Beware The Spaceman

Tag: Batman Returns

  • Batman 1966 The Penguin

    Retro Reaction in ZX Spectrum colours


    Hizzonner the Penguin / Dizzoner the Penguin

    We have a slight change here. Penguin is the first on this list where I’ve chosen episodes that are not the villain’s debut. These ones come from season 2.

    Yes, season 2 — where the phrase “If you’ve seen one episode of Batman, you’ve seen them all” really comes into play.

    Being quite into my old TV (as you can probably tell), I’d love to defend season 2. But even I must concede we get formulaic here. We also get some different villain choices. Some are great, and some are clearly stand‑ins (sorry, Puzzler).

    Many of these villains have since disappeared: foes like False Face, Colonel Gumm, The Archer, The Sandman, and Chandell.

    Some of the new characters I liked, though. I remember enjoying Ma Parker’s story, and I thought The Bookworm made a decent villain too.

    I digress — our main villains return here, apart from the Frank Gorshin Riddler. Riddler is recast as John Astin (known for playing Gomez Addams). Good as Astin is, the role doesn’t quite gel with him.

    By this point in the series, we’ve seen Burgess Meredith play the Penguin before. The twist this time is that Penguin stops a robbery in the introduction. Naturally, it’s all part of a scheme. Penguin has aspirations of becoming the Mayor of Gotham City.

    If that plot sounds familiar, it should. The 1992 Batman Returns film pays homage to the series by using this storyline. Reportedly, Burton wanted Meredith to return to the franchise to play Penguin’s father. By then, Meredith had to pull out due to ill health — a real shame, because I would have loved that callback. We did get the role filled by Paul Reubens, though (someone who will no doubt appear here in a reaction in the future).

    As with the other villains, the broad strokes of what we recognise as the Penguin are all here: the crooked businessman. Later adaptations (after Returns) would tone down the gimmicked umbrellas. Returns redesigned the character, but the waddle, nose, and love of those gimmick umbrellas were all in Meredith’s Penguin — all of it dating back to the comic itself (around 1941).

    This series was not only closer to the comic than a lot would like to admit — it was a vital building block in the making of the Dark Knight as he is today.

  • A Missing Batman Movie Between Burton’s Films? This Book is Close

    Who remembers that movie in between Batman and Batman Returns that introduced Max Shreck and had Clayface as the villain. No? Well… now it kind of exists.

    If you haven’t read Batman: Resurrection by John Jackson Miller, there are some minor spoilers ahead.

    Batman: Resurrection is set between the two Burton films. Bruce and Vicki Vale (the love interest from the 1989 movie) are still sort of together, and Gotham is recovering from the Smilex gas attack in the first film. That attack is how this story’s Clayface comes into existence. He begins as a Smilex victim in a coma on a dodgy ward in Gotham Hospital — a dodgy ward with an even dodgier doctor, but going too far into that would drift into spoiler territory.

    We also get a plot involving Clayface cosplaying the Joker, which anyone who played the Arkham games or watched the animated movie may find familiar.

    What doesn’t work quite as well are lines like “Batman thought.” This is why I think superhero stories are best suited to visual mediums — comics or film — where internal monologue doesn’t feel quite so clunky.

    So where does this sit? It has that “empathise with the baddie” streak of the Burton movies. In my mind, this book would have made a great straight‑to‑VHS film slotted between the two movies. The Clayface/Joker switch would have allowed a Jack Nicholson sound‑alike to step in, and some of the fight scenes feel like they’d work best in animated form.

    It’s that kind of easy read. Not essential by any means, but fun.