One of the talking points around the latest animated adventure Batman: The Caped Crusader is how the “current year” view of the world has even seeped into Gotham City. This is most visible in the straight gender swapping of the villain The Penguin.
Why was this done? Well the answer is, on the face of it, truly quite extraordinary. According to showrunner Bruce Timm, The Penguin was gender-swapped for Batman: Caped Crusader because both he and series executive producer James Tucker felt that Batman lacked “good villains”.
This is an incredible claim.
One of the key features of Batman is that his rogues gallery is so impressively brilliant. Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Mr Freeze, Two-Face, Bane, Hugo Strange, Scarecrow, Black Mask, Hush, Deadshot, Killer Croc, Deathstroke… I am tired already and I am not even halfway through.
No other superhero can boast a line-up like this, apart from maybe Spider-Man at a push. You dig deep into, say, Superman’s rogues gallery and you find a puddle just a couple of inches deep.
So what exactly did he say?
Timm was speaking to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and was asked by The Academy’s Christine Champagne why they did the gender swap:
“James and I were talking about the overview of the show, and we said, ‘One of the problems with Batman, as he is, is there’s a lack of good villains. You’ve got Catwoman, you’ve got Poison Ivy, you’ve got Harley Quinn. But it would be really good to have more female villains.’ And off the top of my head, I said, ‘We never really could figure out exactly what to do with The Penguin, what the gimmick for The Penguin would be. What if we gender-flip The Penguin?’”
Tucker then contributed:
“When he said ‘Maybe we can gender-flip Penguin,’ I just got this flood of ideas. I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich in her tuxedo and Cabaret the musical and the art form of cabaret, and I just started drawing. I instantly got a flood of ideas. Also, I was thinking a little bit of Harvey Fierstein and Hairspray and Divine. It just was like I knew instantly what it could be.”
So, even if we squint when reading this and lean towards the charitable view that Timm and Tucker were talking specifically about female villains, this does not stand up.
Timm himself created Harley Quinn and Phantasm. One is now an iconic female villain or anti-hero, and the other is the antagonist in possibly the best-received animated Batman adventure of all time – Batman: The Mask Of Phantasm.
Of course, then you have possibly the most high-profile female villain in pop culture in Catwoman. There is Lady Shiva and Talia Al Ghul. Expand thinking to the Bat-family and you can start to talk about Batgirl, Batwoman, Oracle, Huntress… there is no lack of female representation in Gotham City.
We simply have to say here that we are not quite sure what Timm is actually talking about.