Amazon Prime’s new Batman animated series has gender-swapped the villain The Penguin into a woman, with creators saying the change was inspired by drag queens and musical theatre.
“Batman: The Caped Crusader” was a huge success.Batman: The Animated SeriesThe program aired from 1992 to 1995.
Tim and executive producer James Tucker said: Emmy Awards They felt that the show lacked “good villains” and, more specifically, female antagonists.
“The idea that Batman has no female villains is absurd and insulting. … This is clearly nothing more than a cheap gender swap to promote feminism and demoralize Batman fans.”
“When James and I were talking about the outline for the show, I said, ‘One of the problems with Batman right now is the lack of good villains. We have Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, but I think it would be really nice to have more female villains,'” Timm said.
Tim continued, “I immediately said, ‘I had no idea what to do with the penguin, what his gimmick would be. What if I reversed the gender of the penguin?'”
Tucker said he was immediately inspired by the idea: “I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo and the musical ‘Cabaret’ and the art form of cabaret, and I just started drawing. Ideas just started flowing. I was also thinking a little bit about Harvey Fierstein and ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Divine.'”
Pop culture news site Bounding into Comics published a photo of the new Penguin. Basically, Characters from the 1990s But added compensate and lipstick.
Park Place editor-in-chief John F. Trent called the character changes unoriginal and “cheap” substitutions.
“Bruce Timm created Harley Quinn with Paul Dini in the ’90s. He could have created an entirely new character if he wanted to,” Trent mocked.
“It’s ridiculous and insulting to say Batman doesn’t have any female villains. There are plenty, including Poison Ivy. Talia Al Ghul, Lord Shiva“This is clearly nothing more than a cheap gender swap to bring feminism to the forefront and demoralize Batman fans,” he added.
Oddly enough, producer Tucker said the idea for the new series was basically to recreate the 1990s version, but in reverse.
“The mission statement of this whole show is to evoke the original but turn it on its head,” Tucker said.
This isn’t the first time a major change in the Batman universe has been met with widespread criticism.
In 2023, DC Comics officials revealed that the company plans to replace the Dark Knight with an all-new, black Batman, though plans for a permanent change were reportedly scuttled after retailers predicted the switch could cause sales to drop by up to 75%.
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