Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Batman: Earth One was a somewhat controversial retelling of Batman's origin, focussing on a younger, inexperienced Batman as he comes to grips with his desire to fight crime with the assistance of Alfred who, in this universe, is also a former Royal Marine.
There were some fun deviations from the classic bat-lore however, with Johns having opted to make Penguin the main antagonist of the series as a vicious political operator and as the man responsible for the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. That instantly makes him one of the most villainous interpretations of the character thus far - not that he had much longer to leave an impact, with Alfred having killed the brute in the comic's third act.
Penguin is at his most snivelling in the comic, exuding a kind of smarminess few other Bat-villains could dare match. He was also one of the more realistic interpretations of the character to have emerged in recent years, and though with Batman it's often the more outlandish characters that terrify the most, the Oswald of Earth One unnerves because he's the opposite.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
