Batman fights the Robins. The funeral for Jim Gordon. Bruce’s friends have a talk. All this, and the first meeting of Absolute Batman and Joker. Absolute Batman #21 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Nick Dragotta, colored by Frank Martin and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Will Nevin: Two issues each of Gotham Central and Gotham General are better than no issues, right? And a Gotham Central starring Officer Gordon? We are living in blessed times.
Matt Lazorwitz: We need to encourage everyone we know to buy these so we get more, right? Review them glowingly (I mean, they could suck, but with these creative teams I doubt it), and do everything we can. It’s gonna be a good time for Bat readers. Not so much for Gotham, since it’s an event, but their suffering is what we pay for, I suppose.
Will: Of course, it’s not all good news. Anarky is featured in Gotham Central. Maybe this will be the *one* Anarky story I like.
Matt: There are a lot of Anarky stories you haven’t read, Will. There might be another somewhere.
Will: And before I forget, looks like Bad Seeds is going to be one hell of a crossover. Good luck to anyone who might be trying to cover it!
Many meetings
Matt: We have reached the middle chapter of an Absolute Batman arc, so we’re at the point where the action slows down and we get character pieces. Well, in the middle of the issue anyway. The beginning is one of the biggest action pieces this book has done, and the ending is one of those scenes that we’ve been building toward.
Will: I’ll say this for your average chapter of Absolute Batman: There’s no way you’re getting bored during any of it, and any number of plotlines are going to see some measure of advancement. The close? Oh yeah, that was a biggie. But we also saw Dick Grayson put some distance between himself and the other Robins, as well as Babs more or less picking a side in the fight between the Robin corps and Batman. Oh, and we had that flashback, too. Really, if there was a standard structure for what we’ve come to expect from this book, this was it.
Matt: Snyder is not guilty of decompression, is he?
Let’s start at the end here. It’s a small scene, only a couple pages, but the first meeting between Bruce Wayne and Jack Grimm is certainly intense. And Grimm acts the most Joker that he ever has here. His obsession with Batman is showing, for one. But I think even more interesting is that Jack admits he didn’t expect Batman to be what he is, that he has grown beyond his initial plans. And he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He seems elated to have a challenger. This is all very Joker. Up to and including transforming a little and scaring Bruce. There isn’t a Joker in any universe that isn’t going to miss the chance for a good joke.
Will: Even the Joker who doesn’t laugh all that much, eh? Here’s a question for you to ponder as I pondered it while I read that scene: To what extent is the Absolute universe (at least the corner that Batman inhabits) a mirror one? Batman creates Joker, reflected darkly as Joker creating Batman. The rogue’s gallery is a miscreant cast of individuals who occasionally draw together, reflected here as a cast of friends crumbling.
Matt: Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but there is definitely something there. Not to mention the mirroring of Batman being rich and Joker being working class being inverted here as well.
Speaking of the crumbling group of rogues, that scene was intense. We haven’t seen them all gathered since the day Bane devastated them, and things aren’t looking good, are they? Only Waylon seems to care about Bruce, or really them as a group, at this point. Penguin and Two-Face are broken, and are quickly approaching supervillain status. And Eddie is just a weirdo.
Oh, and the guy Two-Face was tracking, Victor, the serial killer who got out because of Harvey’s connection to Batman? Victor Zsasz, right?
Will: Oh damn, missed that one completely. That’s gotta be him, though. Probably a throwaway line (for now), but it would be interesting how you might spruce up a knife pervert for Absolute. Maybe a guy who’s dedicated to keeping his victims alive, carving them up into art, hoping one will live? That’s my Absolute Zsasz.
Matt: That would definitely be a big swing for Zsasz, but one that fits the Absolute nature of things.
Will: And, don’t forget, keeps alive the can-do body horror ethos of this book.
Matt: We didn’t get to know him well, but I am going to miss Absolute Jim Gordon. He is possibly the least changed in this universe, which should have told us he was going to be the first major character to die.
Barbara’s eulogy for him was poignant and lovely, and I have to give her credit for not flipping Bullock the bird for selling out her dad at the end of the mayoral race. Class act all the way. And Mayor Hill’s bawling crocodile tears? That guy better meet a messy end, because he is a true scumbag.
Will: Of the myriad questions I’d ask ol’ Scotty S. about this book, Gordon might be at the top of the list, and I might start with something as simple as why he was the first to die. We really should have seen it coming when he both lost reelection and didn’t have a clear place to go back to at GCPD.
Matt: I am beginning to think that, based on her response to Batman destroying Ivy’s heart at the end of the last story, and her response to the Robins here, Babs is becoming the moral center of this book. I think she might be the person who is going to pull Bruce back from the edge. She has a firm sense of right and wrong, and isn’t willing to compromise it. As Bruce hopefully will when he works through what he’s going through right now. I can’t blame him for walking right on the line, but we know he’s going to come back around, and I think Babs confronting him might be at least part of what does it.
Will: We know the moral center won’t run through Alfred, at least not in the next 30 issues or so. But I think he is at least developing an affinity for Bruce. When do you think we’re going to find the space for him to square up against Slade?
Matt: I’ve been thinking about that. As of this issue, Slade seems to know that Alfred is working with Batman, so the collision course is set. Maybe an issue with parallel narratives: Batman vs. Joker/Alfred vs. Slade?
Will: Oooh, that would be interesting. I don’t see the latter pair being able to talk things out, though. Can’t hear each other over all the shooting.
Matt: And speaking of not being able to hear over the chaos, The opening of this issue, the Batman vs. the Robins fight, is possibly second only to Batman’s final throwdown with Bane for sheer scale, and might even beat it. Dragotta got to have a lot of fun blowing up a few blocks of Gotham. But we got some character beats in there, too. I am curious what made Absolute Jason Todd such a hardass. I suppose a Jason who didn’t have Batman’s influence would have wound up being even darker than his Prime Universe counterpart, and this guy does not seem to care about civilian casualties even a little, which is setting him on a collision course with Dick Grayson. And probably making him teacher’s pet with Slade.
Will: And Slade’s boss, Jack Grimm. One more dark reflection: Joker kills Jason Todd. Jason Todd adores Joker.
Matt: I wish we had gotten an Absolute Robins one-shot or an issue that focused on them a little more before we got to this big fight, just because it was hard for me to tell which Robin was which in their armor. The suits are distinct, but it doesn’t help to have distinct suits if we didn’t have enough knowledge to know who is riding in each one when the fight started.
Will: Dragotta’s layout style — which undoubtedly contributes to the book’s unique vibes — doesn’t help here when so much of the mecha stuff is relegated to itty bitty panels. Bit of a tradeoff, I reckon.
Matt: It’s a great style, and I think the idea of widescreen storytelling on a small scale is pretty neat, but yeah, the small panels with the big mechs that we’re not too familiar with don’t help. But I think it’s consistent and better than a bunch of splash pages. This isn’t a “comic full of splash pages” kind of book, and it would feel weird if we got one.
Will: It’s called “sequential storytelling” for a reason, innit?
Matt: True.
We’re 1,500 words into this review, and we still haven’t talked about Harley’s Bat drone swarm or the flashback. I am looking forward to when this Falcone flashback arc wraps up, because I want to read all the flashbacks together and watch that whole thing play out at one time.
Will: And where the heck is Scarecrow? Anytime Scarecrow isn’t in this book, we should all be asking, “What is Scarecrow up to?”
Bat-miscellany
- This week’s BatChat podcast has us read three stories by the recently departed writer of many a Bronze Age Batman tale, Gerry Conway.
Buy Absolute Batman #21 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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.
