10 Things DC Wants You To Forget About The Penguin

Ever since he waddled onto the scene in 1941, the Penguin has been one of Batman's top villains.

Despite cutting a comical and unintimidating figure with his top hat and tails, Oswald Cobblepot has more than proved his worth over the years. Unlike most of the Dark Knight's rogue's gallery, the Penguin is completely sane, allowing him to focus all of his devious mind on crime

Using his club, the Iceberg Lounge, as a front, the Penguin runs most of the crime syndicates in Gotham, dipping his flippers into all sorts of illegal activities. He's proof that you most definitely shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Then again, the Penguin is also a short man with a monocle fighting against the world's greatest vigilante so not everything he's tried to do has worked out for the best. In fact, some of Oswald Cobblepot's misadventures have been downright embarrassing.

From his inauspicious inspiration to some of his more ridiculous plans, there are plenty of things about the Penguin that DC would much rather you just forgot about. That's no fun though so let's have a root around in Mr. Cobblepot's dirty laundry to see what we can find.

Hopefully, the results will be less horrifying than that last sentence makes them sound.

Unlike a lot of villains, the Penguin is still fairly similar to how he was introduced in Detective Comics #58. However, there have been a few things that have been altered from his first appearance.

The Penguin was first introduced as an art thief. He snuck into a art-gallery that Bruce Wayne was attending and stole a painting by rolling it up and hiding it in his umbrella (one tragic downside of modern security systems is that art-theft is far less whimsical now.) He then took the painting to a local mob as proof of his criminal genius and they let him join.

Eventually he fell out with the mob boss though when he called him a "be-monocled bird". Penguin responded by shooting him with an umbrella gun and taking over the gang. He then insisted that his underlings refer to him as Mr. Boniface instead of the Penguin.

Like most of Batman's enemies of the time, Penguin only went by his codename in later appearances and so Mr Boniface was left as his presumed real name for years until it was changed to Oswald Cobblepot.

Although, the story that revealed that name is probably something else DC would like you to forget.