Who am I ?

I'm Emmanuel Papillon, a French web designer who happens to be very fond of puzzles, video games, Batman in general and the Animated Series in particular. This web site is a combination of a all those interests, and belongs to a group of artistic, experimental web sites I've created, called Batbad.

Batbad is a huge project I started around year 2000, which goal is to offer something new and immersive with web design, through three web sites : the main site is a homage to French comic writer Fred (the "Batbad" name comes from one of his comics) ; the second site, the biggest of the three, is about David Lynch, and is a virtual exploration of his world ; and the last one is the site you're visiting now.

I also do sites for a living, of course, and my curriculum vitae is available from Batbad's main site, which you can access by clicking on the "batbad" plaque on the TV below.

Actually, I never followed Batman comics continuity, it just doesn't interest me all that much. I just know the main events and characters that are important to understand separate stories and spin-offs, and appreciate some allusions (Jason, the Golden Age, the Crisis)...

In fact, I discovered Batman thanks to Tim Burton's film, featuring Jack Nicholson. Even despite the obvious (to me) flaws of the film, I've been very impressed by its world and atmosphere, and wanted to know more about the franchise.

I read my first Batman comic, "The Killing Joke", in 1989. I know it's seen as a masterpiece but I didn't like it much, mostly because to me it demystifies the Joker. "Arkham Asylum", by Grant Morisson and Dave McKean, and especially "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller, really did give me what I was looking for, and made Batman an important character and symbol for me.

What did switch my Batman interest from "it's quite good" to "it's just brilliant", though, has been Batman : the Animated Series. As someone mostly into visual art, what struck me first in the series was the stylised art from Bruce Timm and the dynamic character design (both allowing gorgeous animation) ; then the old "film noir" atmosphere (very fitting for the Dark Knight's universe), the 1940/1950 look, settings and pacing ; and finally, the surprisingly mature and clever writing (which went on with the excellent "Batman Beyond").

I even think the quality of the series's writing ridicules all the Batman films's until "Batman Begins". It's disturbing when a straight to DVD cartoon like "Return of the Joker" has more character analysis, disturbing images, and depth, than any of the first four Batman Hollywood films. They really did something special here.

Puzzles can be an art form. Why can the general public admire a painting's composition, technique and intent, and not a puzzle's ? They're careful craftworks, beautiful and full of meaning. Why are art forms about seeing (paintings), about smelling (perfume), about touching (sculpture), about hearing (music), or about tasting (gastronomy) commonly recognized, and not what's about something much more important than any of our five senses : our capacity to think ?

Lewis Carroll was first and foremost a mathematician who loved problems, games and puzzles. Descartes was a logician who enjoyed logic riddles and paradoxes. History's greatest thinkers and artists all liked to play with abstract concepts, and to challenge their own intellect with complicated problems. Why shouldn't we ?

I've always been fascinated by complex mechanisms and automatons. This is why I've mostly studied computers and programming : there's few things as satisfying as creating something out of your sheer mind, then letting it live its own life. Visual art is close to it, but to me there's something "dead" about it : viewers of a work of art don't interact with it. People using a program or browsing a web site or playing a video game or solving a puzzle, on the other hand, do.

I switched from programming to web design because I wanted to stay in control of my end product, and not be just another cog in the machine ; and also because visual art is still too important for me to simply type anonymous lines of code as a programmer all day. This web site, I hope, effectively brings several of my passions together, and as a result will suck you into the Riddler's world.

For some reason, recent comics writers have that idea that the Riddler belongs to the past - to the Golden Age and the TV series. Batman comics getting darker and darker since the seventies, the Riddler has become some sort of embarrassment : generally treated as a "has-been" villain, he's shown as a campy (yet smart) nerd, trying hard to stay among the costumed criminal elite. He's comic relief, because his modus operandi is seen as campy, immature, and dated.

This is a big mistake. The Riddler is all about media manipulation, ciphering and deciphering, misleading clues, double meanings, deceptive appearances, and the power of the mind... aren't our times much more appropriate for the Riddler than the Golden Age ? If a classic Batman villain should be at ease in our age of computers everywhere, virtual reality, video games and the Internet, it's the Riddler.

The Animated Series, despite Bruce Timm's dislike for the Riddler and the limitations of the series format (short episodes and young audience), understood this. Its Riddler is smart, calm, sarcastic, knows how to please and use the media, and has huge programming and hacking skills. Like in the very first Riddler appearance in the comics, his riddles aren't a pathological weakness, but a way to trick Batman into the wrong direction, to cheat him. Why would riddles be terrifying in a film like "SE7EN" or in a movie series like "Saw", and be nothing but camp into Batman's universe ?

This web site, I hope, pays tribute to that Riddler : a smart, serious, worthy, complex and interesting character - like the Riddler from the "Riddle me That" story from "Legends of the Dark Knight". Most of the time, that tribute will be made through games and puzzles, but will also make use of stories and characters, to make the site a much more complete and enjoyable experience.

I trust you'll like it.