No prob. Pengy is my second fav Batman villain. He's been underrated for years, ironically it happened just after Returns, which should have boosted his popularity after being in a movie.
But he was absent for pretty much the next three years in the comics, even leaving him out of the whole Knightfall storyline, and then when they eventually brought him back it was as a boring casino owner.
Thankfully in the last few years he's been getting back on top again, with the comics (Penguin Pain and Prejudice in particular. Read it if you haven't already. Penguin is so scary in it), the Arkham games, and the Gotham TV show.
I don't ever recall him saying anything like that. It was obvious they were just trying to make Penguin look presentable as a candidate because his regular clothing was horrendous.
"Research tells us that voters like fingers" lol. I still want to know how she expect to get five fingered gloves on his flipper hands.
Oh The Batman cartoon. Sorry when people say the Batman animated show it usually means BTAS.
I can't stand that show, so if they tried to make Bruce and Penguin mirror images of each other, then I'll take your word for it. I couldn't watch more than a few episodes. Their ape looking barefoot straightjacket Joker was the last straw for me.
I'm back haha, sorry for the delayed answer.
So about the batman, I totally get you. It took me a little time to really appreciate this show, because of how ugly it looks. After a while, it didn't bother me that much. To this day, there are still some artistic choices that I'm not too fond of (reggae Joker or kung fu master penguin come to mind for instance), but I have a fondness for this show. It's really different from TAS, and it doesn't try to be the same thing. The first episode is a clear departure, with batman arresting Rupert Thorne in the first scene. What I like about it, is that even though it's not as serialized as beware the batman for instance, there is a real sense of growth. In the first season, bruce is not a rookie, but he's also not really a seasoned batman. But in the end, he's really really good at what he does, and you can totally believe he's part of the justice league. There is also all the sidekicks stuff, with barbare showing him he doesn't have to do everything alone, and later, Dick becoming his ward. There are some real character arcs, and they are well written, like their take on clayface, which is basically an adaptation of the killing joke (and like in the dark knight, the joker wins, because he has the good guy becoming a monster of sort). But my point was: in that show, they are also playing with the idea that the cobblepot family used to be wealthy. And it's not anymore. And oswald hates Bruce because of this. You can see how he wants to be an aristocrat, but he's really a dork, with no sense of what someone wealthy could do for others. He's the dude who wants to be rich and would do anything for that, including hurt people, when bruce is the dude who is rich, and would do anything with his wealth to protect people. One would give all his money to get his family back, and the other would give his famlily to be rich. The same thing can be said of oswald in Layman's tec run. He wanst to have his mother name on a plaque, not to honor her and what she represented for gotham, but because it's his name. And he would rather cheat and have Bruce killed to achieve this goal, than do everything in his power to honor her by decent means. So in that regards, I do think Oswald being from a wealthy family can make him a twisted mirror of bruce. But that's just me.
Let's get back to batman returns now. We have a Bruce Wayne who is basically a recluse. Granted, he sometimes go out for business, but it's obvious he's not comfortable with people, and he feels more like a weirdo than a society playboy. Also, most of the time, he's alone in his manor, waiting to go into action. On the other hand, you have oswald, who lives in the sewer, but has a family who lives with him. He may act like a freak once he's in society, but he does seem to appreciate being with other people, and in a sense, he's comfortable with others, and he has no trouble being himself, even though he's supposed to play the gentleman act. He's more than happy to play a role, when you can see Bruce would be more than happy not to have to play the bruce persona in public. Also, Bruce is playing the vigilante because he was traumatized when he was a child, and he wants to fight crime, in order to avoid other persons (and that includes specifically children) to suffer the same loss. On the other hand, Oswald was traumatized as a child, and as a result, he wants to get revenge on gotham's families, by taking their children. Also, like oswald said, it does seem, in this movie, that batman whishes he could be a freak, when Oswald has dreams of grandeur. and because of those dreams of grandeur (which he has in parts because his parents were wealthy) it allows Max to manipulate him into his scheme, which he does by playing with the aristocrat imagery, that includes the top hat and all.
What I like is also how fragile oswald really is, and how Max is the true monster in this story, even though he doesn't "wear a mask" and he's not a freak.
Also, I'm sorry, but english not being my language, it's not really easy to convey mi ideas in a convincing way.
I currently have a small wall of unread books by my desk, not all of which are in English, so I can probably wait for a while to see if the price drops.
