Absolute Batman: Vol1 The Zoo (Writer: Scott Snyder, Artist: Nick Dragotta)
Almost all comic book artists operate a side hustle doing spec commissions from fans, and those commissions are overwhelmingly for pictures of Batman. So tiresome and predictable are these requests, that I have heard that artists will often give discounts for anyone requesting anything novel that the artist might enjoy drawing. But comic book artists have to hustle, and so they continue to churn out those Batman commissions.
One person who never had to hustle was Bruce Wayne, the boy orphaned into incredible wealth and a deep personality complex that has captured our imagination. Or at least that is the character as is traditional told. DC comics’ Absolute series latest attempt to reboot and reimagine their traditional stable of superheroes, with a generous, but maybe not too generous, license to reinterpret. Absolute Batman is the flagship title, and from what I sense of the buzz, the response has been positive.
Absolute Batman has hustle. Maybe grindset, but I’d say something more than grindset. His father was a public school teacher, gunned down on a school field trip – the class including his own son – to the zoo. Bruce and the rest of his class took shelter in the bat house. So it all begins. All the pieces rearranged, inverted, and reconstructed. I enjoyed the notion that the World’s Greatest Detective developed his intellect by taking a thorough liberal arts education. It was actually kind of touching to see Bruce Wayne grow his power base by going into government and getting involved in public works. Bruce Wayne doesn’t have a the grindset. You don’t become Batman by having the grindset. Bruce Wayne became Batman by being a striver.
But some of the rearrangements seemed less inspired. Alfred Pennyworth is now a cynical special forces agent, roaming Gotham city on the orders of unknown parties. It is beyond a cliche to reinvent a character by giving them a special forces background – it’s more like a joke. It is a joke because everyone is a badass now. Batman was already the ultimate badass, but not an absolute badass it seems. There is an amped up brutality to his fighting. There is a lot more impaling, stabbing, and dismembering. His bat symbol, one of many homages to Frank Millar’s Dark Knight, is now an axe head, ready to be wielded against Batman’s foes.
The most telling reinvention, maybe the best and the worst, is what has happened to Batman physically. This is Batman who did not miss leg day. Someone realized that Batman’s bodybuilder biceps were ridiculous and fixed it by jacking out his thighs and calves. Superhero comics have always exploited the teenage preoccupation with the adult physique - most obviously the female physique, but more so the male physique. This Batman’s physique is not there to impress women, it is to intrigue men. It is as if the artist has observed the growing body dysmorphia among young men fueled by steroid abusing superhero actors and fitness influencers, and just pushed it all to its logical conclusion.
Who are Batman’s foes? A faceless gang “The Party Animals” causing sociopathic violence across Gotham. They are a rotten bunch, and that is about all there is too them. They are literally faceless baddies, committing their terrible deeds while wearing an assortment of masks. The more familiar rogues gallery of characters have become Wayne’s poker buddies from school, awaiting their own personal developments, or lurking almost out of sight, for future story arcs. This in part seems to be by design. If there was a goal in this first arc, it was surely to make the Absolute Batman more interesting than his villains.
For all that I would note that this comic is eminently readable. There is some truly execrable visual story telling in the superhero comics world. There are convoluted continuities and artists working desperately around their own limitations. But shorn of its baggage, this batman comic moves along at a brisk pace, ready to surprise you every couple of pages with some novel take on the familiar material.
For now at least, comic books artists have a new and interesting way to draw Batman for the fans.