Penguin #0: The Cat and the Bird

Penguin is dead, and anybody in the criminal underworld wants to claim the Iceberg Lounge. Penguin #0 collects the backup stories from Batman #125-127 and reprints them as a single issue in preparation for Penguin’s upcoming series.

Catwoman is watching the Iceberg Lounge in the wake of Penguin’s death. As Penguin #0 opens, crime boss Finbar Sullivan and a Yakuza trio are trying to stake a claim to the club. Catwoman breaks up the initial conflict before the Underbroker, a banker for Gotham’s criminal underworld, stops it. Penguin entrusted him with his final will, and Underbroker and his robot assistant, The Executor, will see that the choice is executed. The Executor, unable to locate all of Penguin’s named beneficiaries–his children–hires Catwoman to find them. But everyone named in the will is dead when Catwoman tracks them down. With none of the named beneficiaries left alive, the Iceberg Lounge passes to a previously unknown brother and sister pair of Penguin’s children. Penguin’s liquid assets are seemingly donated to a charitable bird foundation in Metropolis. Catwoman deduces that the foundation is an excellent front to launder money and tracks down the very much alive but “retired” Oswald Cobblepot.

Penguin #0 is a transition issue, mostly an epilogue to Penguin’s supposed death in Batman #125 and partly a prologue to the upcoming Penguin #1. But its function as a prologue becomes evident only in the final pages when Zdarsky reveals that Penguin faked his death to retire. The titular character is the main character in his book only in a thematic sense as the plot unfolds. What we learn about Penguin is more factual than emotional.

Instead, the issue is mostly a Catwoman vehicle. She has emotional beats as she searches for Penguin’s children and continually finds them dead. Penguin’s retirement is viewed through Catwoman’s own experience as she considers the allure of a fresh start. It’s a compelling idea that Zdarsky sets up for Catwoman, but the issue leaves it wide open, so it doesn’t create much of an arc for the issue.

The most obvious deficiency of Penguin #0 is a result of it being a collection of backup stories reprinted as a single issue. The pacing is uneven. It’s heavily front and back-loaded with a compressed, surprisingly uneventful middle.

Penguin #0 features a lively Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Ortega gives her a definite personality, primarily via her eyes. She draws Selina with narrowed eyes and an overall more severe expression when he draws Selina as Catwoman. She’s more minimalist in her expressions but no less communicative. When out of costume, Selina is usually wide-eyed with more exaggerated body language.

Ortega’s attention to detail with characters, in general, stands out. Addison’s overall appearance, with her fur coat, short stature, and walking stick, calls to mind the typical Penguin appearance. The detail that sells it, though, is Addison’s nose. She doesn’t have quite the long hook that Penguin did, but it’s getting there. Penguin, meanwhile, has a much smaller nose after his faked death, but Ortega changes nothing else about his appearance. We only get one look at Penguin in his new identity before Catwoman identifies him, but he looks different enough to pass as someone else without the nose. As soon as Catwoman calls him out, it’s impossible to unsee that he is Penguin. The shape of his face, the eyes, and the hair all look the same. Ortega’s art nicely reflects the character’s arc of retiring but not changing.

The first half of the issue occurs at night as Catwoman stops the fight at the Iceberg Lounge and later hunts for Penguin’s children. It contrasts the final scenes leading to Catwoman’s conversation with Penguin in his flower shop. He describes how everyone in Gotham seems to be night people, almost afraid to sleep because of what might happen. For his retirement, Penguin “wanted some daylight.” This takes place amidst the brightening light of sunrise. Guerrero sets the perfect visual tone for the scene between him and Catwoman. But as the scene draws to a close, Penguin slips back toward the shadowy part of the setting until, once Catwoman is gone, he is entirely out of that bright light. Guerrero balances the light and dark, tracking how the sunlight fades further from the shop’s windows.

Cowles’ lettering is essentially good here, but his choice to use black caption boxes and white text for Catwoman’s narration isn’t always successful. In scenes with lighter backgrounds or overall settings, the contrast between the black caption boxes and the surrounding colors works well. The narration pops off the page. But in the darker scenes, the caption boxes don’t work nearly as well. The eye doesn’t want to focus on the captions quite as readily.