The Penguin #10: Penguin’s Empire

Over nine issues The Penguin tracked Oswald Cobblepot’s original rise in Gotham City and his rapid return from Metropolis. Each issue was a deliberate step in building up Penguin’s power–a lot of promise that hasn’t delivered much of a conclusive result. At long last, The Penguin #10 seeks to pay off all that setup.

Penguin aims Batman squarely at his children in The Penguin #10. The duo’s uneasy deal propelled Penguin to the top of the criminal underworld, and now Penguin is planning to take down Addie and Aiden. In the process of going after the children, Batman discovers that he had no idea how vast Penguin’s criminal empire had become. But is it so big that he, Addie, and Aiden can’t bring it down?

The issue is connected more by theme than plot. The plot is rather basic: using Batman to destroy Penguin’s children. Everything revolves around Penguin’s superiority. This is hardly new. The most significant throughline the series has is building Penguin up as a major force. But this time, the other major characters are forced to admit it, even if only to themselves. In the case of Batman especially, it is an amusing reversal. The character who purportedly can always win if he has enough time to prepare wasn’t at all prepared for the extent of Penguin’s empire.

The Penguin #10 moves surprisingly fast. It jumps between characters and settings at what feels like 100 mph despite not featuring any kind of action or real urgency. Every scene change adds to the sense that something new is happening–that some kind of transition is about to take place. Indeed, the issue ends with a potential game changing scene. In the way that the final page of The Penguin #9 revealed a wrinkle and potential weakness for Penguin, so too does the end of this issue.

Addie and Aiden are particularly prominent in The Penguin #10. De Latorre’s work on them in this issue is more important than any other to this point. Particularly noteworthy is a scene where Addie visits her father. The series has repeatedly juxtaposed Penguin’s short stature and greater weight relative to others against the power he has over them. For the meeting between the Penguin and Addie, De Latorre adds more lines to Addie’s cheeks and near her eyes than elsewhere in the issue. Her expression is submissive to her father and her body language defeated. Addie looks small compared to her father, relatively powerless. De Latorre doesn’t draw her in this way at any other point in the issue. Even in her final appearance when she is forced into action she’d rather not take, Addie is not defeated in the way she is in the one scene with her father.

Aiden, on the other hand, constantly has a sense of dullness. There is very little change in his expression throughout the issue, even in the later pages when he is beaten. Whereas De Latorre uses variation to convey Addie’s relative strength in any given scene, Aiden’s static appearance roots him far down the power scale in almost every interaction. His appearance is also a very good marriage to how he describes himself in his internal monologue.

Coloring punctuates scenes in The Penguin #10 more than in any issue to this point. Addie and Aiden kill someone in hot pink panels which heavily contrasts the largely darker blue of the scene. A pile of corpses is red/orange. Aiden is beaten in panels that feel photonegative with white figures against a red background. These panels work particularly well not just because of Maiolo’s work in them but in how they contrast with the choices he makes for the overall environment and thus the panels before and after the extreme ones.

The Penguin #10 is particularly text heavy. It jumps between different sequences with different focus characters quickly. Dialogue bubbles and caption boxes are organized as cleanly as possible to keep the reader’s eye moving quickly across and down the page.