My design of Magpie and my take on her origin.
Margaret Pye was the headline act at the Iceberg Lounge, performing as a silk dancer that would entertain the many guests of the Lounge. As one of Penguin’s favourites he often doted on her, paying her not just in money but in many different pieces of jewellery. She would often be seen wearing this whenever she wasn’t performing and lived a privileged life as one of Penguin’s top performing show girls.
As time went on, Penguin naturally began to search for new talent to keep the acts from being stale and suddenly Margaret (stage name Magpie) was no longer center stage. She loved shiny things and nothing was as dazzling as the spotlight being all on her, but now, as he act became old and she was also getting older, she was being pushed to the side for younger, prettier performers to keep the crowds coming for more.
Unable to take this, she at first let her vindictive side come through in petty theft, stealing the gifts Penguin gave the other girls and hiding them away at her penthouse.
She continued in this way, but soon, it wasn’t enough. As Margaret was put further and further to the back of Penguin’s mind, her performance that had been on every night was now being shown only twice a week, with once a week just around the corner.
The nights she wasn’t performing, she was instead working as a waitress, a job more dangerous than being on stage due to getting close with the criminals that frequented the club.
Every night Margaret played the role of waitress, she had to watch the younger, newer, fresher performers steal her shiny spotlight, casting her in the dark. Now she was only paid in money, no longer paid in her favoured riches and diamonds and the final straw came when she was kicked out of the penthouse and it was given to the new headline act, ‘Phoenix’ a fire dancer who was attracting crowds of customers.
Enraged and jealous, Margaret confronted Phoenix at what had once been her penthouse, with the young performer putting sault in the wound by not even recognising who Margaret was. In a rage, Margaret lashed out and it was in this fight that Phoenix became horribly burned over her face, ruining her good looks. About a week later Penguin dropped her in favour of a new headline act: Peacock, a feather dancer.
This gave Margaret an idea. She could reclaim her spotlight and all the easy living if she got rid of the competition.
Slowly, Margaret began attacking the other acts, stealing their jewellery and leaving them horrifically disfigured in the attacks after. Alternating between burning them with fire and attacking them with chemicals.
Soon, this was not enough, her bitterness wouldn’t allow it and she had to one up the girls. Not just with her looks and performance, but with her wits too.
It took some practice, but eventually Margaret was able to perfectly replicate individual pieces that the girls were given as gifts by Penguin. During their performances she would steal the jewellery and replace it with her replicas. The secret being that these replicas were boobytrapped. Filled with so much explosives they would go off whenever someone wore them with a heat sensitive trigger. Due to where the jewellery was worn, this lead to many losing their lives or becoming hugely disfigured or disabled. Gradually the amounts of explosives became bigger and bigger, to the point that death was inevitable, but not just that. Margaret was so angry with all these girls stealing her spotlight that she had to not just kill them, but completely obliterate their identity. Rip away their faces, blow off their hands or legs, destroy everything that made them, them as well as the things that she believed stole her spotlight, their looks, talents and their youth.
But despite all this, Margaret was still kept as a waitress, she was still old news, she had been a diamond but one that had now lost its shine.
Her downfall came when the objects she had stolen from the girls and replaced with the explosive replicas was discovered in her now tiny apartment. She didn’t have to keep the shiny objects she had stolen from the girls before stealing their lives, but she was so angry and bitter, she didn’t believe that they deserved them. That she was the best, that she was the brightest and the only one who deserved the finer things in life, who deserved the pretty shiny pieces of jewellery.
In an effort to avoid sentencing, Margaret got in contact with Eraser and she is instantly intrigued by him. At first she tries seduction as a mean of getting what she wants, but Eraser only works for money, so she relents and agrees to pay. This doesn’t discourage her flirting, however, as she finds him interesting, alluring with an air of mystery to his character. Eraser also is very interested in her, but won’t engage in anything with her as such things leave behind the most evidence. This is a running theme between the two with the pair of them having a very flirtatious partnership, Magpie constantly pushing her luck to see behind the mask and Eraser keeping his hands to himself as much as possible so he doesn’t leave any evidence of himself behind, though he does express that he finds Magpie to be a very ‘pretty, shiny, thing’ that’s out of his reach. For now at least.
Despite his best efforts, he didn’t count on Batman having some evidence himself and it not all being at the GCPD, so Magpie was still sentenced and placed in Arkham.
Her delusions of grandeur expanded, to not just being better than the girls that replaced her at the Lounge, but being better than every other performer in Gotham. Desperate to be center stage in any capacity, while simultaneously getting rid of competition in her eyes, Margaret or ‘Magpie’ as she goes by in the villainous circles, goes around Gotham, stealing from other starlets and performers, leaving behind her mock explosive riddled jewels, all to get revenge on people she’s never met for daring to upstage her. The diamonds she steals are her trophies from her crimes and she always did love shiny things.
