Flip Through These Penguin Comics That Influenced The Batman Spinoff

The Penguin comics are free to read online.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Crime is for the birds. In The Penguin, it's for gangster Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), who is clawing his way to power as the new kingpin of Gotham City after the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone in the 2022 movie The Batman. The eight-episode spinoff series (premiering Sept. 19th on HBO and Max) bridges the gap between Matt Reeves' The Batman and The Batman Part II, where Farrell's proto-Penguin will become the Batman villain that fans recognize from the DC Comics mythology.

While The Penguin isn't an adaptation of any specific story, the series pulls elements and characters from Oswald Cobblepot's 83-year history in the comics. Oz's origin story involves characters from such seminal comics as Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One or Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's seminal Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory — characters like Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly), and Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown).

Another influence: 1932's Scarface, about a gangster's rise to power. The focus on Oz's background and his mother, Francis (Deirdre O'Connell), "is what differentiates him from previous versions of the Penguin in the comics, where he used to come from a wealthy, well-known family," series creator and showrunner Lauren LeFranc told Empire. "Matt had already made him an underdog in that he was number two to Carmine Falcone in the film, but we didn't know anything about his family. So it was important to me that he comes from nothing, and he's really aching to get more status and be seen as more important."

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Below, check out these Penguin comics that are free to read just in time for The Batman spinoff:

Penguin: Pain & Prejudice

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Oswald Cobblepot's pathological obsession with money and power is the focus of 2011's Penguin: Pain & Prejudice from writer Gregg Hurwitz (Batman: The Dark Knight) and artist Szymon Kudranski (Detective Comics). The five-issue limited series examines Oswald's beginnings as a beak-nosed, bullied child nicknamed "beautiful boy" by his mother, "freak" by his father, and "Penguin" by his brothers over his affinity for birds — a moniker he would embrace for the short-statured animal's vicious attacks when provoked.

On one flipper, he's a dutiful son to his overprotective, catatonic mother, Esther; on the other, the ice-cold crime lord murders his bully brothers and systematically destroys the lives of any man who dares insult him. Penguin commits a series of high-profile jewelry heists to spoil his mother and, after her death, his beloved fiancée, a blind woman named Cassandra.

As Batman rattles cages throughout Gotham, he foils the villain's attempted bombing of a school with a mechanical penguin. After the Penguin terrorizes Gotham's children with a series of violent robot bird attacks, Oswald snaps and kills Cassandra when he mistakenly believes she was making fun of him. Batman apprehends Penguin and puts him behind bars — where he's mocked by the guards from his "bird cage" in prison.

Penguin: Pain & Prejudice #1 is currently available to read for free on DC Universe Infinite.

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Batman - One Bad Day: Penguin

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Part of Batman: One Bad Day — a series of 64-page one-shot comics featuring Batman villains Riddler, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Clayface, and Ra's al Ghul — the Penguin's bad day is by writer John Ridley (The Other History of the DC Universe) and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli (The Joker). Left destitute after the Umbrella Man seizes his criminal empire and the Iceberg Lounge, unleashing chaos on the streets, the Penguin assembles a motley crew to take back Gotham City's underworld.

"As innocent as children can are, they can be equally cruel. The abuse that I suffered just because I was born different. The name-calling, the bullying... the harm is, you get so tired of suffering, you want the rest of the world to suffer with you," the Penguin tells an associate, confessing that it was childhood mockery that caused him to become a criminal. "My purpose in life became to be admired and respected. And if not those two... then feared."

Batman – One Bad Day: Penguin is available to read in full for free on DC Universe Infinite.

The Penguin (2023)

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Written by Tom King (Batman/Catwoman) and drawn by Rafael de Latorre (Marvel's Daredevil), the 12-issue limited series sees the former Penguin (referred to as "Mr. Cobb") retire to Metropolis after faking his death and framing the Dark Knight for his murder in Chip Zdarsky's current comic run on Batman. "Revenge is for the birds," says the former kingpin, but when he's recruited by the U.S. government to take back the streets he once ran, Penguin faces off with the assassin known as The Help, the femme fatale Lisa St. Claire, the Riddler, and his own children: Aiden and Addison Cobblepot.

The Penguin #6-#7 flash back to when Oswald was an "unimportant man" working as a bartender at the Iceberg Lounge and serving the club's owner: mob boss Carmine Falcone. Resenting the Falcone Crime Family's mockery, Oswald sells the Roman's empire out to a nascent Batman as informant "scrapping for scraps." Batman determines the desperate Oswald "wants respect and needs money," and working with the caped crusader to bring down Falcone's operations makes the small Oswald important.

Batman makes an arrangement with Oswald: give up Falcone and he'll let him run the Iceberg Lounge on the condition that he rats out his criminal clientele. While running the remnants of the old Falcone empire out of the Iceberg Lounge, Oswald Cobblepot became a well-dressed rogue with a "theme and scheme" like the Joker or the Riddler. With his top hat, umbrella, and monocle, there would be a new villain to ruffle the Batman's feathers: the Penguin.

The Penguin #1 is free to read on DC Universe Infinite.

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