In this corner, we have Gotham’s new Dark Knight, the Batman! And in this corner, we have the man who wants to break him, Bane! Only one is coming out of this fight on two legs. Absolute Batman #14 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Nick Dragotta, colored by Frank Martin and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
For 14 issues, we have seen glimpses of him. People have spoken about him in hushed tones. But now, Alfred Pennyworth finally sheds light on the mysterious man who never laughs, The Joker. Absolute Batman #15 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Jock, colored by Martin and lettered by Cowles.
Will Nevin: How ya feelin’ about Warner Bros. (and the DC IP) getting sold off?
Matt Lazorwitz: I’ve been through this so many times before! AOL, then whatever happened after that, then whatever happened after that. As long as the characters remain profitable, and the margins for publishing aren’t too outrageous, we’ll still get comics.
Now if you’re asking me how I feel when it comes to the consolidation of all media under two or three umbrellas, that’s another question entirely.
Will: Oh, this will be awful for consumers, creators and theaters (theaters especially if Netflix goes home with the loot). The future is well and truly terrible, Matt. But whoever wins will keep the lights on at the idea factory, and comics creators will continue to scrape by as they have for the last century.
Matt: Comics have been dying since 1945, and they will continue to be until 2945. Thus is the way of all things.
Batman vs. Bane: The Final Round
Matt: As we reach the end of the second major arc of this series, I am thinking about Absolute Bruce Wayne as a character. We get a couple moments here that cement for me that, behind the trappings, behind the extra inches of height and around his chest, this Bruce and Prime Bruce are not all that different. And then we get a moment that completely tosses that thought on its head.
Will: The emotional hook in the flashbacks is that we’ve been led to believe that Bruce and Selina were willing to either encourage Waylon to take a dive in the Big Fight (™) or to otherwise hang him out to dry. But as we see with the climax of both stories weaving together, this Bruce didn’t do that; he stayed loyal … and maybe made some money in the process. But, yeah, that stuff and the idea of Batman fighting because it’s the right thing to do — not necessarily because he’s going to win — certainly rings true to the character we’ve known (at least as we’ve known him in our lifetimes).
What was the curveball for you?
Matt: Batman pretty much kills Bane, right? This Batman has to this point stuck to the One Rule as much as his counterpart, but here, he flat out kills a guy. The only reason Bane is still alive at the end is all the stuff that has been done to him. If Bruce had his way, he’d just be dead. At least that’s how I read it. I mean, charitably you could say that Bruce didn’t know exactly what the Venom OD would do to him, so maybe it’s a little grayer than that, but not by much.
Will: Absolute Batman is very much a “violence first, think about the long-term medical prognosis second” kinda guy. I think he 100% intended to kill him, and the fact that he’s alive on what amounts to a technicality doesn’t absolve Bruce of that. And as we’ve discussed, “Venom” is not necessarily a great story, but if this is as close an interrogation of it as the Absolute Universe is going to get, this … wasn’t that great? By giving Venom unlimited abilities, it stripped it of its meaning, and Bruce deciding not to use it for himself was more of a tactical decision than an addict getting clean.
Matt: I’m not seeing that. Or I’m curious for you to elucidate. Are you saying that choosing not to use the Venom is more about not wanting to be hooked into the machine that Ark M has created, thus making it a tactical decision? Venom doesn’t have the downsides that it does in the prime universe, for sure: the loss of intellect and inability to control your emotions are not here. So it would seem harder to kick it that way, although it doesn’t seem like Bruce was quite as addicted as he was in the original either.
Will: Maybe I read it incorrectly, but I took it as Batman had two infusions worth of Venom removed from his body: the one that was fired into Bane (the tactical decision) and the one that Selina is presumably using to get some sweet, sweet cash. To me, that wasn’t a principled move; it was a battlefield strategy. Like, that’s not Batman wanting to get clean, that’s Batman wanting to win a fight.
Matt: Hmmmmm … OK, I see where you’re coming from. I think he wanted off the Venom because he didn’t want to be dependent on Ark M, for sure. And I think both of those doses were for Bane if he needed them, and Selina just made off with the second one to sell for, as you say, sweet cash without Bruce’s foreknowledge because regardless of the universe, Catwoman is going to steal.
Will: Must be nice getting out of this arc as one of Bruce’s friends without being horrifically deformed. Although you figure some tragedy is coming her way.
Matt: I think being pursued by Ark M and all that entails is not going to be a bed of roses for Selina.
Dragotta was firing on all cylinders this issue. That huge Croc monster that Waylon has become fighting Bane looked awesome, and juxtaposed against the much more realistic fight he was having in the flashback just added to it.
Will: We’ve talked about how the persistent flashbacks in Absolute Batman can be distracting (and some of the layouts here didn’t help with that, particularly the first page), but it was a heck of an effective way of grounding the big hoss monster fight.
Matt: And to segue into the next issue, that ending? Yeah, don’t make deals with the devil. Because the devil will never let you go.
Will: Bombs away, Matt.
The Most Dangerous Joke
Matt: So, a year and change in, we now have what seems to be the origin of the Absolute Joker. I say “seems” because very little of what we get is from the dinosaur-man’s mouth, but I think Alfred is on the right track here.
Will: Evocative in many ways of the original Joker, yet something quite different, isn’t he? We have the multiple-choice histories (three of them, by the way, which may or may not be a coincidence), but the evolved, ultimate, actual form of the Joker continues the body horror motif that we’ve seen in this book. Scary as all fuck, Matt.
Matt: Yeah, getting Jock to draw this issue was a great choice.
Will: Oh, absolutely. The designs, the mood, the spreads, all top notch. He’s still only got the one normal-person face, though.
Matt: As to what is going on with Joker, this does remind me of what Snyder did back in “Endgame.” The idea that Joker is this eternal force in Gotham. Only here? It’s not just him screwing around with Batman, he actually is. The baby suit, as I surmised, is what is keeping him young and probably at least somewhat human, and he can change into this fanged monstrosity to hunt and to let off steam by laughing as he devours poor Harvey Harris. That guy never gets any breaks, does he?
Will: I shudder to think of what foul fate awaits poor Joe Potato. Joker as eternal (via whatever means) demon can work, absolutely, but can it coexist with the “Joker as a Bruce Wayne/Batman mirror” concept that’s clearly laid out at the conclusion?
Matt: That’s something we’ll have to see. In theory, so much of modern Batman, from the point of Grant Morrison and onward, has been about Batman as an iconic figure, as more than just a man. And so Joker taking that place in a universe that is founded on darkness makes a perverse degree of sense.
The idea that JK Industries is playing all sides against each other is a really solid thematic idea, too. Snyder always wears his current anxiety on his sleeve, as we have discussed many times in many other stories, so here we have a company that is so large that it has worked its way into everything and is beyond amoral, but is actively attempting to make the world burn. It ties into what we saw of Joker in Absolute Evil, the true belief in the Omega at the center of everything, but didn’t require having read that.
Will: JK Industries certainly gets at the concept that so much of what we see in politics and media doesn’t really matter — it’s created and controlled conflict for someone else’s gain but never our own. It’s an incredibly timely idea. But ultimately, I think I agree with you in that we need to see more about how this is going to play out; Joker as evil, literal force and Joker as Batman mirror can work independently, and it was a bold play to smoosh them together.
Matt: I look at it as an extension of one thing. Batman, taken to an extreme, would be a force for oppressive, probably fascistic order; just ask anyone who has written a dark Batman story that isn’t The Batman Who Laughs. So Joker pulled to that same extreme would be this force for evil, and when you mix in him being rich, I think you can’t resist drawing him closer and closer to an anti-Bat.
It makes me really interested to see what will happen when the inevitable Prime Batman-and-Absolute Batman-switch-places story happens. I think Prime Batman will be pretty shocked to see whatever horrors are down in the Jokercave.
Will: And Absolute Batman would have Prime Gotham sorted in … what, a week? Amazing what you can get done with a little bloodlust and a battle ax.
Matt: Until 30 members of the Bat family all fall on him and take him down, asking what this hulking monster did with the real Batman.
Will: Ah, yes, because the ninth rule of comics says, “Whenever heroes meet for the first time, they have to fight.” But maybe the gods of wisdom will prevail, and we won’t get Absolute Batman vs. Absolute Wonder Woman.
Matt: We’ll find out next month!
Bat-miscellany
- Once a Robin, always a Robin, right? Well, yes and no. This week, the BatChat podcast reads three stories featuring Robins in their superhero identities from after they hung up the mantle of Robin.
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Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
