![]() By making him start as a low level runner working his way up the organization we get to make him part of the building blocks of the city, a role that fits him perfectly. We built his story by really focusing on the development of organized crime in Gotham. You could never imagine Carmine Falcone getting into a turf war with the Joker, but the Penguin absolutely could. (Full disclosure, there's a certain nostalgic appeal to that classic Burgess Meredith Penguin.)Įvery modern version of the character, however, has depicted a brutal and ruthless crimeboss that is just as at home leading his organization from his mobster-classic nightclub as he is interacting with the psychopaths of Gotham. If you let him sit on the sidelines, he's just a funny looking holdover from Batman's goofier years. The Penguin is a character that really only needs you to USE him for him to come across as an incredibly compelling character. This version of the character persisted, and now almost every version of the Penguin you see is depicted as being above street level crime, sometimes even running for Mayor of Gotham. This was a very clever way to take a pretty healthy dose of the original Penguin and carve a place for it in the modern world of Batman he was one of the few Batman villains that wasn't insane at all, he was a brutally cunning crime boss that was able to operate under Batman's nose, occasionally agreeing to deal with the Dark Knight if it meant keeping him away from his businesses. ![]() In the same year Batman: the Animated Series invented the idea of the Iceburg Lounge, the Penguin's nightclub where he operated under a veil of legitimacy. It was a weird idea, to be sure, but it did advance that character away from his classic cartoony appearance. He was the main antagonist in the 1992 Tim Burton movie Batman Returns where he was reimagined as a sort of mutated sewer monster leading an army of rocket-pack sporting Penguins. ![]() This was the verison of the character that was gleefully depicted by Burgess Meredith in the 60's era Batman series. Much like the rest of Batman's rogue's gallery he was a fairly harmless character that specialized in theft rather than mayhem. He was a rolly-polly master thief, a sort of visual gag that was not uncommon in that era Alfred actually had a similar look in his first appearance.
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