Julian Day | Calendar Man (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exceptfebruary) wrote2015-12-22 12:35 pm
exceptfebruary) wrote2015-12-22 12:35 pm
Entry tags:
MoM App/Info
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Julian Gregory Day aka The Calendar Man
CHARACTER AGE: Late 30s
SERIES: DC Comics, Preboot: New Earth, mostly Batman
CHRONOLOGY: Team Titans issue #13, just after getting the Time Foes together
CLASS: Creepy calendar-themed supervillain
HOUSING: Yes, room him with anyone! I would also prefer one of the three other cities and not Heropa, if that’s okay.
BACKGROUND:
So the DC Universe loosely mirrors our own modern world, if our own had superheroes, magic and space stuff. Metahumans and superheroes fly around fighting superpowered crime and extraordinary criminals; Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, the Justice League, Justice League International, the Teen Titans. Lex Luthor, Circe, Braniac, the Rogues, Darkseid, you name it. And most of them operate out of cities and places that don’t exist in our world, such as Metropolis, Keystone, Opal City, Star City, Paradise Island, you get the picture. To be a superhero is to be one of many and costumed crime is almost a legitimate enterprise.
The most relevant place to Julian Day in particular is Gotham, home to the Batman, the caped crusader, the bat themed superhero and his numerous cohorts. The air gets notably darker and grittier. The town is corrupt and full of crooks. If it's not organized crime running the place, the costumed ones are there murdering, thieving, causing disasters. There are fewer powered people, with some notable exceptions. Most of the vigilantes and costumed criminals have no powers, just training, determination or gimmicks.
Only a few care more about their gimmick than Calendar Man.
Julian Day started operating as Calendar Man in the early days of Batman’s career, when the mob still ruled the town and the “costumed freaks” had only just started appearing. He committed crimes based around the calendar. Presumably ones similar to those he committed in the previous DCU, Pre-Crisis - four themed robberies, one for each season, a week thieving things related to the names of the weekdays, etc etc. It can probably be assumed that Julian had committed crimes on holidays too, given his MO. Somewhere along the line he was caught and thrown into Arkham Asylum.
Which brings us to the events of the Long Halloween, in which someone else starts committing crimes based on the holidays. It starts when Johnny Viti, nephew to the crime lord Carmine Falcone, is murdered on Halloween. The killer purposely left behind the murder weapon and a Jack-O-Lantern. From then on, every major holiday is marked with murders of mobsters, and by Christmas Eve Batman starts going to Julian Day for information.
It’s heavily implied that Julian had figured out who was doing the killings early on – he was certainly obsessing over it enough. And of course he would, someone was committing crimes on holidays. The Calendar is his realm of expertise, and the Holiday killer was taking it over. By Labor Day, Julian advised Batman on who the killer nicknamed “Holiday” would go after, leading to the capture of the self-proclaimed culprit: Alberto Falcone, Carmine Falcone’s son. Things were not quite wrapped up, however. The events of the Long Halloween resulted in Harvey Dent, the district attorney, becoming Two-Face and murdering Carmine Falcone, one year after it all started.
Dark Victory continues this line of events about a year later, after Alberto Falcone had been placed in Arkham. In the cell across from Calendar Man, even, because I guess it didn’t occur to anyone how bad of an idea that was. Regardless, Julian Day escaped Arkham (on yet another Halloween), just as a new series of crimes started on the holidays.
The new “Hang Man killings” were only of secondary importance to Julian as he gave himself tattoos around his skull (JANFEBMARAPRMAY etc) and started to work with Harvey Dent/Two-Face and the other rogues. His job involved moving into the walls of the recently released Alberto’s house and tormenting him by making him think he was hearing the voice of his father. This lasted up until Harvey Dent murdered Janice Porter, the then-current DA, and got Calendar Man to dispose the body on Alberto’s bed. But when he tried to convince Alberto to commit suicide, Alberto clued in and revealed the game. There was a scuffle and Alberto got away, injured but alive, and Calendar Man is found injured and unconscious outside the house.
Stuff happens, but that’s the end of Calendar Man’s role in that story.
After that, there were years in and out of Arkham (and sometimes Blackgate prison), mostly in. Eventually he teamed up with the Misfits, a group of villains tired of not being in the spotlight. Killer Moth, the moth-themed leader; Catman, whose theme should be obvious; Chancer, some lucky guy; and Julian himself, the Calendar Man. With the help of some of Julian’s calendar-themed gizmos, they kidnapped Gotham’s mayor, Jim Gordon and Bruce “Totally Not The Batman” Wayne. While they were retrieving the ransom, Killer Moth secretly tried to kill the hostages. They managed to escape, however, and Bruce/Batman caught up with them. He revealed what Killer Moth had done, causing Julian to refuse Moth’s orders to kill the Batman. Calendar Man subsequently gets punched out. (For the record, this was Calendar’s original pullpoint.)
I’ll be bringing him to MoM from his very next caper (presumably escaping soon after the Misfits were caught). Calendar Man goes on a road trip and breaks Clock King, Chronus, and Time Commander ("the Time Foes") out of their various places of incarceration around New York State. The plan was to steal back Time Commander’s super powerful magical hourglass to get up to shenanigans, but they had the bad luck to run into a team of superpowered teenagers called the Team Titans. They get beaten pretty fast.
Calendar’s pull will be from just after breaking out Time Commander, but before any of them get to do anything.
As an aside, Julian’s had a handful of other appearances since then, most of them not relevant. There is one story where, in Arkham, he tells the doctor of a childhood incident where he waited from Christmas Eve until New Year’s at a bus stop in the snow for his father, who never showed up. It’s implied as a possible beginning on his fixation on dates.
I would also like to bring him in with his Cape and Cowl memories, please! So I’ll quickly overview what he did there:
Julian was ported in Hallowe’en, 2011. He soon discovered his porter-granted ability to summon holiday themed monsters by Veteran’s Day. He
He spent his time in the City’s asylum obsessing over things on the network; calendars from other worlds, Homestuck trolls zodiac stuff, etc. In February there was a breakout and Julian escaped. He then tried to ruin April Fool’s Day for the City but failed (as far as he’s aware). He did succeed in ruining Father’s Day for a bunch of Imports by summoning Ghost Dad monsters. Which got him caught again until October, and he subsequently teamed up with Scarecrow to ruin Halloween 2012 for everybody (monsters were involved). He was ported out soon after that.
PERSONALITY:
Julian Day is completely and utterly obsessed with the calendar and anything to do with the calendar: the days of the week, holidays, zodiac signs, the number of days in the month, the names, the dates, the seasons, and especially the holidays. He gives meanings to these things. He expresses this obsession with themed crimes, and while he can come across as a bit of a joke, he takes it dead seriously. His obsession is by no means limited to his crime, and infects almost everything he does.
More to the point, Julian is extremely possessive of his gimmick. He helped stop the Holiday killings and tormented Alberto Falcone almost to the point of suicide because Holiday was taking the attention away from the Calendar Man. Regardless of whether or not Alberto was the Real Killer, he became the face of Holiday terror - and Calendar Man couldn't have that. Julian has a fear of having his work as the Calendar Man forgotten, indicating a huge want for attention, but also a need to be associated with the calendar. It’s HIS thing and no one else's. Other time-based themes he's less possessive of, but the calendar in particular belongs to him. And he wants the Calendar Man to be remembered for his crimes.
Julian does seem to respect human life to an extent, and outside the incident with Alberto Falcone, will often state that murder is not one of his crimes. He views it as a last resort, and only if necessary. So far he’s managed to keep his hands clean in that regard. However, in certain circumstances, literally depending on the day or when he feels threatened, he may become increasingly violent and much less empathetic. Under normal circumstances he is relatively calm (or at least the appearance of calm), almost eerily so. His mood swings and violent tendencies are limited to holidays and/or those days he’s assigned extra meaning. Just because he's not a murderer does not mean he's not dangerous.
Julian is something of a loner, lost in his own world of dates and times and created meanings. This does not mean he never interacts with anyone, and he’s perfectly willing to team up with other villains. But he does tend to filter those interactions through his obsession. He can get to know people, even be pleasant in his own way, but in the end his own ideals and the calendar will take precedent over others.
He’s extremely intelligent, although this is limited by his obsession as well – if it does not have to do with the calendar, he loses interest. But he is very good at what he does. He’s known to be good at building gadgets and is decent enough with technology, although it's not his main priority. It probably goes without saying, but he has an extensive knowledge of anything to do with the calendar. When dealing with people, he can be surprisingly perceptive, but can still make mistakes.
He speaks with a lot of fragments, making side comments, observations, and asking questions that are sometimes more like statements. When Julian's particularly lost in his own thoughts he repeats lists of holidays, rhymes ("Thirty days hath September", "Monday's child is fair of face"), counts out the days on his knuckles, things like that. In costume or committing a crime, he’s more flamboyant and theatrical. For Calendar Man, crime is almost as much a performance as anything else, and he prioritizes being remembered for it over the end result. In fact, he often spends more money setting up his crimes than what he gets from them. That being said, his need for funds often drives his crime as well, like a strange feedback loop.
In the City, he embraced his porter-granted powers and used them to great effect. It made him bolder, and unlike his gadget-based crime let him act without worrying about money. In a new world, one where he had to start over from scratch, he felt the need to step up his game. Over time, between learning about different worlds, different calendars, and a belief that the Porter was in tune with the calendar (often bringing people in on holidays, etc), he increasingly targeted imports. Coinciding with the calendar, of course. Everything always leads back to that.
POWER:
Calendar Man has no canon powers! I’d like to give him two for MoM, detailed below:
1. Holiday Monster Summoning
Calendar Man can summon monsters! He can only summon them on holidays, and they have to fit the theme of the day.
Almost any holiday counts as long as it is celebrated in-universe and has some sort of symbol or figure that can be monsterized. He can’t summon outright religious figures, but other stuff associated is okay. So Coca Cola style Santa is fine, St. Nicholas or Jesus is a no-go.
Calendar Man's only be able to summon the same number of monsters as the current day of the week, minimum of 1 on Mondays, maximum of 7 on Sundays. Power and size is spread between all of them, so Sunday's monsters individually have 1/7th of the power Monday's singular monster might have. Some monsters might have magical effects which come at the cost of physical strength. For example, Valentine's Day Cupid monsters might fly and have arrows that cause infatuation, but can be one-punched.
They’ll listen to Calendar Man’s orders but he doesn't directly control them. They also cannot/will not kill, although they can injure, fight or destroy things. After being defeated or by the end of the day the monsters and any magical effects they created disappear. The possible exception being on holidays that span across multiple days, though their number still has to stay consistent with the weekday.
And of course, any magical effect a monster might have on a character will be with player permission.
2. Date Detection
Upon touching someone or hearing their voice (over the network counts, if they’re using voice or video), Julian can sense one important date to the person.
This can be their birthday, marriage anniversary, day their mother died, day their planet blew up, day they were originally imPorted etc. It just has to be important to that person! It does not have to be the MOST important date, just an important date. Julian can sense the date is worth something to them and what the date is, but will not know why.
It can be Month/Day or Month/Day/Year. It does not have to be on the Gregorian calendar, as long as there is some equivalent calendar (i.e. if a character comes from a world that has different months, etc). The player of the character in question can choose to translate it to the Gregorian calendar though. The date can be something from their own world or in game.
ICly, it is inconsistent, doesn’t always work, and sometimes even when it does it takes a while for Calendar Man to sense it. OOCly, it will be OPT-IN at any time and there will be a permissions post!