|Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot|
|Citizen of the United States with a criminal record.|
|Nation or Planet of Origin|
|Base of Operations|
Normal human with poor athletic abilities and hand-to-hand combat skills but a genius level intelligence with skills a strategist, businessman, inventor and ornithologist (branch of zoology studying birds).
Civilian and military weaponry.
Umbrellas designed with a vast array of offensive and defensive capabilities including: ballistics, flame thrower, bacterial and poison sprays, acid, bullet-proof shielding, concealed swords, radios and methods of flight including parachutes, helicopters and rockets.
|Detective Comics #58 (Dec. 1941)|
|Bill Finger & Bob Kane|
Oswald Cobblepot's mother insist he always carry an umbrella after his father died of Bronchial Pneumonia, an illness she believed to be caused from being caught in the rain.
Cobblepot's appearance and ever-present umbrella made him the target of childhood torments and his only friends were the birds of his mother's pet shop.
After graduating from college, his mother past away from a longtime illness leaving Cobblepot destitute, resulting in the foreclosure of the pet shop, and seizure of his only friends, the birds. Angry at the law, he decided to go into crime and offered his services as a thief to a local crime boss.
Cobblepot was laughed at and rejected by the mobster, who taunted him by calling him a penguin. Deciding to make his new moniker a name to be feared, Cobblepot returned to confront the mobster, dressed in a tuxedo and armed with a .45 caliber umbrella. Killing the mobster in self defense, his ingenuity so impressed the dead mobster's accomplices that they agreed to make Cobblepot their new leader. Fulfilling his desire to be feared and respected Cobblepot adopted the name of Penguin.