Has Batman Ever Fought The Cosa Nostra?

[Chubaka]

I am of course referring to the Sicilian Mafia. Would anyone happen to know of a referrence where Batman is pit against the Cosa Nostra or any other equally huge mafiosi?

It strikes me as a cool coincidence that Bernardo Provenzano, capo di capi of the Cosa Nostra, was arrested after 43 years of being a fugitive on April 11th 2006, 3 months and 4 days after Batman Begins was released worldwide.

[Lorendiac]

I am of course referring to the Sicilian Mafia. Would anyone happen to know of a referrence where Batman is pit against the Cosa Nostra or any other equally huge mafiosi?

Batman has fought gangsters with Italian names on many occasions. For instance, Dick Grayson's parents were killed by a gangster called "Boss Zucco" -- which looks like an Italian name to me!

Harvey Dent became Two-Face after a gangster called "Boss Maroni" tossed acid in his face. Again, sounds like an Italian name, doesn't it?

Both of those examples go back to the 1940s. And there have been plenty of other gangsters with Italian-sounding names since then in Batman continuity. For instance, in the 1980s Frank Miller invented "Carmine Falcone, AKA The Roman" as the head of an organized crime outfit in "Batman: Year One," and Jeph Loeb later invented three grown children of Carmine's to use (along with The Roman himself and other people with Italian names) as prominent characters in "The Long Halloween" and its sequel "Dark Victory" in the 1990s.

However, I'm not sure how often -- if ever -- we have explicitly been told that so-and-so is a "Don in the Cosa Nostra" or "a Mafioso from a family of Sicilian immigrants" or anything else that would absolutely nail down the point that a particular villain was "Mafia" instead of just "a bad guy who just happens to run some criminal rackets and just happens to have an Italian-sounding name."

I read somewhere that the movie adaptation of Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" never actually used the word "Mafia" in dialogue. If you watched the movie, you saw that most of the major characters were Sicilian immigrants (or their offspring) who ran organized crime outfits called "families" that controlled various rackets in and around New York City . . . but nobody ever actually said they were "Mafia families," exactly. I think there's a rumor that this was done to avoid insulting honest Italian-Americans, although I'm not sure how that would work and the rumor could be wrong anyway. It's possible, for all I know, that Batman's comics have sometimes followed a similar policy of not explicitly using the word M-A-F-I-A, for one reason or another. But I don't know for sure.

[TROUBLEZ]

About the Godfather, the guy who ran an Italian-American organization was leading a boycott, or protesting the movie because of it's depiction of Italian-Americans as being in the Mafia. Because of this, "Mafia," "Cosa Nostra" and other names for it never were mentioned in the first movie. The second one however did mention those exact names in the courtroom scene. It's ironic that the leader of the organization was also a part of the mafia.

What about the Huntress famliy? Was her father explicity mentioned as being in or head of the Mafia?

[Doom]

I believe in Huntress: Cry for Blood they specifically mention the Cosa Nostra. I know they do travel to Sicily for that one.