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I've Just Read Absolute Batman #1 by Scott Snyder & Nick Dragotta

I've Just Read Absolute Batman #1 by Scott Snyder & Nick Dragotta. I rather liked it. But I did have one problem with the opening...

As I mentioned earlier, I've read Absolute Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta, the launch of the Absolute Universe for DC Comics, a world formed in the battle with Darkseid, and infused with his energy, a harsher, crueller DC Universe, in which the stars have to shine a bit brighter. I first reported the existence of this comic and line a year ago, though it only came to fruition recently. So, what are my impressions? I am going to do my best to avoid spoilers, this is a book that is partially built with a twist or two that deviated from the standard Batman, but I am going to lead with the very first one, in the opening pages. So be warned, Batspoilers on.

Right at the beginning, Absolute Batman does not appear to have the courage of its convictions. This is a new Batman, a Batman for the age, a Batman which reflects current concerns rather than those of the 1930s, a Batman of the now. A working-class Batman, a Bruce Wayne without the silver spoon in his mouth, who has made himself a Batman without a fortune behind him, who is not a member of the elite beating up the mentally ill on the street – those are now the people he grew up with.

So, the instigating moment that changed Bruce Wayne is not a shooting in Crime Alley of his parents. His father is not a multi-millionaire; he is a school teacher at the state school that Bruce Wayne attends. So, obviously, the shooting that will change his life, that will reflect modern America, that will define this Absolute Batman for the age takes place with his schoolmates at… a zoo. Gotham Zoo.

It chickens out. The thing that would most define this, make this most relevant, would have been a school shooting. Of course, the odds that the week that this is published, there would be an actual school shooting are high. A zoo shooting… much lower. Unless the pachyderms are packing. So maybe, just maybe Absolute Batman has prevented a little triggering and has actually half a chance of getting published. By having the trigger pulled around a bunch of dumb animals. Again, not a school.

So, since I have spent three paragraphs saying what it doesn't do… what does it do? Absolute Batman sets out a new language for Batman, but that embodies Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli via Frank Quitely. It's a big book, but it is made even bigger by the many double-figure panel counts for pages. The previews that we have seen are of one of the big action set pieces, but it's not representative of much of the book, not even much of the action. Instead we have Edgar Wright fast cutting through Bruce Wayne's world, ten, eleven, twelve panels a page, Dark Knight Returns meets We3, the level of detailing slowing down or speeding up the reader. There will be comparison to certain manga, but this is still very much in a Western tradition, it is just happy to use a few more tools.

It uses this increased panel count to record the smaller moments, which might get skipped over by other creators, to fully flesh out this Gotham and the people in it, Bruce Wayne, part of Gotham rather than looking down in it, if he wasn't such a man mountain he would get ignored rather than papped.

If the standard Bruce Wayne childhood is one of fear, Absolute Batman had something different, an intensity of life which followed the shooting. This Batman has already dealt with his trauma in the healthiest way possible, rather than having it fuel his Bat psychosis. Because this Batman did not just grow up with a butler.

So instead this Batman is taking the very sane approach to someone determined to make change, to deal with those from above, in the helicopters or yachts and their pawns, rather then those running the gyms, casinos or brothels. Just like Jesus, Batman lives with the criminals. Because there are much bigger threats, much higher up, that threaten everyone… The standard DC Batman would have a big problem with this. But Absolute Batman is someone else. And has a very different problem to deal with.

What is threatening Gotham is extreme, suspicious populism. The kind that, in England, saw a mob set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers in Southport. Because erroneous reports, heightened by reactionary politicians and social media oligarchs, have stated that a Muslim asylum seeker had stabbed two young girls. It wasn't true, the arrested suspect, also a child, was Welsh Christian but, to quote Jerry Sadowitz, "What's racism without ignorance?" Since then there have been further protests with similar aims, and police crackdowns on these threats to life have been caricatured as a threat to free speech.

And so Gotham finds itself under assault from a crime spree, with police unable to help themselves, let alone others, out-funded by other interests. Rather than anger as the motivating public factor, it is fear. Fear is used to undermine the current social order, for the big cats to play their games against each other, to come out on top.

What can one man do against all this? Quite a bit, it seems. This is Absolute Batman, going up against the fat cats, the one percenters, the ones who play the populace and make them dance, sacrificing them for their own purposes, and then making them blame each other. This Absolute Batman has been planning for a long time, staying in Gotham to learn rather than travelling the world and doing the kind of jobs that an eccentric billionaire trust fund kid would never do…

Oh yeah, and he's got throwing knives for ears. Sorry, spoilers…

Absolute Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta is published on the 9th of October and is up for FOC this weekend, so expect a lot of this sort of thing.

ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1 CVR A NICK DRAGOTTA
(W) Scott Snyder (A/CA) Nick Dragotta
BATMAN LEGEND SCOTT SNYDER AND ICONIC ARTIST NICK DRAGOTTA TRANSFORM THE DARK KNIGHT'S TALE FOR THE MODERN AGE! Without the mansion…without the money…without the butler…what's left is the Absolute Dark Knight! Retail: $4.99 In-Store Date: 10/9/2024

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