Calendar Man 2024

How I would design and reinvent DC Comics' "Calendar Man."

This character bible is a re-imagining of Batman's "Calendar Man" because every incarnation of him his cringe and out of place. I propose here a new version of the character that should be canon and be treated with a new level of creative and intellectual respect.

-

John David Garland, otherwise known as "J.D. Garland" in academic circles and esoteric journals, holds a PhD from Tufts University in Comparative Literature and currently teaches full time at Gotham University for the past twenty years. He is loved by the academic staff and students alike. He is known for his controversial thesis on Shakespeare's non-existence and his attack on New Historicism, translating both Derrida and Lacan against the American liberal culture. His innovative and quirky analytical philosophy is known to rebuke the most liberal and universal arguments that are commonplace.

At his first decade at Gotham, he met Adrian Wang, a fellow PhD student in Cultural Anthropology doing research on Asian American culture and street art. Both fell in love and had an open gay relationship for five years, as well as legally getting married. Soon after the marriage, Adrian was killed in a car accident. Garland fell into a deep depression and started a compulsive eating disorder, transforming his slim and beautiful figure into a fat and gluttonous form. While he may look ugly, his personality is bright and kind. Both students and staff joke about his first impression ugly appearance, and then people change their mind after hearing a heartfelt lecture in his class on topics from psychoanalysis to revisionist history. Garland has also been known to have personal relationships with students outside the classroom, even allowing them to text him at the middle of the night or ever hanging out on the weekend.

Garland invested into a cryptocurrency business, where others would mine for him. He would choose certain dates when to invest in crypto and what to sell, as if it was a friendly hobby. Users on his Discord server would call him the "Calendar Man" because of his accurate timing when to buy and sell crypto. Unfortunately, Garland’s crypto was traced to a money laundering scheme with Scarecrow, another ex-professor that he admired. When Gotham police traced the origins of Scarecrow’s scheme, they arrested Garland at a casual day teaching class. His arrest was provoked as unfair and unjust by academic staff and students.

When Batman interrogates Scarecrow, Scarecrow blames Garland for the scheme, and urges Batman to interrogate him instead. Batman soon meets Garland in a padded room, surprised at his character for who he is. Garland comes off as polite, and is flattered to meet The Dark Knight. When Batman asks questions about the scheme, Garland rebuttals and says that what he was doing was normal and just so happen to associate with Scarecrow simply because he admired his work. Garland acts as his own lawyer, and persuades Batman that he is innocent and that internet activity is constantly misunderstood as evil. Garland also admits he’s into gay pornography and says that he hates child sex trafficking. He also enlightens Batman about logic, dates of time, historical events, and why people with trauma are stuck in a peculiar zeitgeist and time period itself. Garland asks if Batman feels the same way about his motivations and if he has a fixation. Batman ignores the question.

Before he leaves, Garland hints to Batman that it is most likely on the weekend that something bad would happen because he is wasting his time with an innocent bystander, like him, in the room. Garland also mentions how Batman made the same mistake by keeping busy while Bane broke his back. Batman now feels that Garland knows too much and is hiding something.

While Garland is in jail, rival academics want him out of the university. They proclaim he is a pedophile into Asian boys, a racist propagandist trying to doubt American liberalism, and as well a crooked mafia leader who gets what he wants. Garland feels intense anger against those who mock his feelings towards Asian men, as his lover was Asian American.

Garland has been known to doubt liberal and egalitarian ideologies in class as irrational fears against human desires, citing René Girard, François Laruelle, and Jacques Bouveresse. He then is kicked out of academia at the right moment because of his ties with Scarecrow and the controversy around his crypto scamming. Another person accused him of grooming boys in his Discord for inappropriate sexual communications and writing things that made him feel uncomfortable.

Garland is upset and demands to have a public speaking event aired on television. In this speech, Garland does not apologize for who he is, and proclaims his love for the university, staff, and students. He blames liberal society for "cancelling" his appearance and threatens to sue for defamation. He explains that his opponents are uneducated in the history of intellectual thought and logic. He then blurbs out the myth of "The Holocaust" because he believes it is used to advocate “the fascist state of Israel that builds upon a fairy tale that scares everyone involved.” This little line cancels Garland further, and now organizations like the ADL or SPLC want to corner him as an "anti-Semite."

After this new controversy, Garland because more upset and writes an article about how his opposition attacks his queer character, even though it’s by the very queer people that trusted him in the first place for the last twenty years of his professional life. He assumes it has something to do with his passionate love for Adrian that is outside the normative.

In jail, Garland hears about a conversation around Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus Pit, that it has the power to resurrect people. Garland was in disbelief that this could be true, but the prisoner, named “Hank,” says that this is real, and the technology of the acid bath in the prison complex could be linked to it. Hank explains that he has AIDS and will die soon if he doesn't do something about it.

During prison work at the acid baths, a riot breaks out, and Hank climbs the ladder to jump into the acid bath. Garland follows him, and a guard accidentally pushes Garland into the acid bath.

Unfortunately, Hank doesn’t survive the fall and dies in the acid bath. But Garland survives from the acid and is totally fine. The guards rescue him and put him back in his cell.

Garland realizes he now has the power to invoke picture perfect memory, including memories of him and Adrian Wang. He uses his power and cries to relive the memories of the past like watching a movie. His good behavior in jail leads the prison guards to suspect he is innocent and deserves that he be let out. They decide to let him out and let him return to his home until he is called for trial. Garland also starts to realize that he can read other people's minds and see what they have done in the past or what they feel like they are going do to in the future.

Back at his home, Garland reads about Alvin Plantinga's concept of "human freedom and divine foreknowledge." In this text, God may know what everyone will do in time, but also can't predict what an individual will do with their own abilities. Garland has this same revelation about his newly acquired powers and realizes that he has become God. Garland starts to believe in future dates that individuals believe they will make happen. He then tests his powers out through his own private research scanning other people's minds at the public park.

Before the day of the trial, Garland was invited to clean out his office at Gotham University. He reads the minds of the supposed empathic staff, and realize in their minds, they called him "gay,"a faggot," "a pedophile," and even "a Asian fetishist." It was such a shock for him that for more than two decades, they pretended to respect him for his queerness and intellectual criticism of liberalism, when in reality, it was all just a social status game of people who didn’t believe in it.

When confronted with a rival professor who was condescending against him, Garland reads his mind and then retorts back with intellectual one liners, citing Alain de Benoist and other forbidden names to rebuke the thoughts that professor had in his head. The professor becomes so furious he runs out of the room.

Garland shames the academic staff for judging his love for "Asiansexuality" as irrational, calling them "fake cosmopolitans" and "paycheck pigs." The staff slowly realizes their own guilt. Some get more mad at Garland and call him “a white supremacist.” Garland reads their minds and sees that the very name callers come from pro-white rich families. He then uses this power knowledge to corner them in traumatic terror as hypocrites and “racists.”

An uproar begins at Gotham University from the admission of students based upon race and how "anti-white" the academic staff really is. Students and the angry public start defending Garland on 4chan and Twitter calling him the "based" professor.

During his trial, Garland acts as his own over his lawyer and reads everyone’s mind in the room. He uses this information to leverage the argument to his side. When addressed on why he would sell crypto to criminal types openly, Garland remarks that they have a similar queer status as him.

The opposing lawyer uses private information that Garland was into gay Thai porn and used crypto to buy from this service, which also was recently busted for child sex trafficking. The opposing lawyer asks whatever he is into pedophilia. Garland softly explains that it is a subculture that is positive about sex, and that he is "coming to age" over a repressed unmet desire and finding meaning with people like him. This lecture by Garland reaffirms his theories on psychoanalysis and his radical and niche sexual preference against normative society that continues to scapegoat him. By reading other people’s minds in the room, Garland uses this advantage to rebuke them before they can speak. Many people are exposed to Garland’s theories of outsider sexuality.

When the opposing lawyer asks, "But why does it matter if it's that race over this one? Why won't you treat everyone the same??" Garland replies that sexuality is not egalitarian and cannot be reduced down to irrational lust. He then proclaims that being gay is like Will Fellows idea of “the gay culture that gate-keeps civilization," and that Asian people do this better than the subjective and annoying Puritan ethics that dominate European civilization. This sparks wide debate on the internet, and Garland becomes an internet sensation overnight.

While Garland does not win the case, it is a neutral standoff between defamation and laundering. He has to pay back $100,000 and cannot use the internet for two years. Gotham University does not allow Garland back into his position, and then the youthful and radical protests erupt over this mistreatment.

When released out of jail, many fans approach Garland and want to help him out. Garland reads their minds, somewhat grooms them, and gets $100,000 in over a week. His fans speak on behalf of Garland as "Calendar Man," and he is invited to all major podcast programs that are recorded without him accessing the internet. Garland even appears on The Joe Rogan Experience to talk about “wokeness in the collage faculty.” He soons develops a cult following around body building gays and conservatives.

Soon after, Garland visits Adrian Wang's living sister, Jessica. Jessica congratulates Garland's success as a cult figure. Garland reads Jessica's mind, and he is happy to know she agrees with him on every aspect of race and identity. Jessica recently married a white guy named Tim. Garland reads his mind, and realizes that he too is exactly like him. Garland is then encouraged to use his powers to fight for justice and for the downtrodden, even if it means breaking the law.

Jessica gives Garland a large red and white coat that Adrian use to wore. Garland is fond of it, and demands he gets the same red and white coats as his main wardrobe choice, seven days a week. This is when Garland puts on a name tag "Calendar Man" and dons his iconic red and white look, but in a somewhat ironic Ivy-league fashion. Garland becomes a little bit more humorous and jokes about how the internet gave him a new life.

During a walk back home, The Joker approaches Garland for advice and help. The Joker asks if he knows what others are thinking about. Garland replies that Joker will likely rob a bank. Joker then tricks Garland by revealing that he had the Gotham police behind him. Joker then persuades the police that Garland has the power to read minds and should be locked away in Arkham Asylum with him. Joker is then able to get away from the police, and the police unfairly put Garland in Arkham Asylum instead.

Another new mass media case reveals that Garland has the power to read minds, and the establishment becomes furious about his relationship with not just Scarecrow, but now Joker.

Garland is upset at this. Although he hates Joker, his new information on him could give power to Batman. That is, if Garland is let free and given back his position at Gotham University.

Batman soon meets Garland again in Arkham Asylum, interrogating him about Joker and his mind powers. Garland is able to use his power on Batman, and Batman gets ever more paranoid.

This soon develops a new canon of comics and stories as John Garland, also known as "Calendar Man," who is a political pawn with all characters in the DC universe. Garland retains the image of a fat gay guy like Brendan Fraser in The Whale.

This to me is a better Calendar Man arc than anything DC has ever put out.

-pe

7-7-2024