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maxwell-grant · 9 months ago

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This feels like the kind of ask someone should've gotten around to a million years ago, but it seems it falls to me: The Shadow vs. The Penguin. Is there anything there?

Anonymous asked: How would pulp heroes like the Shadow or Green Hornet respond to The Penguin. Characters like Joker or Ra’s I can see them gunning down but that feels weird to do with Oswald “Pengy For President” Cobblepot

(Penguin by Mike Mignola. The Shadow by Lela Dowling)

It's amazing, really, what you've built here. You had a vision and made it real. Every Batman in existence respects you for it, Oswald. In fact, I'll tell you a secret…people assume that Batman's last enemy on most worlds out there is Joker. Maybe Riddler, or Ra's…but it's you.

See, you grow this crime empire until he has to deal with you. - The Batman Who Laughs #3

What there is here is a bit of an impasse, because yes obviously this is brutally, comically one-sided against The Penguin. Pitting most if not all Batman villains against The Shadow is going to be already one-sided in The Shadow's favor. Pick a Batman villain, even the big ones that make Batman the underdog like Ra's and Bane, and you can name a similar threat that The Shadow already defeated. Even if you don't count superpowered cheating with whatever abilities The Shadow has this moment, he's already dealt with most of everything they can do, he's beaten these strategies and puzzles and countless death traps at their own game, and yeah there's the fact that he's known for the fact his villains don't tend to come back for round two even when they don't die facing him. Villains that he faces tend to die specifically because they try to kill him and he returns their fire (it's important to establish here that, unless his enemies have guns drawn on innocent people, The Shadow rarely shoots first - they always have a chance to lay down their arms and walk away, a chance that most obviously never take), and Penguin's known for his unwillingness to go down without a fight and for his signature move being a concealed sneak attack, which means his odds of dying are near dead certain.

In fact, The Shadow already fought a Penguin-esque guy as one of his few reocurring villains, via The Wasp, Gibson's latter day attempt to make another Voodoo Master/Shiwan Khan. The Wasp is a "Napoleon of crime" whose body and strange buzz voice and antics and operations are themed after his namesake animal/insects, who uses a concealed weapon part of said theme (an electric "sting" on his hand powered by batteries on his belt), who connects Cranston to The Shadow and was also the only villain to figure out that Kent Allard is The Shadow. He was cleverer and more resourceful and harder to defeat than most of the typical Shadow villains, and to his credit he did achieve a thing nobody else really achieved in the run, and it didn't really do him that much (learning the secret identity tends to be a death sentence for vigilantes, but for The Shadow it's really not that big a deal, given how easily he can make new ones) and he still went out like a chump, and he's only really remembered as the less impressive of the reocurring supervillains, lacking the outright superpowers of the others. It seems like a fairly closed case.

Problem is, the more comically one-sided the odds are against Oswald, the more likely he is to actually win or at least survive because of that. Going up against people who should have his goose cooked, getting away with things he absolutely shouldn't, slipping away to survive and put one over Johnny Law, that's his thing, it's been his thing from day one. He is no stranger to dealing with vigilantes or people much bigger and stronger and scarier than him, it wasn't that long ago he was walking off getting shot at point blank and later faking his death. Penguin is no common criminal, and he isn't just a guy who's unusually smart and competent at it enough to waddle among supervillains either. In his narrative domain, The Shadow is unbeatable, but in his narrative home, The Penguin is unkillable, and not just because he's a comic book villain who survives by editorial demand. He has protagonist survival clause now.

In his ups and downs over the years, he survived in large part by becoming a fixture of Gotham, someone impossible to uproot from the setting, with his ignanimous transformation into stool-pigeon and banal crimelord in part a consequence of said survival. After more or less retiring from villainy, the next step was to very gradually join the likes of Catwoman, Azrael, Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya in their careers as independent Gotham-adjacent protagonists, which is why he now gets to have his own tv series (the second one at that, because Gotham exists and if it achieved anything, it was proving that there's an audience for The Penguin Show - and yes it still is very much shitty, but also not remotely surprising, that the instant they made a version of Oswald thin, that guy became a critical and fandom darling overnight). The Penguin wormed his way into becoming irreplaceable and they tried, they tried very hard over the years to replace this guy, and he's taken some brutal lumps and fell off very hard from the Bat-villain totem pole, but even that just enabled him to ascend to a different pole and one that makes it he can't really be just another gangster or supervillain to be knocked around, and one that's almost specifically built to ensure his narrative survival. Someone who serves the story better by being alive.

Has The Shadow ever dealt with a guy like this? Yes, yes he has. The Shadow is no stranger to criminal protagonists, or the concept of nuance, or redemption. He is certainly no stranger to the gentleman of crime who is more than what he seems.

The man who entered was tall and well built. He had the manner of a gentleman. He was attired in a perfectly fitting dress suit, which he wore with the easy air of a man of the world - Kings of Crime

The gentleman of crime arose, picked up his hat and coat and reached for his cane. There, his form obscured, The Shadow stood close enough to overhear what Graham Wellerton was saying. The gentleman of crime was talking to members of his mob.

What was Graham Wellerton's purpose? How and why had the gentleman of crime parted from his men? Why was he no longer engaged in robbery? - Road of Crime

To all appearance, George Ellerby was a gentleman; and he was actually qualified to prove such a claim. But tonight, he was to be a gentleman of crime - Battle of Greed

"I wonder," said Sandersham, slowly, "just how much The Shadow can do, or intends to do. Who is he, Krengle? How powerful is he?"

"No one knows who The Shadow is," replied the lawyer. "But he is death on crooks, they say, and he considers crime to be much broader than its legal implications." - Battle of Greed

There's about 5 Shadow novels that specifically touch on the topic of redemption. There are others where it comes up, plenty of others where The Shadow goes the extra mile in giving criminals a chance, and stories that highlight the lines that The Shadow draws in deciding how to deal with criminals (“To murderers, The Shadow dealt death: to such schemes (robbery, fraud, etc), he dealt ridicule.” - The Third Shadow), but those 5 make a focus of it. In all of those 5, we meet characters that can be called a "gentleman of crime". They are cunning, respectable-looking young men who use their smarts for crime, largely because of social circumstances that force them into using criminal tactics for dealing with life-consuming problems that the law has failed them in, and The Shadow assists them in addressing and rectifying said problems and turning their lives around.

In Kings of Crime, blackmailer and swindler Hubert Carpenter. In Road of Crime, the protagonist Graham Wellerton, "bank robber deluxe". In The Broken Napoleons, engineer Curt Sturley. Battle of Greed opens with George Ellerby, although he's not really the protagonist and is stopped before he commits his first robbery, and that story has two other redemptions that pull more focus. And in House of Shadows, Kid Pell, whose tragic demise opens the story. With the exception of Carpenter, all of these young men are given understandable and even sympathetic reasons for having become criminals, as all of them became criminals specifically because the law failed them profoundly and allowed them to suffer horrible injustice and ruin upon their lives and families, while shielding those that inflicted it upon them and provided no other recourse for them, and The Shadow goes out of his way to directly or indirectly steer them away from the paths they're walking.

Out of these, only Hubert Carpenter had a body count: he is not a murderer outright, but his past deeds had pushed victims to suicide, and The Shadow fully intended to let him serve his sentence in full. It is through the involvement of innocent parties (he took a dive to get the money to his family, he was betrayed, and his wife fell ill, making him break out of jail and desperately try to get the money for her treatment by robbing an old man who turned out to be The Shadow in disguise) and Carpenter’s own serious efforts to reform himself and assist in the downfall of his far crueler former partners that he’s able to redeem himself and face a new life (The Shadow delivers a government pardon so that he serves a month instead of 10 years).

“Somehow, he knew that The Shadow would not see the innocent suffer for the guilty.” - Kings of Crime

Kid Pell, who had already shot at least 6 people and killed 2 before the story began, wasn't quite so lucky. Dying of blood loss after trying to shoot The Shadow, his last words are a plead for him to get the guy who pushed him into this path, and keep an eye on his brother Denry to stop him from going down his path (which ends up happening, but The Shadow is able to save Denry in time).

"They called me a public enemy," declared Pell. "What else could I be, after my first kill? You know what it is to be quick on the trigger. That's the way I am" - he hesitated, his smile dwindling - "or was."

"I tried crime," said the Kid. "It didn't pay. But I was in it - deep. So I stayed. I've got no excuses. I'm not even blaming the fellow that started me in it. What I did was on my own. Understand?"

"Do me a favor," muttered the dying man. "Let me be forgotten - as Kid Pell. I rigged this hideout, so I could close accounts. Let me go through with it the way I want."

The Shadow's whispered tone gave agreement. Pell's face relaxed. In the glow of the lantern, his features lost their forced hardness. It was easy to see why he had been nicknamed the Kid. His age couldn't have been more than twenty-two.

Even his surroundings spoke a pathetic story. The shelves of the trailer were provisioned for a long stay; and among the canned goods were a few jars of homemade jam; probably the very sort that he had swiped from his mother's pantry only a few years ago.

There were books, too, that dated back to boyhood. Even when he had embarked on his career as a public enemy, Kid Pell had taken these along. He was looking at them, eyes open, the jam jars and the books, and he was smiling again, Kid Pell was. But the dampness from his dying eyes was forming into little beads, like raindrops. Suddenly, the Kid's lips stiffened.

A hand was resting on the Kid's shoulder. He could feel the power of its grip: the hand of The Shadow, merciless to men of crime. To this dying youth, murderer though he was, the pressure of that hand had the warmth of friendship.

"Maybe, Shadow" - The Kid was choking the words - "I ought to have met you before. Maybe… if I had-"

The grip tightened. It brought an end to regrets that could not be remedied. It steeled the Kid for what lay ahead - House of Shadows

-the words that The Shadow delivered held Sandersham rigid. Never in his life had the millionaire listened to such pointed accusations; such words that jogged his memory, nor such tokens of prophecy. "Rupert Sandersham," came the voice, "you are a man condemned by your own avarice! You are a master, not of finance, but of greed!"

"While your wealth grows greater," resumed The Shadow's voice, "your life grows shorter. As your schemes expand, your soul shrivels. You have physical comforts, yes"—the tone was mocking—"but who knows how long you shall retain them?"

"Your power, Sandersham, is not equal to the strength of the law. There have been loopholes in your schemes, that certain eyes may discover before your attorneys plug them". - Battle of Greed

Is The Penguin sympathetic? In some ways, yes. Is The Penguin redeemable? Not a question I'm remotely interested in handing a firm "Yes/No" to, because it's kinda both and neither, redemption tends to be conditional and fickle like that, and also irrelevant to the matter here: We've established that The Shadow (again, speaking for the pulp version here, it's what I tend to do) does not go out of his way to execute criminals, but doesn't hesitate to kill them when they try to gun him or others down. Would The Shadow extend The Penguin an olive branch and spare his life in the hopes that he'd come around and use his impressive intellect and resources and drive for the better? No. It would be useless. The Shadow doesn't deal with that kind of "hope", and The Penguin would not be interested in doing so either.

There have been occasions where The Shadow was caught in a bad enough situation that he had to momentarily pause the pursuit of a criminal, but The Shadow does not compromise, nor does he ever really need to, and he knows a true villain when he sees it. He is not keeping Oswald around as a informant, because he doesn't play by Gotham City rules where that seems like a reasonable thing to do. The true villain of most Shadow stories is always the person who stands to profit the most from said calamity, and most of the time they operate beneath suspicion. There is 0% chance of him underestimating Oswald the way Oswald prefers to be underestimated.

There are two ways Oswald Cobblepot would walk away from meeting a quick death at the hands of The Shadow. The first would be if he never killed anyone, or did anything that led to anyone's death ever again. He'd have to commit to undoing the ruin he brought onto people's lives and give back as much to the city and his victims as he possibly could. Such was what The Shadow did in Battle of Greed to Rupert Sandersham, a millionaire who got a kick out of ruining others financially. He is not the villain, nor is he a murderer, but The Shadow manipulated and terrorized him into making amends and repaying all the people he destroyed. These would be the best, most impossibly nice terms The Shadow could offer Oswald, along with him serving time and spend his whole life looking over his shoulder when, and if, he gets out.

"Look at yourself, Sandersham! You are wearing stripes! In front of you are bars! Beyond you, the outside world. Regard it as an omen, and make your choice. Amend the past; rectify the wrongs that you have done—or face the future consequences that your present methods will bring you!"

Rupert Sandersham was staring downward. His startled eyes saw the stripes that The Shadow had mentioned: those alternate ribbons of dark and light, that came from the setting sun. They had turned his gray suit into a convict's garb! Could it be that he, Rupert Sandersham, might find himself within a prison cell?- Battle of Greed

And that is not happening. There is not a single version of The Penguin who would accept these terms or accept this as a thing he's going to do. Short of the most kid-friendly media and even then, much as I argue that he should have rules of conduct, I don't think there is a single version of the Penguin who'd balk at murder or who hasn't committed it with little to no remorse. Oswald Cobblepot may carry much bitterness and heartbreak, but The Penguin loves what he is too much to accept being anything else. He isn't scared of any of these terms and would find them deeply absurd, because who is this, trying to tell The Penguin he isn't allowed to rob this thing, or kill that guy getting on his nerves, or ruin that rich asshole over there. The audacity of this laughing clown! As if he didn't have one too many to deal with!

The other way he lives, at least for a while, is if he turns out to be right about the way Gotham City works, and it turns out that he really cannot be removed from his position without far worse things growing as a result. I don't think The Shadow would have issues with the Batman villains individually, but neither do Batman or most superheroes. It's Gotham City that's the real problem here, and it's a problem that Batman hasn't solved in nearly a hundred years, and neither has Superman or any of the billion superheroes in that universe, a problem that will never be solved so long as there's a profit to be made on Batman. The Shadow can and has cleaned cities of organized crime before, usually by manipulating it's players into destroying each other, but even he has limits and Gotham City is no mere gangster-ridden town, much like how the man who claimed it is no mere crimelord either.

So the final matter at play here is whether The Penguin is right, and if so, whether The Shadow can afford to kill The Penguin, when there are other more pressing matters. Because the biggest reason Penguin's able to position himself where he is, as a necessary evil in-universe and a reocurring side character/even protagonist out of it, is by never being the nastiest or most urgently threatening villain in the room, and therefore always being the one that the heroes have to compromise with or have to defeat quickly to get moving. He has weaponized a Kingpin-esque idea that he is a necessary deterrent, because Gotham can always get worse, and everyone else who can take power in Gotham from him is much worse than him, and therefore you save the most innocent lives by allowing him to do his thing under a leash. Refer that line above, about how The Shadow will not suffer the innocent for the guilty.

There has been at least one Shadow story where he's dealt with this dillemma, in Face of Doom, as I elaborate here. The Shadow defeated the Face through taking the long way around, disarming his individual lieutenants, luring them into traps and disguising himself as The Face and all kinds of strategies necessary to checkmate the guy, but in the process also giving The Face enough time to regroup and strategize and target his agent(s). A similar thing happened when he had to take down Benedict Stark, and had to considerably slow down the operations to rescue Rutledge Mann from kidnapping. Issuing any kind of harm or death to The Shadow's agents guarantees him unleashing carnage on you personally, refer to Gangdom's Doom where he obliterates organized crime in Chicago in response to the death of Claude Fellows, but The Penguin can play smart. He can refrain from doing that, and buy himself more time, as The Shadow goes after those that think they have what it takes.

I think The Shadow vs The Penguin would probably pull elements from all of these stories I'd mentioned. If The Penguin is right, The Shadow would have to defeat, or at minimum stall, crime in Gotham City in a way that could then remove The Penguin from the picture, which means The Shadow would have to go through the rest of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Difference being, he's not going to fight those guys forever, he might not even fight them at all.

For The Shadow, he's up against a particularly smart, resourceful and powerful "gentleman of crime". One with personal tragedies and codes of conduct, one who might have even been like the ones he'd been able to reform if life hadn't twisted him, but who at present poses an active danger to the lives of people of the city, and stopping that is the bigger concern. He's taking down not just one crime king, but an empire that the crime king holds at bay, and god knows how many crime kings in the way, and possibly others who would see the innocent suffer for the guilty and keep this stalemate forever. The Shadow doesn't do stalemates, and Oswald Cobblepot is going to repent for all he's done or die, and nothing in between.

For The Penguin? He might very well be in heaven. He's dealing with death itself arriving from nowhere to give him the greatest challenge of all: surviving. Which just so happens to be the thing he does best and takes the most pride in doing. It might even be the kind of thing that makes him feel alive again. Facing down someone every bit the implacable wall of terror the Bat is, but who is less about the martial arts brute showdowns and more about god knows how many other subtler espionage chessplay and psychological mind tricks, and zero hesitation in putting a bullet in his head.

And possibly taking it's sweet time wiping out all of the competition, going through the long list of wiping out all of Oswald's hated rivals and competitors for him, and possibly a few unfortunate friends. Years, decades of playing the long game, gathering his assets, putting pieces in place, keeping his head low, letting the Bats and the others walk over him and forget he's there, and he's rewarded with the game of a lifetime! To be the arch-criminal who took on The Shadow and won! You'd almost think he'd have planned for The Shadow to come after him, and getting very angry if Batman shows up to get on the case to stop this because huur I'm a big selfish brute who wants to hog all the fun, duuuh Oswald you can do better, we don't kill around these parts Shadow huurgh, god, Batman, *waugh* can you BE any more of a self-important killjoy?

Sure, if no divine intervention comes, he's absolutely going to die, he is not walking out of this confrontation alive even if The Shadow has to go through Gotham ten times to get to him. But, you know, the real problem with Icarus was that idiot drowned when he fell, because he forgot to pack a bathing suit.

And you know what penguins do best, right?

*WAUGH WAUGH WAUGH*

#replies tag #the shadow #superheroes #dc comics #batman #the penguin #oswald cobblepot #shadow magazine #pulp heroes

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