When DC announced the creation of the Absolute Universe, I was immediately skeptical. I wasn’t reading the line-wide event book that led into it, so I wasn’t sure why they thought this would be additive to their brand overall. Were they feeling desperate enough to try to recapture the magic of the original Ultimate Universe that helped Marvel come back from the brink of bankruptcy? But all that apprehension started to melt away when the initial writer announcements started rolling in.
Jason Aaron on Absolute Superman. I loved his raw and gritty runs on Wolverine and Scalped, and have followed him ever since, so what new take would he have on this foundational character that is having a renaissance after the successful movie?
Kelly Thompson on Absolute Wonder Woman. Her West Coast Avengers run will always be one of my favorite under-the-radar team books, creating the memorable Jeff the Land Shark character that she would explore in his own hilarious solo title. But her more serious work with books like Black Widow and Captain Marvel made me confident she could pull off a bold new version of Wonder Woman.
Scott Snyder on Absolute Batman. Obviously, he’s a great choice for the character. He’s written him throughout various titles for over a decade, but he seemed like a safe pick. I’d seen him reinvent the concept of Batman many times throughout his run. What new would he have to say in recreating Bruce Wayne from the ground up?
After getting my hands on the books, Absolute Batman quickly became my hands-down favorite, offering an amazing new vision of the character that takes Bruce Wayne from billionaire playboy to working-class hero who can’t rely on infinite resources. It’s a move that immediately makes him more relatable for a modern audience, especially one that may be frustrated with the ways that the rich are screwing over regular folks in the real world. Smart tweaks to his origin and side characters set up clever drama that ties them all together at their very core, but my favorite reinventions are the horror-inspired takes on the villains.
I’ve been a fan of Snyder since his breakthrough Vertigo series American Vampire, so I knew that he would be bringing the terror to Gotham City. Many of his previous Batman runs had a good horror focus, from his take on James Gordon Jr in “The Black Mirror” to the sinister secret society, the Court of Owls, to the vicious Batman Who Laughs, and Absolute Batman feels like he’s being let loose to make new versions of characters as scary as possible.
Spoilers ahead for Absolute Batman #1-18.
Absolute Batman‘s Descent into Body Horror Begins With Reinvention of Fan-Favorite Villains
The villain reinvention starts out pretty mild on the horror side, but it is still effective. The first arc, “The Zoo,” starts out with Black Mask and his gang of Party Animals terrorizing the city. All of the Party Animals wear a menacing-looking black skull mask, which hooks them up to a private network of cryptocurrency that shows them a job board of crimes that they can get paid to do. It’s a real horrors-of-capitalism take on the idea of Black Mask and his criminal empire, tapping into the idea of economic desperation pushing people towards violent means. There’s a bit of a Purge aspect to it, as many of these Party Animals are having a blast racking up cash for doing awful things. Artist Nick Dragotta brings it all to life in a beautifully kinetic style that captures the true chaos of a city under siege by an untrackable network of crime-for-hire.
“Absolute Zero”, a two-part arc that follows The Zoo, is where Snyder really starts leaning into the horror. Marcos Martin steps in as the artist for this story, telling a new, chilling version of Mr. Freeze. Bruce Wayne is investigating the newly constructed detention facility known as Ark M and looks into its connection to Victor Fries Jr. This version of Victor, the son of Victor and Nora Fries, tells him how he was frozen as a child after he was diagnosed with a rare condition. His parents told him it wouldn’t hurt, but much to his terror, he was conscious the whole time he was cryogenically frozen, feeling every painful moment. Not only did it fracture his mind, but it twisted his body, weaving ice into his muscle tissue, allowing him to transform into a horrible, gaunt form with blue skin. It’s a terrifying ordeal that Batman barely survives, but it’s nothing compared to what comes next.
In addition to the main villains of the first two arcs, these first eight issues introduce us to a surprising group of Bruce’s childhood friends – Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent, Selina Kyle, Oswald Cobblepot, and Edward Nygma. It’s refreshing to see them as allies to Bruce, so much so that they are even brought into his operation as Batman. Unfortunately, things quickly take a turn for the worse.
The “Abomination” storyline is a real turning point for the series, upping the stakes in a way that makes things truly feel like all bets are off with the new Absolute Universe. Following Black Mask’s failure in The Zoo, the man pulling the strings, who is later revealed to be the Absolute version of the Joker, decides to call in Bane to take control of the situation in Gotham. This new take on Bane is the most intimidating foe yet, a mass of muscle and violence that dwarfs the already beefy Bruce Wayne, at least triple his size after years of experiments to turn him into the ultimate living weapon. Dragotta brings this nightmare to life as Batman attempts to infiltrate Ark M, only to be captured by the brute.
Bruce attempts to escape over and over, finding other prisoners who have been experimented on, including his friend Waylon, who has been transformed into a new, monstrous version of Killer Croc. Bane continues to capture Bruce, breaking him psychologically as the Ark M doctors do procedure after procedure on him to push his body further. After escaping, but being unconscious for twenty days, Bruce returns to find Bane has struck his friends in another attempt to show him the futility of his resistance.
Batman’s Latest Run Features Body Breaking Horror
Bane broke nearly every bone in Oswald’s body, impressively doing so without hitting any vital organs, leaving him in a life of constant pain. Dent has had his skull cracked down the center and left with horrific burns on the entire left half of his body. Eddie gets it the worst of all. Bane challenges him to a game of riddles before damaging his frontal lobe, exposing the back of his brain, and hooking him directly into a massive computer. All these are truly nightmarish moments of body horror, laying the groundwork for incredibly emotional villain turns that are sure to come down the road.
For his final confrontation with Bane, Bruce manages to get Killer Croc, Catwoman, and Harley Quinn all to help with a plan to lure Bane into a football stadium before using his engineering skills to demolish a building to drop it directly on him. This only pushes Bane to further tap into the Venom that has altered his body, making him grow into a disgusting mass of flesh and meat that looks straight out of the finale of Akira. It’s the perfect combination of bombastic action and disturbing body horror, highlighting what Snyder is best at when it comes to writing Batman.
Issue 15, which reunites Snyder with his “The Black Mirror” collaborator Jock, is a one-off that tells the tale of Jack Grimm, the Absolute Universe version of the Joker that has been pulling the strings from the shadows. It’s all presented as research from Alfred Pennyworth, who in this universe is a British spy who has been on his trail for years, telling various theories about Grimm’s enigmatic past. Instead of just being a comedian whose life was turned upside down by a cruel twist of fate, it’s hypothesized by Pennyworth that Grimm is actually an immortal sadist who has spent the better part of a century amassing wealth through some of the deadliest inventions of the last hundred years.
Not only that, but he’s also a shapeshifter whose true form is one of a dragon-like being that has the traditional Joker color pattern. I’m still a little skeptical of this reinvention, as Snyder’s wearing-his-own-skinned-face version of the Joker from Death of the Family already seems more terrifying, but I’m willing to give his iteration a chance and am excited to see where it goes.
Body Horror Reaches its Absolute Apex with Poison Ivy
After a one-off issue where Batman teams up with Wonder Woman to attempt a cure for Killer Croc’s condition, the “Seventh Kingdom” story arc introduces us to Absolute Poison Ivy, who has way more body horror than I’m used to seeing from our traditional version of Pamela Isley. Guest artist Eric Canete brings the issue to life in a scratchier style than the rest of the series, telling her origin of trying to combine human cells with organisms from all six kingdoms of life. As she got closer to her research paying off, she saw it torn from her by corporate greed. In an attempt to spread her research to evolve all of Gotham to the point where they can fight off the machinations of the Joker, she transforms a building into a nightmare of flora and fauna that feels like it would be right at home in Annihilation.
When you finally see her in all her mutated glory, she looks like the final form of a Resident Evil boss, growing eyes and teeth in all directions as she manipulates her surroundings and sends waves of duplicates after Batman. It’s a brutal fight that takes Bruce to some dark places, making for an impactful story in just two issues.
Batman has always felt like one of the more horror-oriented mainstream superheroes, and Absolute Batman distinguishes itself by leaning into that as hard as possible, without ever losing the emotional core of the characters and a great sense of exciting action.
The series is all gas, no brakes, moving at a breathless pace with big narrative swings that frequently upend the status quo and move things forward narratively with reckless abandon. I’ve enjoyed Batman in various movies, cartoons, and comics since the animated series, but this book still finds ways to surprise me with its radical new takes.
The next story arc promises to introduce a dreadful take on Scarecrow, and I can’t wait to see what Snyder has up his sleeve for him.
