous.
Driven insane by her twisted perception, she adopts the moniker of Calendar Girl and embarks on a crime spree that could only be stopped by Batman. In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, he appears in his more traditional role of comic relief, as he’s used as plot fodder and the butt of Batman’s quips in every appearance he makes.
He also makes appearances in the Lego Batman film as part of Joker’s squad of villains and the musical production Holy Musical B@tman, where he robs a TGI Fridays’ goofy wall pictures before being made short work of by Batman and Robin. Perhaps the most terrifying version of Calendar Man appears in the Arkham video game series where he’s imagined as a pure psychopath obsessed with numbers in the worst way possible.
He doesn’t make a direct appearance in Arkham Origins or Arkham Asylum; we just hear about him on the news, talk about him while solving Riddler’s riddles, or cruise past his calendar-filled cell whenever we visit Arkham. He makes his first proper appearance in Arkham City, and all the build-up makes him seem like a borderline-supernatural threat.
If you visit him on 12 specific dates every month, he will tell you a story about a crime he once committed, with each story becoming progressively deprived and more violent. If you listen to all of them, it will cause him to break out of Arkham and escape. He’d return in Arkham Knight with 7 clones of Solomon Grundy, much to the shock of Batman.
Calendar Man would put Gotham’s Protector through his toughest test in that game, and was also on hand to witness his arch enemy’s apparent demise, fulfilling his personal vow to see through all of Batman’s living days. A more recent Calendar Man appearance was in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad, where he had a cameo as one of Polka Dot Man’s bullies at Belle Reeve penitentiary.
Sean Gunn rocked up with what we think is Julian’s best look to date; the one from Jeph Loebs’ Long Halloween storyline. Over half a century later, a character that was supposed to be a one-off villain has now become one of the most cerebral maniacs in DC history.
Whether he’s rocking a hilarious snowman costume or kidnapping a newborn baby to torment Batman’s moral compass, Calendar Man is a rare case of the low-tier villain rising up and becoming something more. His silly origins and subsequent ascent to deserved Arkham resident have earned him his spot in Batman’s rogue’s gallery.