Penguin: Pain and Prejudice by Gregg Hurwitz

Penguin: Pain and Prejudice by Gregg Hurwitz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Batman

Wow! This was amazing! So much more than what I was expecting! First, I recently ran across Kudranski's art and love it. This book's illustration is wonderful, dark and atmospheric. The contrast between Penguin as a child and adult is amazing and it hits you in the heart. I hadn't expected to actually have any kind of feelings for Penguin, not a character I particularly like. However, this story takes us back to Oswald's birth, flashback's to his childhood while showing him in action as the current crime boss. When one sees the sweet baby at birth one feels for the mother whose love surmounts a birth defect. The tale of Oswald's childhood bullying, torture and neglect at the hands of his own father and brothers along with classmates really showed an emotional background that made the reader feel for the boy. While at the same time, the behaviour of the current criminal Penguin, getting off and enjoying torturing those who even look at him the wrong way is such a contrast. For me, this character finally came to life as a three dimensional person.

The book also ends with a one-off story that does flashback's to Oswald's teen years and contrasts it to a current story of his having a romance with a woman who doesn't know who he is. A very well-done story, though the art style is so different from the rest of the book, it's a bit unbalancing.

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