In this column, our resident ‘comics guy’ Fred Azeredo expounds on a single comic book issue every month. Not necessarily the biggest, not necessarily the best, just one he thinks is worth discussing! See if you agree!
Maybe we should’ve seen this coming. DC’s brand new Absolute Universe—confusingly bundled with the mostly unrelated All In initiative—was clearly meant as the company’s analogue to Marvel’s Ultimate line. It made sense, especially since Marvel just relaunched that universe to great success, and the history of the Big Two is nothing if not mutual imitation. But Marvel’s original Ultimate books were such a hit because they brought on what were then up-and-coming, exciting creators like Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar to radically reimagine what their flagship characters could be.
DC, meanwhile, tipped Scott Snyder to write Absolute Batman, the first Absolute book to hit shelves. Yep, the same Scott Snyder who wrote the entire 52-issue run of New 52 Batman, plus Dark Nights Metal, Dark Nights Death Metal, and all the billion other Metal events. There’s no denying that Snyder’s take on Batman was once as fresh and surprising as Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man was in 2000, but now it’s about as fresh as… well, anything Bendis is currently writing. That staleness really shows in Absolute Batman #1, which should have been a radical, go-for-broke reimagining but instead feels like a shallow remix, changing things just for the sake of it.
The major changes here include Bruce’s mother still being alive and a citizens’ rights campaigner in Gotham, Bruce and most of his Rogues apparently being school chums now (though surprisingly little is made of either of these), and Alfred now being a badass mercenary tasked with killing Batman. Snyder obviously thinks much of this last twist, as he anchors the first issue around Alfred’s comically hardboiled, tough-guy narration, but it ends up laughably edgy. Just reading “My name is Alfred Pennyworth. And I’m here to do some bad things” got me giggling hysterically—not exactly the reaction the first issue of a much-hyped Batman retool should inspire.
Even with all the changes, it’s surprising how awfully familiar it all feels. For all his much-touted lack of billions, this Batman is still fundamentally the same character: a clever and implacable vigilante who refuses to kill, demonized by the media yet instrumental to saving Gotham from the criminal threat du jour. Sure, his chest emblem is a detachable axe he uses to chop people’s hands off (which is pretty cool!), but we never feel the sense of exhilarating alienation we should get from seeing the familiar made suddenly strange. Instead, this bulky, actionized Caped Crusader feels suspiciously like a return to Doug Moench’s grimdark muscleman of the ‘90s. This is not a good thing, people.Oh, and, by the way, remember James Tynion IV did ‘Batman but if he had no money’ in 2020? Four years ago. I’ll hold out hope for the next few issues, but if this debut is anything to go by, Absolute Batman doesn’t bode well for DC’s attempts at refreshing its slate.