Biographic - Sunday September 21, 2014 Comic Strip Licensing and Permissions

Transcript

Biographic Steve McGarry Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin One of the most eagerly anticipated new TV shows this fall is the crime drama "Gotham." The series serves as a prequel to the "Batman" franchise, revealing the origins and early days of the DC Comics characters enjoyed by millions of comic book readers, gamers, and TV and movie fans around the globe. The name Oswald Cobblepot may not be familiar to many of those fans - but they will almost certainly know him by his alter ego. First introduced in a 1941 issue of Detective Comics, The Penguin is one of the great villains of the superhero canon. The campy 1960s TV show "Batman" saw veteran actor Burgess Meredith don a purple top hat and adopt a distinctive squawking laugh to portray The Penguin. Meredith went on to earn two Academy Award nominations in the 1970s, for roles in the movies "Rocky" and "The Day of the Locust." The criminal fiend depicted in Tim Burton's 1992 "Batman Returns" movie was a much darker and disturbing character, with Danny de Vito portraying The Penguin as a sinister sociopath raised by penguins in the city's sewers. Among those who have voiced The Penguin in animation are Ted Knight, Paul Williams, and Seth Green. In the new TV show "Gotham," The Penguin's origins are brought to the small screen with Robin Lord Taylor in the role of budding supervillain Oswald Cobblepot.

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