Tony Zucco
62 years ago - Tony Zucco is born in Gotham City, son of Carl Zucco, an underboss to the Maroni Family
46 years ago - 16-year-old Tony Zucco is arrested for the first time for selling stolen cigarettes.
42 years ago - 20-year-old Tony Zucco starts working heists.
33 years ago - 29-year-old Tony Zucco's father is killed in a shooting by Carmine Falcone's men. He is an outspoken advocate for violence among the families going forward.
29 years ago - 33-year-old Tony Zucco becomes a capo in the Maroni Family. He uses a young Oswald Cobblepot as a runner.
24 years ago - 38-year-old Tony Zucco resents serving under a kid when Maroni Sr dies and Sal Maroni returns to the States to take over the family.
20 years ago - 42-year-old Tony Zucco is outspoken in his opposition to the truce between the Falcone & Maroni families, but as a capo, he has to accept it.
15 years ago - 47-year-old Tony Zucco starts building his own aggressive extortion racket outside of the control of the Falcone or Maroni families as they are disrupted by Batman. People start calling him "Boss" Zucco.
14 years ago - 48-year-old Tony Zucco extorts Haley’s Circus for protection money. When they refuse to pay. his men use acid on the trapeze, leading to the deaths of the Flying Grayons, leaving only their son Dick Grayson alive. Batman take his operation apart and capture him, sending him to prison. Oswald Cobblepot takes over his territories.
11 years ago - 51-year-old Tony Zucco sells out Sal Maroni to Roman Sionis, posing as his confidant in prison but letting Sionis know everything he's doing. After Maroni is killed by Julian Gregory Day, Zucco escapes and attempts to join Sionis's organization, but is killed for betraying his boss.
I personally really enjoy the way the gangsters of the world of Gotham have come into existence. They were all one-off references when they were first conceived, far less important than the colorful villains the stories were really about. Later on, when the larger parts of Gotham's mythology were being built up they would reach back to those one-off gangsters. Their names got bigger and their roles got more important, until we had the Carmine Falcones and Sal Maronis of today.
Zucco, I think, is kind of unique amongst the gangsters of Gotham, because I don't believe he was ever really used as part of the evolving world of organized crime stories. His role, instead, comes from just how unbelievably huge his original one-off story happens to be. He's even been brought back into continuity a few times, all because of the role he played in the origins of the most important hero in the entire DC catalog.
Zucco, I think, is kind of unique amongst the gangsters of Gotham, because I don't believe he was ever really used as part of the evolving world of organized crime stories. His role, instead, comes from just how unbelievably huge his original one-off story happens to be. He's even been brought back into continuity a few times, all because of the role he played in the origins of the most important hero in the entire DC catalog.
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Zucco's Comic HistoryZucco's first appearance (and really, the only one that REALLY matters) happened in 1940, in Detective Comics #38, the debut of Dick Grayson's Robin. I'm sure you already all know this, but Zucco was a gangster who, within the world of this particular issue, runs all the organized crime of Gotham. His men were responsible for the deaths of Dick's parents. Within the issue, Bruce sees Dick wanting to get his revenge on his parent's murderers, but stops him, taking him in and training him, involving him in the dismantling of Zucco's operations and the ultimate capture of the gangster.
Zucco would be another one-off gangster if he wasn't so important to the origin of Robin, but as he is he's been referenced a few times in a few other places, most notably in Batman: Dark Victory, Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale's sequel to their seminal miniseries Batman: The Long Halloween. In modern post-flashpoint Nightwing comics, we've actually seen a return of the character, and even met his daughter Melinda Zucco, the mayor of Bludhaven, who was later revealed to actually be the daughter of Dick's father and Zucco's first wife Meili Lin, making her Dick's half-sister? Wild. |
Our Zucco StoryYou don't actually see this in the original story, because it was early enough in Batman's publication that they were still kicking gangsters off of skyscrapers to their deaths, but in a lot of versions of Robins origins, you actually see Dick have a moment when confronting Zucco when he actively chooses NOT to take his life, but instead to arrest him. We actually think this is hugely important; this is actually the full fruition of Bruce's intention to spare Dick from the same childhood he experienced. Dick, in his very first adventure with Bruce, actually achieves closure. He gets to choose, in his first story, that he's not going to let his parent's death consume him.
Because of this, I actually don't really think it's necessary to keep returning to the well, making continual references to Tony Zucco and the hold he has over Dick Grayson, because the reality is that he doesn't have one. Dick was able to overcome him. That's important. We built up his story to tie him into the world of the Gangsters of Gotham, but I think the huge, incredibly important role this character plays has already been fulfilled. |
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