Many performers create fictional backstories for their characters that are never shown on screen, but very few have actually written down such backstories. However, Paul Dano has the advantage of portraying a character that is owned by a business eager for intellectual property, so in a blessed instance of corporate synergy, he's releasing a tie-in comic book for The Batman about The Riddler's backstory.
In his interview with GQ, Dano discusses this journey and says that part of his preparation for each role is finding out how his character "gets to page one." The Riddler: Year One, which was "somewhat inspired" by the Frank Miller classic Batman: Year One, was created from that idea. Dano's meticulousness supposedly so impressed Batman director Matt Reeves that he introduced the actor to DC Comics, and the rest is history.
Dano reportedly spent a solid six months of this year immersed in his Riddler book, which is "an emotional horror narrative about trauma," despite having done a lot of the legwork for the movie, according to GQ. The Fabelmans star claims that a large portion of that time has been spent "becoming extremely nerdy about sequential art and color theory." He likens the experience to directing a movie (his first film in that capacity was Wildlife, co-written with partner Zoe Kazan in 2018). "I could feel how much I love this picture we took... This comic reminds me of my next movie.
Many famous people have written comic books, including Kevin Smith, who has written for both Marvel and DC, and Gerard Way, of My Chemical Romance and Umbrella Academy fame. Few people have been able to fully develop their own characters on both the paper and the screen. It's a small club to which Dano now belongs, but Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Nicholas Brendon got to write for Xander and the entire Scooby gang in the comic adaptation of the television series. On October 25, 2022, The Riddler: Year One will be released, and we'll see how he fares.