Summary
- The Falcone family is well established in DC Comics mythology as bridging old and new Gotham.
- The family appeared in iconic Batman stories like Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween.
- The Penguin is the latest live-action adaptation to unlock the huge storytelling potential of Gotham's 'Roman Empire'.
The Batman universe is well known for its cast of colorful villains. But over the Dark Knight’s eight-decade career, the threats to Gotham City expand beyond the joke-telling, umbrella-swirling, riddle-setting inhabitants of Arkham Asylum. The Falcone family, also known as the Roman Empire, has been part of Gotham mythos for nearly 40 years. Appearing in some of Batman’s greatest stories, they’ve become a compelling part of the city’s history on page and increasingly, thanks to shows like The Penguin, on screen.
The Falcones bridge the old Gotham that created Batman through the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents and the new Gotham created when Batman’s war on crime raised the stakes to let in villains like Joker, Penguin and Riddler. Unsurprisingly, the family has made its way into expanded media. The Penguin shows how invaluable the most famous crime family in Gotham is in casting a new light on the dark city of Gotham.
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What Is The Falcone Crime Family?
In Batman history, the Falcones have the significance of being Batman’s first target. Sure, in the days before Robin, there were the growing inmates of Arkham to contend with, but the Falcone crime family’s grip on Gotham was what first drew Batman into effective alliances.
DC Comics has fleshed out the extended Falcone family, but the core protagonists remain those inspired by the Corleone family of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (particularly Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation). At the head is Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, an apparently untouchable crime lord and his wife Louisa. Then there are the three Falcone children: In descending order of age, they are Mario, Sofia and Alberto.
The Falcone family brought allies and rivals with them. Most notable are the Viti Crew, a family off-shoot operating in Chicago, and the Maronis, a rival crime family headed by Salvatore “The Boss” Maroni.
The Falcones In DC Comics
The Falcone family first appeared in Frank Miller’s definitive Batman: Year One. In 1987, DC was taking advantage of its universe reset, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Wiping the slate clean and establishing a new continuity for well-known heroes resulted in influential arcs and series like John Byrne’s Man of Steel. Miller, who had helped establish the darker Modern Age of comic books with the seminal The Dark Knight Returns a year earlier, took the chance to reframe Batman by exploring his early years.
Batman: Year One concentrated on the noir and realism of an inexperienced Dark Knight waging his war to free Gotham from the clutches of the crime families that controlled it. In Batman: Year One, evidence of corruption involving a detective in GCPD opens up the deep connections between crime and the institutions of Gotham City. It sees the fledgling Dark Knight save the family of newly transferred Lieutenant Gordon from the Falcones and Vitis. The pair then work together to hand District Attorney Harvey Dent the evidence to remove the corrupt Commissioner Loeb from office.
While Batman: Year One was a significant introduction, another comic arc is considered the defining saga of the Falcones. The Long Halloween was a 13-part limited series written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Tim Sale. It’s regarded as a classic Batman storyline, spawning a spin-off and sequels up to 2024’s limited series The Last Halloween, where a host of artists pay tribute to Sale following his death in 2022.
The Falcones In Batman: The Long Halloween
The Long Halloween picks up from Batman: Year One to explore the second year of the vigilante’s career. It entangles Catwoman in the Falcone saga, as she begins to suspect that Carmine Falcone is her father, and provides a compelling origin for a particularly dangerous interpretation of Two-Face. It also digs into the blood feud between the Falcone and Maroni families that ran through Gotham crime.
Having worked his way up the ranks to establish his family at the center of Gotham Crime, Vincent Falcone, father of Carmine Falcone and Carla Viti, had to contend with the Maroni family muscling into his patch. A breaking point was when Sal Maroni’s father Luigi ordered a hit on Vincent’s son. When Vincent brought a dying Carmine to Thomas Wayne late one night, and the doctor saved his life, it was witnessed by a young Bruce Wayne. For the Falcones, this was long-standing proof of the Waynes’ loyalty to the Falcones, which would drag the socialite into the year of the Long Halloween alongside his nocturnal alter-ego.
During that year, in which Batman, Gordon and Dent solidify their pact to take down the Falcones, members of the family are murdered on prominent holidays by a killer wryly dubbed Holiday. As Carmine’s attempts to assassinate Dent fail and all-out war breaks out with the Maronis, he’s forced to call on the growing community of costumed villains to hold his empire together. Things worsen when Alberto Falcone and Carla Vita are killed by Holiday and, during a trial in which Sal Maroni offered to give evidence against Carmine Falcone, Dent is not killed but disfigured by an acid attack.
When Dent reemerges as the deranged and vengeful Two Face, he assassinates Carmine while it looks like Sofia Falcone has simultaneously perished in a struggle with Catwoman. The Falcone family looks to have succumbed to a new-look Gotham when Alberto is revealed to be Holiday, having assumed the ‘freak’ persona to be bigger than his father and faked his death. Two Face and Alberto’s crimes and personas blur in the arc as Dent’s wife lets Alberto take the fall for some of Harvey’s crimes, hoping her husband can be cured in Arkham, and Alberto’s execution is deferred due to insanity.
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The Falcones In Batman: Dark Victory
This classic storyline continued in the limited series Dark Victory and Catwoman: When in Rome, which ran concurrently with The Long Halloween. Dark Victory provides the origin for Batman’s sidekick Robin and ties up several character strands from Miller’s Batman: Year One as it charts the continuing battle between the Falcones and Two Face. It sees Carmine’s eldest son Mario return to Gotham and take custody of Alberto when he’s released on house arrest. At the same time, Sofia, who was left paraplegic after her fight with Catwoman, continues the Falcones’ war with Two Face.
All signs point to Two Face when a mysterious new killer dubbed Hangman starts targeting corrupt police officers. But the killer is later revealed to be Sofia, who was faking her injuries to take revenge on everyone who helped Harvey Dent become DA. As the truth emerges, Sofia smothers her brother Alberto and is ultimately shot by Two Face. When the broken Mario, the last surviving Falcone, torches the family home, it looks like the family’s grip on Gotham is over. Organized crime’s attempt to harness the new villains of Gotham ultimately led to its destruction.
The Falcones In Other Batman media
The influential Falcone family has played a role in the Arkham game series. Their classic comic storylines have also been adapted into animated movies of Batman: Year One and a substantially altered Batman: The Long Halloween. But live-action movies and series have best demonstrated the crime family’s storytelling potential.
The Falcone family is a perfect way to ease Batman and his costumed rogue’s gallery into Gotham. Tom Wilkinson’s Carmine Falcone was a notable part of Batman Begins before he fell prey to Batman and Scarecrow, but fans will have seen the beats of The Long Halloween story arc play out more in the sequel, The Dark Knight. There, the Joker’s chaos decimates the crime families of Gotham, including the Maronis, and transforms Harvey Dent into Two Face.
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The Falcones In Gotham
The Batman character who’s benefited most from Gotham’s early turf wars on screen is Penguin. Gotham, Fox’s prequel series that concentrated on Jim Gordon arriving in the corrupt city, was dominated by the fights between the Falcone and Maroni families in its early seasons. The feathered felon was shown playing the two off each other to rise through the ranks.
During Gotham, Penguin (Robin Lloyd Taylor) manipulates the Falcones and Maronis into a turf war that sees Carmine Falcone attempt to retire from crime. John Doman’s Carmine is the most noble and sympathetic version seen on screen, but that doesn’t mean his family is any less deadly or deranged. When Carmine leaves the city after his son Mario is infected by the Mad Hatter’s Tetch virus and ultimately killed, Jim Gordon lures him back to stop the Penguin’s reign of terror.
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Gotham’s fourth season part-adapted The Long Halloween when it introduced Sofia Falcone. Failing to save her from the Gotham life he had, Carmine sides with Penguin against his troubled daughter, only for Sofia to murder her father to pin the blame on her rival. Naturally, it doesn’t end well for Gotham’s new queenpin when she’s shot and left in a coma.
The Falcones In The Batman And The Penguin
The Falcone saga is most prominent in the films and series that make up Matt Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga, starting with 2022’s The Batman. While The Long Halloween strongly suggested that Catwoman Selina Kyle is the daughter of Carmine Falcone, it has never been explicitly confirmed in the comics. The Batman made that an integral part of the film’s plot as as a young Batman (Robert Pattinson), two years into his career, tackles the crime families of Gotham including John Turturro’s twisted Carmine Falcone, and tangles with his illegitimate daughter Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz).
In The Batman, the campaign of masked serial killer Riddler uncovers a web of corruption plugged into an ongoing feud between the Maroni and Falcone families. Oz 'Penguin' Cobb (Colin Farrell), a brilliantly realized Falcone lieutenant who runs the Iceberg Lounge club, is suspected to be informing on the Maroni operation to GCPD, but it’s all part of the plan of the real snitch, Carmine Falcone. Conspiring to remove the Maronis from the equation once and for all, Carmine is shot dead by the Riddler while being arrested.
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The Batman entwines the history of the Wayne families further than The Long Halloween, linking back to a bad call by Thomas Wayne. A deal gone wrong during the Gothamite’s campaign to become mayor explicitly draws Carmine Falcone into the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents. In doing so, he becomes responsible for Batman’s existence.
The Penguin picks up two weeks after Carmine’s death (the mobhead now portrayed by Mark Strong), using the changing face of organized crime to show the ascent of Penguin. Cobb eliminates Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), an addict and a playboy, early on and pins the death on the Maronis, igniting the usual turf war. But his major opposition isn’t Luca Falcone, Carmine’s brother who’s taken over the family, or the imprisoned Sal Maroni. It’s the astute and unpredictable Sofia (Cristin Milioti). The underestimated heir has recently been released from Arkham following a barrage of electroshock therapy, where she was incarcerated as the Hangman killer. In this continuity, Alberto’s Holiday persona is shared between the Riddler and his older sister.
It remains to be seen where The Penguin and the forthcoming The Batman 2 take the story of the Falcones. But they’ve proved to be a fascinating addition to Gotham lore. The dysfunctional criminal unit brings a huge potential to explore Gotham City. Its impressive and destructive history is now being felt on screen as much as in the pages of comic books.
- Release Date
- 2024 - 2024-00-00
- Showrunner
- Lauren LeFranc
- Directors
- Craig Zobel
- Writers
- Lauren LeFranc
- Franchise(s)
- Batman, DC Elseworlds
Cast
-
Colin FarrellOz Cobb -
Cristin MiliotiSofia Falcone
WHERE TO WATCH
Created by Lauren LeFranc and starring Colin Farrell, The Penguin builds on 2022's The Batman. The Max series chronicles the eponymous villain's attempt to reach Gotham's criminal peak, rising through the underworld in the middle of a power struggle.
- Seasons
- 1
- Prequel
- The Batman (2022)
- Story By
- Bill Finger, Bob Kane
- Streaming Service(s)
- MAX
