Synopsis:
Batman was born out of violence – a horrible tragedy that shaped the trajectory of his future. But when a vigilant MI6 agent starts tracking the lonely life of Bruce Wayne, he discovers the interconnectivity between a hero’s shell life and the many layers of the Black Mask Gang. It’s Batman versus Alfred Pennyworth!
Review:
Continuity has been a battlefield in comic books from the beginning. Whether it was trying to reconcile the two very different Flashes in “Flash of Two Worlds” (the landmark The Flash #123 from 1961) or 1985’s much more ambitious, and arguably more controversial Crisis On Infinite Earths, every generation has tried to shoulder the weight of all the substantial history that has come before. Where superhero comics have arrived at 2024 seems to be a modest shrug.
The joy of continuity is in what matters to the individual reader, and individual takes have become the mode. The Absolute Universe by DC Comics is the latest example of this, and perhaps the best argument for why continuity no longer matters as it once did.
Absolute Batman #2 is nowhere near as dense in its introductions as the first issue, but through ways big and small elaborates this is a very different Batman from ones we’ve met before. And it’s just fine. No one is out anything by this radical new interpretation by writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta – other Batmen exist as they have throughout comics and other media – and we only gain here.
Case in point: the Absolute Batmobile.
This version isn’t remotely a car at all. Young Bruce clearly loved playing with Tonka trucks because his new ride is a gigantic dump truck with a bat-shaped ram scoop fixed to the front. The dump body is actually in the shape of Batman’s symbol and tapers off into a little bit of a Batcape. He clearly nabbed it from a quarry or massive Gotham construction site, which begs some questions, but that’s this comic book so far: huge, impossible to miss, and not remotely practical.
As big as the action and changes to Batman lore get, the book also delves deeper into Bruce Wayne the traumatized child. So much of Batman legend surrounds the murder of his parents, but very rarely does Bruce’s trauma, guilt, or pain get any substantial investigation. All of it goes into his quest to fight crime, the legend he seeks to create, and the escalations that ensue.
Scott Snyder capitalizes on keeping Martha Wayne alive by showing us a young and older Bruce who is actively hurting. This is a welcome change, especially early in a narrative that is so keenly determined to turn Gotham even darker. The first issue suggested that this Bruce was familiar with his nominal Rogue’s Gallery. Issue #2 confirms that he grew up with some of them – Penguin, Riddler, Killer Croc – and most interestingly, Catwoman.
Bruce was friends (more?) with Selina Kyle when they were teenagers, a major shift from traditional Batman lore. This skews closer to the Peter Parker/MJ relationship from the first Ultimate Comics run in the early 2000s by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, and it’s not unwelcome. It’s certainly different, and some readers’ mileage will vary (many pitchforks came out a few years ago at the idea the Bat and Cat would marry, so much writer Tom King ‘hired’ a bodyguard).
This is a smaller Gotham; this is a more intimate personal world for Bruce Wayne; this is a story without obvious heroes. Batman is beyond even a vigilante here, willfully maiming and killing the Party Animals, a vigilante gang running amok in the city. They deserve it, but it’s extrajudicial and beyond Batman’s traditional moral scope. With Alfred, Jim Gordon, and maybe Bruce’s mother all at least tangentially connected to Gotham’s corruption, the shadows here are very dark and close.
The story gets its enormous scale from Nick Dragotta’s fantastic artwork. The panels are graphic, bold, and big. Iconic images abound – the burning towers, the BatTonka, any shot of Batman in action – and the book both draws you in and zooms way out. It’s a wonderful, vital, different experience from Batman comics of late and more superhero comics period. Some may bounce off this new iteration, but it is sure to draw others in. Either way, the eighty-plus years of Batman continuity matter little. He is what he is today, as he was in 1939, or 1989. He is all those things, and we are all him, in our own different and profound ways.
Leave a Reply