Just when you thought you were done getting excited for Batman projects in an oversaturated market, who should come strolling along but “Batman: The Animated Series” co-creator Bruce Timm? The DC animation legend’s “Batman: Caped Crusader” might very well be “the best piece of Batman media in a decade,” to quote Witney Seibold’s glowing review for /Film. It’s certainly a worthy successor to “The Animated Series.” Where that beloved ’90s cartoon was limited by the censors at Fox Kids, Timm’s latest animated take on the Dark Knight — which nearly died on the vine after it was dropped by Max, only for Prime Video to pick it up — is given the space to be as emotionally mature, political, and even frightening as it wants to be.
Rather than putting a superficially grimdark or excessively violent spin on the DC Comics universe, “Caped Crusader” takes advantage of its lack of censorship to dig deeper into not just the psychology of Bruce Wayne and his rogues gallery, but also the underlying themes of class warfare and systemic corruption that’ve always been a part of the Batman mythology. Indeed, the ’40s-set crime drama re-imagines many of the Dark Knight’s greatest enemies in ways that feel particularly timely in 2024: Clayface is now basically an incel and one big homage to classic black-and-white horror cinema; Catwoman is a spoiled heiress who resorts to crime when her bank account runs dry; Harvey Dent is a morally compromised district attorney whose eventual transformation into Two-Face takes on an even greater sense of tragedy; and so forth.
Even The Penguin gets a makeover here as Oswalda (with an “a”) Cobblepot, a sophisticated, cold-blooded lady of crime brought to life with relish by the voice of Minnie Driver. Why gender-flip the Penguin? To paraphrase Timm and producer James Tucker — why not?
Caped Crusader’s Penguin is part Marlene Dietrich, part drag queen
As Timm noted in an interview with the Television Academy, the idea for the show’s gender-swapped Penguin came about during pre-production when he pointed out there are far more memorable male Batman villains than there are female ones. “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?'” he recalled. The result was Oswalda, a burgeoning Gotham mobster who’s just as ruthless as her male predecessors and doesn’t blink twice at killing a potential traitor, even if it’s someone close to her.
Like Oswald Cobblepot, however, Oswalda has a sense of flamboyance that evokes old-school Hollywood with more than a touch of camp — in this case, appropriately, the drag queen variety. As Tucker explained:
“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.”
Admittedly, Oswalda isn’t as fascinating as the other reimagined rogues in “Caped Crusader.” Even with her filicidal tendencies (which are certainly more shocking than the violent temper tantrums her male counterparts are prone to), her motives and mindset just aren’t that different from previous iterations of the character. Be that as it may, her introduction in the show’s very first episode, “In Treacherous Waters,” allows “Caped Crusader” to announce itself as something different and even unexpected. Who knows: The already-ordered second season may yet reveal there’s more to this slippy crime mama than meets the (monocled) eye.
“Batman: Caped Crusader” season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
