10 Things Every DC Comics Fan Forgets About Two-Face
6. Batman’s Giant Penny Originally Had Nothing To Do With Two-Face
The Giant Penny in the Batcave is one of three of the most iconic trophies Batman owns, along with the giant Joker card and mechanical Tyrannosaurs Rex. The penny weighs 216 lbs and resembles a copper penny with the year “1947” on it, at gigantic size. The interesting thing is that the Penny has been wrongly attributed to Two-Face when only a cartoon and recent comics have linked the coin to the character.
The Penny was originally attributed to a low-level villain named Joe Coyne, the Penny Plunderer. During a robbery, he found the register filled only with pennies and he saw this failure as a sign to base all his crimes on the pursuit of the near-worthless tender. The giant penny and a valuable one-cent stamp were the valuables that Coyne was after when he was easily bested by Batman.
Later, Lucius Fox, the CFO of Wayne Enterprises, used the Penny to thwart the Riddler when it was being used as a giant art installation. It was the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Almost Got ‘Im” that saw Batman strapped to the Penny and flipped into the air, about to be crushed. Single issues of various comics put Coyne, Two-Face, and the Penny together in one story.