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  1. #1
    Spectacular Member Huntsman1117's Avatar
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    Default The Penguin's Voice

    I feel like I can't hear The Penguin's voice when I'm reading Batman comics. Between Burgess Meredith, Danny DeVito, Paul Williams (The Animated Series), and Nolan North (Arkham Knight), I can't determine whose voice best represents the voice of The Penguin in the comics. It actually threw me off seeing him squawking in the latest Batman issue. I haven't heard him squawk since "Batman Returns."
    Last edited by Huntsman1117; 11-10-2018 at 01:34 PM.

  2. #2
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Huntsman1117 View Post
    I feel like I can't hear The Penguin's voice when I'm reading Batman comics. Between Burgess Meredith, Danny DeVito, Paul Williams (The Animated Series), and Nolan North (Arkham Knight), I can't determine whose voice best represents the voice of The Penguin in the comics. It actually threw me off seeing him squawking in the latest Batman issue. I haven't heard him squawk since "Batman Returns."
    I would probably default more towards Burgess Meredith, but then again I grew up watching the Batman TV show (when it originally aired, not just in later daytime reruns).
    I'd rule out Danny DeVito, but I found his Penguin in Batman Returns too over-the-top for my preferences, as well as a bit too crass and vulgar (in a "Louie DePalma plays The Penguin" kind of way).

  3. #3
    Not a Newbie Member JBatmanFan05's Avatar
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    I admit, it's difficult for me as well, to pinpoint, conciously or not, the ideal Penguin voice. Definitely not DeVito for some reason for me, but this weird fusion area of Burgess and Paul Williams. I love Williams, but his voice feels too gentle in some way I think. Burgess, despite the silliness of that show's Penguin, something about his harsher touch seems to ring true to me even after all these years.
    Things I love: Batman, Superman, AEW, old films, Lovecraft

    Grant Morrison: “Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.”

  4. #4
    Extraordinary Member Restingvoice's Avatar
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    When he laughs or squawk I automatically go with Burgess Meredith, when he's calm I hear Paul Williams, and when he's angry I hear Nolan North. I think it's because unlike Joker who the writers often imagine Mark Hamill as the default, they don't have a fixed version of Penguin in their mind. Burgess is too silver age, Paul Williams don't squawk, and Nolan North is too recent.

  5. #5
    Mighty Member Dr. Skeleton's Avatar
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    For me, it's Paul Williams although in the past, it was whoever did Penguin's voice in the 60's Batman cartoon. Tom Kenney did an impressive job in The Batman in the mid 2000's and in Batman: Ninja.

  6. #6
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    I don't hear voices in my head when I'm reading, other than my own head voice. But the classic Penguin of Bill Finger and Bob Kane quotes Shakespeare and Keats, so I think of him as a transplanted Brit with a posh accent. Or given his sartorial panache, one of those aristrocrats from 1930s screwball comedies and musicals, who wear top hat and tails with a monacle and speak with a mid-Atlantic accent--such as Edward Everett Horton.

  7. #7
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    Discounting Tom Kenny (The Batman)?

    C'mon, that Penguin, who showed up in about a quarter of that show, was both hilariously comic relief and a Wayne Family nemesis, as Alfred Pennyworth remembered him dreadfully.

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