| January 2042 | Edition nº6 |
The Penguin: A Gotham City Crimelord
Oswald
Cobblepot: The Penguin
Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, a son to a mother who truly loved him and a father who did not. In his youth, many things happened that led to him becoming the Penguin; a true enemy to Batman.
Teenage Years
Oswald’s father and brothers all hated him, just like the kids bullying him at school. These kids usually teased him about the shape of his nose, making him look like a penguin. This brought out Oswald’s fascination with birds. He started crafting mechanical birds for his mother - the only person to ever be nice to him - and really only cared for her. It became kind of an unhealthy obsession, as ‘somehow’ all of his siblings and his father ended up in accidents, making that his mother only had time for him instead. Later on, accidents like these would happen to Oswald’s bullies as well. In his high school years, a similar situation happened when Oswald became obsessed with one of his fellow students, claiming that she was the love of his life.Becoming The Penguin
Oswald became a businessman, a crime lord. He smuggled weapons. One time, he almost got convicted because of this, but he let the father of Jason Todd take the blame - which already created his first connection to Batman, as Jason Todd would later become one of the Robins. Jason Todd did take Oswald back, after years; he took revenge as Red Hood. Oswald worked as a bartender first, but he wanted to move up in the businesses - thus, he encountered Batman. They worked together for some time - bringing down the owner of the bar where Oswald worked and thus him owning the business instead. But Batman suspected that Oswald was actually using their relationship and made sure Penguin had to spend some time in Arkham.
The Penguin as an Enemy of Batman
This was around the time when Oswald actually started to get known as The Penguin, but he still did not own Gotham’s underworld as he would later on. Before this, Penguin was encountered by an actor named Basil Karlo, who he made Clayface; as well as that he got entangled in the war of Jokes and Riddles between The Joker and The Riddler (about their right to finish off Batman) - by being on the Joker’s side, but Batman later forced him out of the fight. This, however, was the point at which Penguin became the new strongest crimelord within Gotham. He hired his right-hand man, Ignatius Ogilvy, and his bodyguard, Lark.Oswald decided to do things differently afterwards and reached out to many of Gotham’s villains, specifically the ones who were willing to pay to work with him. He earned quite some money, but, of course, other villains were after this. A whole game of double-crossing was played, until Batman ended it all, ruining Penguin’s reputation in the process. Due to all of this, Penguin ended up on a list of important Gotham citizens to be assassinated. Someone came into his office to do so, but Catwoman (who was planning to rob Oswald) saved him, making Oswald owe her a favour for the years to come.
Penguin got into many fights with many people, but especially Batman, Red Hood, and The Joker were always high on his list. This then also lead to more betrayal by Penguin’s right hand, Ignatius, and him becoming the new leader of Penguin’s Empire. These things never ended well for the Penguin, as he never actually hurt any of Batman’s allies and even got caught himself, multiple times. Even when Oswald wanted to start a new gang or use both sides of a war (which happened more often than it should have; Penguin got himself stuck in wars a lot), Batman knew to stop it just before The Penguin could do any actual harm. However, he did manage to even be the Mayor of Gotham for a little while and set up a new amusement park.
