I feel certain that someone, somewhere deep in the bowels of your sizable enterprise got through the August issue of Detective Comics and thought: “Dear sweet Jesus, the idea of The Riddler as an egomaniacal ‘consulting detective’ is way too good to waste on some one-shot; this should be a whole series!”

This is a good and fundamentally correct thought. But then you despaired, for you realized that a plot-driven mystery series of this sort would require a writer of truly peerless gifts, and Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, and Ellis are otherwise occupied. You cursed the dark moment in which you had summoned such a fetching Galatea, knowing it would be damned to remain cold clay without the right author to breathe life into it.

Now, now, dry your eyes. You know I can’t bear to see a grown comics executive cry. Tell you what, I could see my way clear to script, say, a year’s worth of issues—maybe even stick around as a consultant for the inevitable TV spinoff. Stop, stop, I’m blushing—the look in your eyes is thanks enough.