#ButcherBilly

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

A HANNA-BARBERA ANIMATION ORIGINAL -- JAMES GUNN APPROVED.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on mashup pieces of Hanna-Barbera’s “Jabberjaw” animated character and DC’s King Shark comic-book anti-hero á la James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” (2021), artwork by pop culture maniac-junkie-mashup artist extraordinaire “Butcher Billy.”

Resolution at 1080x1436 & 1085x1355.

Sources: www.pinterest.com/pin/6139049941738866 & X (formerly known as Twitter).

[maxwell-grant]

The Penguin Episode 5: "Homecoming" Breakdown

BREANNAH: I think, if Oz had it his way, I think Victor would carry on Oz's legacy. AMY: Do you think that Victor can ever see Oz as his Rex Calabrese? BREANNAH (sighs): I think that is what Oz wants. I think if Oz had it his way, by the end of this series, Victor would want to plan Oz's funeral and have a parade through the streets and be the, um AMY: The biggest parade ever? BREANNAH: The biggest parade ever. - The Penguin Podcast Episode 5

(Art by @butcherbilly)

(Episode 1) (Episode 2) (Episode 3) (Episode 4) (Episode 6) (Episode 7) (Episode 8)

I wanna know who decided to bang up the Penguimobile so meticulously to give it the angriest, most anthropomorpic scarred face a Maserati can possibly have, on the second before it's given a Viking funeral. That thing looks like a wounded animal and I refuse to accept this was accidental.

I knew we were in for something special when it opened with "Did I ever tell of Rex Calabrese" and the Penguinmobile being burned, and then it turned out to actually be a funeral for the Penguinmobile and the history of why Oz wanted a Penguinmobile so badly, why was it so deeply important for him as a kid to dream that one day he'd get a big flashy stupid car to roll down the block with, and what burning the Penguinmobile means to him now.

"It wasn't just a car, it was a chariot. Made a kid with a bum leg feel like even he could be king." "End of an era."

"Only the good die young." Sure hope that bodes nothing terrible for Victor's future.

It is pretty funny that Oz has Tiktok installed on his phone and that this one scene confirms it exists in this universe, the jokes just kinda write themselves there.

Vic sure seems like he's rapidly getting a taste for the action, the decision he's made is bringing a fight out of him no one but Oz had ever really imagined was there. Not only is he getting comfortable with doing violence on Oz's behalf and making his own decisions, but he's gotten to a point where he's starting to actually look up to Oz, seeing him the way Oz wants to be seen.

Oh hey it's the police chief from The Batman, glad that he shows up here, especially in a context where he gets to eat shit.

I wish Eve Carlo showed up more, so far she hasn't really had too much to do although this episode definitely is the most we've seen. Someone who Oz doesn't really have much leverage with because she sees many of the cracks in his image and who's had a target on her back because of him the moment we were introduced to her, her protectiveness over the girls, the stuff mentioned in the commentary, all of that is interesting and I expect we're gonna get more elaboration regarding her down the line - it's already a big question mark whether she'll even survive the show.

"That's what I do, I fix things. That's all I ever fucking do."

I like these moments of pathetic defiance and pained regretful self-serving vulnerability that we get from Johnny Viti in this episode, with Sofia eating the scenery with the power she now holds over him even as what he reveals still very much hurts her.

The painful vulnerability of Francis nearly burning the house down while softly clutching a catcher's mitt, steeling up and joking with Victor about her bruises, and the sheer happiness and pride overflowing from her as she practically dances to the news that her son gassed an entire family to death, God what a character. She waited her whole life for these scumbags to die and die by her son's hand, it's gonna be a real gutpunch when or if she finds out the truth.

Oz doing everything he does so he can come home one day and have his mom tell him she's proud of him, and at the happiest and most prideful we've ever seen (and probably will ever see) Francis, he wasn't there to see it, and it was only because Victor spun a lie for him.

I wanna take a little aside just to highlight some of Shohreh Aghdashloo's comments regarding Nadia Maroni and her final moments, and this is probably the character I'm going to most miss because I was very interested in everything that she brought to the table, the history and the perspective that this character brings to Gotham, and what went into her creation and death.

She's coming from a huge family. She left the revolution behind. She has traveled the seven seas, she has learned a lot, and therefore she herself has been revolutionized. She's where she cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. All she's trying to do is to save her family, her husband, her son, and what's important to them. There is no right and wrong there. Which reminds me of a poem by the Persian poet Rumi, which says, "Beyond the notion of right and wrong, there is a field. Would you like to meet me there?". That's where she is standing.

Her country was invaded. Foreign occupation. Now she needs to make another country her country, and then save herself and her family. And she's willing to do everything to the point that she would even sacrifice herself for this family.

I guess when you go through a lot and do not have time to think about your doings, your past, your present, what's going to happen in the future, you're just involved with something like a snowball that comes out downhil. You really don't think properly. All you do is action, action, and what's right to do right now.

If she had been thinking thoroughly, she would have not done that - The Penguin Podcast Episode 5

‘Why does Nadia go there? She can send people to bring her son back,’” Aghdashloo says of Nadia’s characterization as an Iranian mother. “But she doesn’t, because she calls her son ‘joon,’ ‘dear,’ and she is ready to sacrifice herself for him. We can’t help it.”

Every time an Iranian mother talks to their son, their name is always followed by “joon,” or “dear.” And at the end of the conversation, it usually ends like this: “ghorbunet beram.” “I sacrifice myself for you.” Nadia literally sacrifices herself for her son. That is the best part, for me, of this scene. If she were a real mob boss, she wouldn’t get herself involved with this. But she is a housewife. She makes mistakes. That scene means so much to me. I’ve been asked, “Why does Nadia go there? She can send people to bring her son back.” But she doesn’t, because she calls her son “joon,” “dear,” and she is ready to sacrifice herself for him. Ghorbunet beram. - The Penguin’s Shohreh Aghdashloo Couldn’t Let Nadia Stay Quiet, by Roxana Hadadi,

Having established that, Jesus Christ.

Oh so that's why Shohreh Aghdashloo's name and eyes were superimposed behind the burning car the whole time in the credits, you fuckers, that's why.

The "You know my reputation?" line from the movie always took a whole different meaning with the show, but with that scene, Oz cooking a mother and her son alive while they embraced and gleefully watching it all happen, is the first time we see him deserve the reputation he boasted about, it's a real what-the-fuck moment in a way that even the stabbing in Episode 2 was not, in part because this was not necessary, and it was extremely premeditated. Oz may have done it only after the Maronis locked the door and tried to kill him, he may have done it as payback for them stealing his shrooms and trying to kill him, but he had already doused Taj in gasoline first. He likely expected Nadia to be there to retrieve him. He waited until Taj was in her arms. It's fucking vile and impossible to justify even more so than the other vile unjustifiable things Oz had done up to this point.

Extremely cool and good that, when asked if this is the worst thing Oz has done, Lauren Lefranc very quickly said No. Cool, cool cool, fun times ahead.

I highlight those excerpts where Aghdashloo discusses the character's morality because it is important to how the Maronis function differently from the Falcones, as we'll see with Sal later, but also the fact that Oz is not targeting people who are morally below him. He is not sticking it to the man by attacking the Maronis. Everything Aghdashloo describes above about Nadia's morality and decision-making aligns with how Victor and Oz function, but Nadia has more family to lose, and she respects a code that Oz wipes his ass with and actively exploits to beat them with. The Maronis still think that they can survive in this town by being strong principled gangsters, when this is a city of villains.

Something about the image of a self-pitying American gangster gleefully burning a middle-eastern family alive, under the pretense of payback but largely because he could get away with it.

"I think there's a reason that we're more interested in the life of the villains nowadays than Madame Curie or, you know, Dostoevsky, is the fact that we want to know what happens to a person that turns them from a human into a creature."

“Maybe today, where we’re standing at the junction of history, we need to get to know our villains so we know how to deal with them,” she says with a wink." -

I can't say too many of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul comparisons have been particularly warranted, but Oz losing his shit at daylight in a yellow/orange-lit deserted junkyard because he ruined his entire drug batch as a result of his cruel recklessness is an extremely BrBa/BCS moment, no notes.

Extreme credit to Colin Farrell that he's nonetheless able to elicit sympathy, despairing over his lifeline turned to ashes in his hands and begging Victor to get his mom somewhere safe, not even being able to name where exactly she would be, because even his mastery over the city is failing him.

Congratulations Sofia, you've risen up to the role of Batman Supervillain so fast that you even get your own Harley Quinn now

Dr.Rush is almost aggressively pathosless compared to everyone else in the show in a way that I think works for his role, that his presence is wildly uncomfortable to us in a lot of ways, and that he's even breathing speaks still to Sofia's buried need to have someone, anyone, in her corner, even a guy who was complicit in her torture.

It's easy to parse his sticking around as attraction to Sofia and I didn't quite know what to make of it, but Theo Rossi laid out a lot of very insightful commentary on the podcast regarding what he saw as the driving force of the character and those got me seeing Dr.Rush as a genuinely interesting spin on the Arkham psychologist. Even if very much not intentionally, I do think he's actually offering an interesting meditation on the broad strokes of Harley Quinn, specifically what drives an ethical-but-naive psychologist to throw themselves wholesale into submitting before the higher force-of-personality offered by a supervillain, even without being manipulated into doing so.

He, like many of us in life, was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think that he went in with the best intentions to go into Arkham, and then he realized what Arkham was, and how horrific it was. I think, to deal with that, because someone who gives their entire life to a specific profession is kind of sheltered from real feelings, if you're dealing with other people's feelings. And I don't think he ever really explored his, in a way. So he gets this opportunity, and he sees what she has become, this butterfly. She had become something else. And he was so dying to become something else other than himself. And he had spent all these years after Arkham numbing himself and doing whatever. A lot of this came to me months after shooting (laugh).

There was a very significant part in Ep.2 where she slaps him, and what we had written in there is that he looks like he enjoyed it. It's like that he enjoyed the feeling of pain because he needed to feel something again. I think that he's become so incredibly numb to watching this horrific thing that he basically lost himself, and why he now dedicated his life to doing whatever was because he needed to rectify his soul, in a way, for what he had seen in this horrific thing.

This is someone who's lost in every single way due to the profession that they had followed, which in probably the beginning sounded like a really fantastic idea. I think that it's dedication to something and seeing now, adding on physical violence, this violence he's seeing, this true, horrific thing, and then also adding on guilt, and adding on, "Is she innocent? Am I complicit? How do I-"

And then add on his own stuff of, "I want what you have". How did you come from the depths of the worst place a human can be, to literally be thrown away, like we were just saying about Rosemary Kennedy. How do you come from there to gain your power and be fully in control? And really strut, like this peacock, where you go, "Oh my-How do I get that?". That's the superpower.

RIP in shit Johnny Viti, you died as you lived, being the idiot who thinks this is still about the money and not sending a message.

Like the other piece of shit backstabber in Sofia's life, all she needed him for was to open the door.

Extremely great incorporation of the Gigante name here, as is Sofia going to war with her mother's coat and painting her as a force too great for the Falcones to handle, assembling the final piece of the great burning self-mythology of family injustice she needs to put on a show as a Batman Villain, looking like she stepped out of the Tim Burton movies and declaring the new order everyone's gonna have to get in line with or die.

Sofia once again demonstrates the ways in which supervillains not only exist, but take over the existing orders: She arrives at the table with warpaint and fur, addressing these men as wronged underdogs like her and her mother, showing herself as a boss who will seriously and almost aggressively not screw them over for the sake of getting a cut, who will pay them ludicrously and generously if they stand by her as she chucks the royal lineage of Gotham in the trash and reaches out to their biggest enemies, as she guns down the Reasonable Businessman on the table so they can take the money caked in his brain matter - and only if they address her by her new nom-de-guerre first, of course.

Of course money is less than dogshit to her - she grew up never wanting for it, then she spend 10 years where it never mattered / actively screwed her over, and now she's single-minded on achieving vengeance and viewing money as only a necessary conversation tool - money was what Milos and Viti cared about, and that way of thinking died with them. They were the dinosaurs who thought they could out-reason or just buy out the meteor.

This is how traditional crime gets it's back broken in Gotham: the mob spent two decades with cheat codes to infinite money, and then Batman took it away, and at the moment they most needed to seriously reorganize and adjust for having limited money, the freaks they created killed them and are now taking over with equally impossible promises far more appealing to regular people, continuining the chain of dominoes that reaches all the way back to the day Thomas Wayne saved Carmine Falcone's life and kicks off why and how Gotham City becomes the place where people like the Batman and the Riddler and the Penguin exist.

It is not only the episode where Sofia comes out to the world as a supervillain, but it's the one where Oz begins doing the same, as we'll see in the end.

This new order is also part of why Sofia ultimately extends an invitation to Sal Maroni. A thing that I was not expecting about Sal, that Clancy Brown brought up as soon as he showed up on a post-episode segment, is that Sal Maroni is easily manipulated. He is the closest we've ever gotten to a classic Honorable Gangster, to a strong and silent Gary Cooper type, the Don who genuinely cares about honor and family and fairness, and he is a sucker. A dumb sucker who lost before the story began, only kept losing while in jail, who needed his wife to coach him and do the real work, and now needs Sofia, who's aiming to become an actually successful Honorable Gangster, to come in her place because he can't even avenge his family on his own.

He is not totally defenseless given the prison escape, but really the main reason he's not visibly and immediately and obviously clockable as a dumb sucker is because Clancy Brown is playing him, which fits his role as a counterpart to Carmine Falcone, Gotham's first villain The Hangman, because nobody would expect John Turturro to be the serial killer king orchestrator of everything wrong in the world. Sal is the anti-Carmine Falcone, and that's why Sofia extends him the grace of an invitation. Because he wouldn't have thrown his daughter to the wolves like that over nothing.

She knows he is right about "You Falcones eat your own", it's how she got here after all. I don't think she respects Maroni, but I think she respects every other man in Gotham even less. At least this one actually honors his word, for what good it does him, and he has just as much reason to pursue her war against Oz as she does, and in the new way of things, in this post-Batman world they live in, it is Justice and Vengeance that rule the city now.

Getting to see the horrific state Crown Point's in also goes a long way towards adding justification for Victor's decisions. That was where he lived up until Oz took him in, Squid was the most powerful person in his life up until that moment, that was the apocalyptic tragedy his beloved neighborhood had turned into. Victor has that love for Gotham and that connection to the family that died here, that the city took and he cannot accept that. That's what he shares with Oz, and with Bruce as well. Of course he couldn't leave it all behind to join Graciela in the sunset, of course he couldn't leave this city anymore than Oz or Bruce could.

Oz getting a bitter taste of his own bullshit when Eve maneuvers around his insecure temper tantrum and makes herself small so he can feel big and not endanger her any further, and he knows it - on some level he has to know she's playing him the way he plays everyone else, and he will go along with it.

Crushing stuff in that scene with Francis - Oz spinning too many plates and despairing and sinking morally and emotionally the whole episode, and then when he thinks he gets to just rest, when all he wants is to go back to his mom's arms for a beat, she shreds his heart to pieces and holds his feet to the fire so he will get back to work. Even more fucked up is that this is her doing the best she can possibly do for him at the moment, because that's how Oz gets things done. Through her negative reinforcement, when he's backed into a corner, when he's desperate and with no way out, that's when he gets miracle solutions and right now they desperately need one.

"My ma, she's what keeps me good" - even if that were even remotely true, your mom doesn't want you to be good, she wants you to win.

We're back to the shithole I raised you in and the only way we're getting out is if you become the Penguin, so be the fucking Penguin.

AND SO HE FINDS HIS OWN BATCAVE

Speaking as someone who always liked Penguin living underground as much as (maybe a little more) the Iceberg Lounge, no small part of me is happy that this one gets to do both, and that this choice of lair comes with a whole story. Oz used to play around here with his brothers, and now he's bringing along a new brother to join him down there.

Burned down to nothing but trauma and resourcefulness and the only person who hasn't given up on him, this person who's seeing him the way he wants to be seen, this kid who embodies the best of him, someone who makes this whole thing worth doing in the first place.

BREANNAH GIBSON: (on the comparison to Walter White and Jesse Pinkman) I think that's a great comparison, especially as you get into the later seasons of Breaking Bad where Walt just becomes this sort of, unrecognizable character from the pilot, and Jesse is - is sort of his moral compass. I think, in a way, Oz and Victor have a similar relationship because Oz keeps him around because he wants to mentor him, and in that way you can see that there's something good in Oz.

Like, I know that he says that his ma is good, and I think he believes that when he's saying it to Victor, but Oz would never admit that in the real situation that they're in, Victor is his moral compass here. Victor is the good in the situation, and Victor is that naive kid from the same neighborhood that Oz grew up in, that maybe Oz wants to see succeed.

And if he helps Victor succeed, he succeeds. And I think there's part of that that Oz is really enjoying about their relationship. And especially in this episode, you know, after Ep.3, Victor's all in. He came back for Oz. He saved him. He's now like, "It's the two of us, and there's nobody else." - Penguin Podcast Episode 5

Armed with these, he storms the underground to prove he can do the impossible and build an empire with two buckets.

Not just the faint last hope, but the first thing he has that's actually by his doing - not owned by the Falcones and leased to him in his role as their court jester, not something he's paying other people to let him use, something he took for himself and then grew into a whole thing.

Which is what The Penguin does - he builds and grows and takes over and expands until Batman has to deal with him. Among the Batman villains, he is the empire builder, and this is where he starts. So far he's just been fixing, now it's time to start building.

And I'll leave the final words here with @davidmann95

OZ USES THE SAME ABANDONED SUBWAY SYSTEM AS BATTINSON BECAUSE THEIR HERO/VILLAIN PARALLEL IS ROOTED IN THEIR SHARED LOVE OF GOTHAM (AS WELL AS THEIR CONNECTIONS TO THE FAMILIES THEY LOST AS CHILDREN IN THIS TAKE THAT BOTH LEAD THEM HERE), SO GOOD

we talked around it a little before but this was definitely the 'okay, fuck it, I guess I'm a supervillain now' episode

Oz, the scummy wheeling-dealing doublecrosser trying to keep all his bullshit in the air and maneuver his way into a successful partnership with anyone he can that he can eventually get on top of Someday, reaches the end of his rope

So now The Penguin has to live in his subterranean childhood trauma lair to defeat all his enemies outright by eating Gotham from the inside out with Arkham super-drugs

[itshouseofwarpeddesire]

#frankenhooker #henenlotter #butcherbilly

[nyancreeperdraws]

A remake of a picture done by @butcherbilly as a Graphic Design project.

The idea was to basically write a report on a specific popular graphic designer and do a report on them. Then afterwords, try to recreate a popular piece in their artstyle.

I chose Butcher Billy (Billy Mariano De Luz), not just because I love how he blends pop culture and reality together, but also because of his artstyle.

I love how it mixes pop art and comic book art with graphic design influences. It looks cool. I wish I could properly recreate it.

I tried my best to recreate the piece I chose (the second pic) but make it my own by adding my own style. I hope I still succeeded and got a good grade.

I've been getting some low grades recently. I hope I get at least an eighty on this.

So yeah hope you enjoy this.

[nojarama]

"Pop Culture Bowie" by Butcher Billy. #bowie #davidbowie #bowieismylordandsavior #churchofbowie #imjustaspacecadetandhesthecommander #bowieforever #bowiemas #abowiecelebration #justforoneday #butcherbilly

[911coded]

I stumbled across this artist on TikTok and tracked down his Redbubble account. Wanted to share for any Swifties out there who also follow 9-1-1 and Stargate 🎼👨🏻‍🎨

[trioxina245]

Captain America vs Iron Man - The Dark Knight Returns homage, by  Butcher Billy after Frank Miller

[quinnhoe]

Just Joe storying about the Eddie billboard 🥰

[poppins-me]

© The Butcher Billy

[dopehopey]

This design is amazing, I need it on everything

[spectersinthesnow]

Art by butcherbilly

[itshouseofwarpeddesire]

#thelighthouse #creaturefromtheblacklagoon #butcherbilly

[thosereblogs]

@thebutcherbilly

[brownslair]

Butcher Billy es un ilustrador brasileño que centra su trabajo en la cultura pop. Tiene una serie de serigrafías donde explora las conexiones entre las estrellas del rock y los super-héroes. No podía ser de otra forma, me flipa bastante. https://www.curioos.com/butcherbilly?series=guitar-heroes

[gloryholesupernova]

Bitch I’m (Not) Madonna

[poppins-me]

source