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Penguin Fictional character biography
Born Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, the Penguin was bullied as a child for his short stature, weight, and beak-like nose. Several stories relate that he was forced, as a child, always to carry an umbrella by his overprotective mother due to his father's death from pneumonia after a drenching. His mother owned pet birds that Cobblepot lavished with attention, and served as his only friends growing up. His love for birds would eventually lead him to obtaining an Ornithology major in college. In some versions, Cobblepot turns to crime after his mother dies and the birds are repossessed to pay his mother's debts; in others, he is an outcast in his high-society family and their rejection drives him to become a criminal. In keeping with his origins, the Penguin pursues his criminal career with class: He prefers formal wear such as a top hat, monocle, and tuxedo, especially of the "white-tie-and-tails" design.
Pre-Crisis
Originally known only by his alias, the Penguin first appeared in Gotham City as a skilled thief, sneaking a priceless painting out of the museum by hiding the rolled-up canvas in the handle of his umbrella. The Penguin later used the canvas as proof of his intellect to a local mob, which he was then allowed to join. With the Penguin's help, the mob pulled off a string of ingenious heists, but the mob's leader and the "be-monocled bird" eventually fell out, leading Cobblepot to kill him with his umbrella gun. The Penguin became leader of the mob and attempted to neutralize Batman by framing him for theft. The Penguin's plans were eventually thwarted, but the bandit himself escaped.
The Penguin was a persistent nemesis for Batman and Robin throughout the Golden and Silver Ages, pulling off ploy after ploy, such as teaming up with The Joker, attempting to extort money from a shipping company by pretending to flash-freeze a member of its board of directors, and participating in Hugo Strange's auction of Batman's secret identity.
The Penguin made his last appearance during the last appearance of the Earth-One Batman. After he and a multitude of Batman's enemies are broken out of Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison by Ra's al Ghul, the Penguin carries out Ra's' plans to kidnap Batman's friends and allies. The Penguin, along with the Joker, the Mad Hatter, Cavalier, Deadshot and Killer Moth, lay siege to Gotham City Police Headquarters, but are infuriated when the Joker sabotages their attempt at holding Commissioner James Gordon for ransom. A standoff ensues, with the Joker on one side and the Penguin and the Mad Hatter on the other. The Joker quickly subdues both with a burst of laughing gas from one of his many gadgets.
Post-Crisis
Following the Crisis rebooting the history of the DC Universe, the Penguin was relegated to sporadic appearances, until writer Alan Grant (who had earlier penned the Penguin origin story "The Killing Peck") and artist Norm Breyfogle brought him back, deadlier than ever. Within the era of the Tim Drake Robin, the Penguin forms a brief partnership with hypnotist Mortimer Kadaver, who helps him fake his own death as a ploy to strike an unsuspecting Gotham. The Penguin later kills Kadaver, after plugging his own ears with toilet paper so that the hypnotist no longer has power over him.
After Batman foils this particular endeavor, the Penguin embarks on one of his grandest schemes in the three-part story "The Penguin Affair." After finding Harold Allnut being tormented by two gang members, the Penguin takes the technologically gifted hunchback in, showing him kindness in exchange for services. Harold builds a gadget that allowed the Penguin to control flocks of birds from miles away, which the Penguin utilizes to destroy radio communications in Gotham and crash a passenger plane. This endeavor, too, is foiled by Batman, who finally hires Harold as his mechanic.
The Penguin resurfaces during Jean Paul Valley's tenure as Batman as one of the few to deduce that Valley is not the original Caped Crusader. To confirm this theory, he kidnaps Sarah Essen Gordon, places her in a death-trap set to go off at midnight, and turns himself in, utilizing the opportunity to mock her husband Commissioner Gordon as midnight approaches. An increasingly infuriated Gordon is nearly driven to throw him off the police headquarters roof before Valley shows up in the nick of time with a rescued Sarah. As Valley left, he commented, "There's nothing the Penguin can throw at me that I haven't encountered before." The Penguin reluctantly agrees with this sentiment, accepting that he has become passé.
Subsequently, the Penguin turned his attentions to a new modus operandus, operating under the front of a legitimate restaurant and casino he cals "The Iceberg Lounge." Though he is arrested for criminal activities several times during the course of his "reform," he always manages to secure a release from prison thanks to his high-priced lawyers.
During the storyline "No Man's Land," when Gotham City is nearly leveled by an earthquake, the Penguin stays behind when the US government closes down and blockades the city. He becomes one of the major players in the lawless city, using his connections to profit by trading the money that nobody else in Gotham could use for goods through his outer-Gotham contacts. One of these connections is discovered to be Lex Luthor and his company, LexCorp, with Penguin's information helping Luthor's scheme to gain control of Gotham's property records, although he is dismissed from the scheme when his attempts to blackmail Luthor backfire.
The Penguin is swept up in the events of Infinite Crisis. In the limited series's seventh issue, he is briefly seen as part of the Battle of Metropolis, a multi-character brawl started by the Secret Society of Super Villains. The Penguin, along with several other villains, is bowled over at the surprise appearance of Bart Allen.
One Year Later, while the Penguin is away from Gotham City, the Great White Shark and Tally Man kill many of the villains who had worked for him, and frame the reformed Harvey Dent. Great White had planned to take over Gotham's criminal syndicate and eliminate the competition, the Penguin included. Upon his return to Gotham, the Penguin continues to claim that he has gone straight, and reopens the Iceberg, selling overpriced Penguin merchandise. He urges the Riddler to avoid crime, as their new shady but legal lifestyle is more lucrative.
The Penguin was featured as a prominent figure in the Gotham Underground tie-in to the series Countdown. He fights a gang war against Tobias Whale and Intergang while supposedly running an "underground railroad" for criminals. As the Penguin conducts his affairs, Two-Face enters the club and demands to be let in on his underground railroad project. The Penguin tells him to meet him after hours and subsequently brings him into a meeting with several of Gotham's most notorious villains, including Hugo Strange, Scarecrow, and Mad Hatter. Batman, in the disguise of Matches Malone, spies on the meeting from behind a darkened alcove. Suddenly, the Suicide Squad bursts into the room and attacks the assemblage of villains. It is revealed that the Penguin is involved with the Suicide Squad, and that he had set up the other villains to gain the favor of the Squad. The Penguin later meets up with Tobias Whale in order to negotiate with him. The Penguin and Spoiler had assembled gangs like the Bat Killers, who were based on Batman's enemies; the Dead End Boys, based on the Suicide Squad; the Femme Fatales, based on female villains; the Five Points Gang, based on the Fearsome Five; the L.O.D., based on the Legion of Doom to which the Penguin himself had once belonged; and the New Rogues, based on the Rogues. The Penguin and Tobias Whale fight each other as Robin, the Huntress, Batgirl, and the fourth Wildcat all get involved. Even though the Penguin gets the upper hand, Whale reluctantly calls a truce with him to stop Johnny Stitches and Intergang. Johnny Stitches sends the Penguin a package containing the Riddler's glasses and Mr. Jessup's dismembered body. Johnny tells the Penguin that Tobias Whale was no longer on his side. Johnny also mentions that he had threatened the families of those fighting on the Penguin's side, and that he is giving him one day to get out of town. The Intergang then attacks the Iceberg Lounge, only to be foiled by Batman. In return for his help, Batman makes the Penguin become his informant.
The Penguin later loses Batman's support after the latter's mysterious disappearance and Intergang's exploitation of the return of the Apokoliptan Gods. He appears in Battle for the Cowl: The Underground, which portrays the effects of Batman's disappearance on his enemies.
The Penguin's mob is absorbed by Black Mask II, who controls his criminal activities. The Penguin, with the aid of the Mad Hatter, abducts Batman and brainwashes him to assassinate Black Mask.
During the events of Brightest Day, the Birds of Prey discover the Penguin beaten and stabbed at the feet of the White Canary. The Birds rescue him and flee to the Iceberg. While recovering, the Penguin expresses his attraction to Dove. Eventually, the Penguin reveals that his injury had been a ruse, and that he is working with the White Canary in exchange for valuable computer files on the superhero community. He betrays the Birds and seriously injures both Lady Blackhawk and Hawk before the Huntress defeats him. The Huntress tapes him up with the intention of taking him with her, only to be informed by Oracle that she has to let him go due to a police manhunt for the Birds. The Huntress considers killing him with her crossbow, but ultimately leaves him bound and gagged in an alley with the promise that she would exact her vengeance on him later.
The Penguin is eventually attacked by the Secret Six, who kill many of his guards in an ambush at his mansion. Bane informs him that he needs information on Batman's partners, as he plans on killing Red Robin, Batgirl, Catwoman, and Azrael. The Penguin soon betrays the team's location, which results in the Justice League, the Teen Titans, the Birds of Prey, the Justice Society, and various other heroes hunting down and capturing the criminals.
Around this time, a new super-villain, who called himself the Architect, plants a bomb in the Iceberg Lounge as revenge for crimes committed by the Penguin's ancestor. Though Blackbat and Robin are able to evacuate the building, the Lounge is destroyed in the ensuing explosion.
Skills and abilities
The Penguin is a master criminal and occasional engineer who uses his genius-level intellect to gain money and power through criminal means. The Penguin's wealth gives him access to better resources than most other Batman villains and his life as a millionaire gives him superior knowledge of the backgrounds of celebrities and politicians, especially those he plans to target in his future crimes. He is also capable of returning to his luxurious lifestyle very easily despite his violent criminal history and prison record. He has even attempted multiple times to enter the political world, even launching expensive election campaigns. The Penguin also has strong connections with other criminal kingpins across Gotham, allowing him to hire their assassins and workers or to spy on them easily. The Penguin relies on cunning, wit, and intimidation to exploit his surroundings for profit, and he is normally depicted as being more rational and sane than other Batman villains, at least relatively speaking.
Although he often delegates the dirty work to his henchmen, he is not above taking aggressive and lethal actions on his own, especially when provoked. In spite of his appearance, he is a dangerous hand-to-hand combatant with enough self-taught skills in judo and bare-knuckle boxing to overwhelm attackers many times his size and physical bearing. The Penguin is usually portrayed as a capable physical combatant when he feels the situation calls for it, but his level of skill varies widely depending on the author; the character has been written both as a physical match for Batman and as someone the masked vigilante is capable of defeating with a solid punch. His crimes often revolve around stealing valuable bird-related items, and his car and other vehicles often have an avian theme.
Equipment
The Penguin utilizes an assortment of umbrellas, particularly the Bulgarian umbrella. These usually contain weapons such as machine guns, sword tips, missiles, lasers, flamethrowers, and acid or poison gas spraying devices fired from the ferrule. (However, the Penguin is able to weaponize his umbrellas in an almost unlimited variety of ways.) Depending on the writer, some of his umbrellas can carry multiple weapons at once. He often carries an umbrella that can transform its canopy into a series of spinning blades: this can be used as a miniature helicopter or as an offensive weapon; he often uses this to escape a threatening situation. The canopy of the umbrella is sometimes depicted as being a bullet resistance shield, and some are patterned in different ways from a spiral capable of hypnotizing opponents to flashy signs. He can also call upon his flying birds to attack and confuse his enemies on battle.
Relationships
The idea of the Penguin and the Joker as a team is one that is decades old, as the two villains, pop-culture wise, are arguably Batman's two most famous enemies. Their first meeting took place fairly early, in "Knights of Knavery." Since then, the two have teamed up countless times throughout the Golden and Silver ages. This carried over into television as well; both appeared together as a team numerous times. They have a very strong friendship with each other; the Penguin has always referred to the Joker as a very close friend and best friend of his, which the Joker has said the same for the Penguin. They have even shown affection towards each other on more than one occasion. One time, the Joker actually cried when he thought the Penguin was murdered, and the Joker wanted to avenge the Penguin's death.
Elseworlds
In the Elseworlds story Batman: Crimson Mist, the third part in a trilogy that turned Batman into a vampire, the Penguin is the first of many criminals to be killed by the vampiric Batman after he surrenders to his darker instincts. Batman brutally tears the Penguin's throat out as he drinks his blood and subsequently decapitates his enemy to ensure that he cannot return as a vampire.
In The Doom That Came to Gotham, an Elseworlds setting based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Bruce Wayne is the leader of an expedition to Antarctica of which there is only one survivor. The rescue team finds no trace of him, but it is revealed to the reader that the now half-mad Cobblepot has abandoned his humanity, and joined the albino penguins of the Elder Things city.