The Penguin Appeciation Thread

Pain and Prejudice is one of the best and most underrated Batman stories that has come out in years. At times I felt a bit bad for Oswald, and other times I found him terrifying and so vile. That's how the Penguin should be. A combination of villainy with a touch of the sympathetic.

If you want recommendations for other great Penguin stories, I'd recommend:

- Detective Comics #610 & 611. Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle greatness.






- Secret Origins Special #1. Penguin gets revenge on a childhood bully who tormented him mercilessly.





- Batman #548 and 549. A great story where Penguin gets tired of life in the Iceberg Lounge and misses the exciting days when he would challenge Batman as a the umbrella wielding, attack bird loving super villain.

 

Batman #548 covers this as well in a flashback Oswald has. It shows a scene where his mother forces him to carry the umbrella around even in the sunshine because the father died of pneumonia by walking out into a rain storm. Only the mother in this story is very unpleasant. A real biotch in fact. She smacks him viciously over the head with the umbrella when he refuses to take it. She even calls him a little freak.

Seek the individual issues. If you have any good comic book store near you that sells back issues you should find them there. Or look for them on-line. They're not expensive. Both are from the 90's.

Also if you're looking for another Penguin story where he's just pure ruthless evil, check out the first Detective Comics Annual written by Denny O'Neil:

I agree. Their run on Detective is my favorite of any era in the Batman comics. I have all of them except for one issue.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Breyfogle really knew how to draw the best Batman.

 

A lot of my favorite Penguin stories have already been posted. Here are some more:

Detective Comics #824



Batman #257



Joker's Asylum: The Penguin #1



Batman #38



Batman #448, Detective Comics # 615, Batman #449







The Batman Adventures #1



Penguin Triumphant



Robin: To Kill a Bird

 

The ones Cain posted are all solid recommendations. I would also recommend this one from the classic Steve Englehart run on Detective Comics in the 70's:




It's collected in the TPB of that era called 'Strange Apparitions'.

I've never read that one. What's the basic plot of it?

 

Shortly after Tim Drake has lost his father and Stephanie Brown The Penguin decides to put out a contract on Robin's head while he's in the middle of his grieving. It was one of the best stories Bill Willingham wrote during his Robin run.

Here's another cool Penguin story and a rare Batman & Joker team up. Where The Joker is framed for killing The Penguin and it ends up being a circumstance driven by a lot of fowl play (I did that on purpose lol).



These are not conventional Penguin stories but I found them to be a lot of fun as well

The Silver Age #1




Teen Titans Silver Age #1



A few more of my favorite Penguin stories from Batman comics

Detective Comics #171




Batman #155



Batman #169



Batman #190



Batman #287



Batman #374

 

Thanks. It sounds good. I'll have to track it down. How many issues did it run for?

I love this one. It was used as a basis for Penguin's first episode in the 1966 Batman show.

 

The entire story runs from Robin #134 - #139

But the Penguin centric issues are #135 - #138

 

After seeing all the Penguin talk over in the Batman (1989) thread I think it's time to bump this thread once again.

Cobblepot Rules!

 

^Grim Reaper is that you? Nice name change

 

It's really cool that you've gotten into him through a lot of his classic golden age appearances. People usually overlook the golden age but there is so much great stuff available from that era it's not even funny. Especially when it comes to Batman.

 

A lot of Burgess Meredith's Penguin was based off the Golden Age stories.

 

Burgess is still my favorite Penguin out of all the on screen adaptions of the character. He was born to play him. Originally he wasn't even first choice. Mickey Rooney was. But he couldn't because of a scheduling conflict, thank god. So Burgess got the part, and he ended up being the favorite villain on the show (they always had a script written for him should Burgess ever be available to do an episode), and Bill Dozier, the show's executive producer, loved him best out of all the guest villains, too.

 

Yeah, Burgess was fantastic. He really transformed for the character. I think his Penguin worked really well because he struck a nice balance of criminal and gentleman. He always had a scheme (and a reputation) but could still charm the ladies and slip into the social scene. This Penguin was really on the ball, too. For example he always detected listening devices that were planted. I liked that side of him. He was no fool.

 

Yes true that. I recall several times where Batman and Robin tried to spy on Penguin and he always sussed it out. My favorite was when Bruce tried to bug his umbrella shop, and ended up being caught because Penguin had his shop alarmed for such a thing. Penguin gassed him and almost roasted him alive in his furnace.

 

He had a little mini aviary of caged carrier pigeons in the back of his umbrella shop;

 

66 Penguin was amazing I loved every moment he was in the show and same as Joker, Catwoman and The Riddler.

My favourite Penguin is Paul Williams in BTAS and live action is Danny DeVito plus DeVito is one of my actor.

 

The 60's show did that, too;




They were teamed up in a season 2 three part episode, and in the spin off movie, too.

 

He used several. Gas, gun, one that shoots sparks, oh and he had a bulletproof one, too. He also had non weapon ones that were tricked out with devices like bug detectors, two way radios, even one that he used to light his cigarettes.

You won't regret purchasing the show or the movie. They're class. Penguin is the lead villain in the movie. Nearly everything revolves around him with the villains.

 

So how many great Penguin stories are available in trade paperback/hardcover and on Amazon? Always been interested to read more on him and this thread's been great.

 

^ I just bought that Annual in it's original format recently. Great story. And Breyfogle doing the art makes it even better. That must be one of his first Batman stories because that came out in 1987, the year before he started his regular run with Grant on Detective.

 

I think birds are his true passion. The umbrella is a prop, but nonetheless much loved by him.

 

Yeah it's the more the birds. He relates to them, he cares about them, they were his only friends as a kid. The umbrella came from his mother forcing him to always carry one, and later he found out what an effective weapon it can be. So while the umbrella is an obsession coming from a personal event in his life, the birds are way more personal to him because of the emotional attachment, and the fact that he resembles one himself.

 

He even often calls the birds his friends. Batman has even mentally noted many times that he Penguin treats birds with more compassion than he ever has his fellow human beings.