As Batman and Harley Quinn flee from the GCPD and the Robins, Harley tries to get Batman to listen to her warnings, and in so doing, tells him about her past. Secrets are revealed, and Batman is left in a dark, and more lonely, place. Absolute Batman #22 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Werther Dell’Edera, colored by Frank Martin and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Will Nevin: Let’s say you got to peruse DC’s offerings at this year’s Comic-Con. What’s the one thing that would interest you most?
Matt Lazorwitz: Ooooo, good question. I am going to stay on brand and say either the Gotham City panel or the advanced screening of the Season 2 premiere of Caped Crusader. You?
Will: Caped Crusader or whatever shenanigans Jim Lee has planned. Or maybe playing with the Superman-themed guide dogs. Such good working puppers.
Matt: Yeah, they are. If you threw an Ace in there, it would absolutely be my #1.
The origin of Harley Quinn
Matt: I have really enjoyed when Snyder steps back from the big, sprawling stories before and focused down a bit more; the Bane origin issue comes to mind. And while we have two timelines here, with the origin of Harley and her fighting alongside Batman, it’s very much focused on Harley as a character. And we end with two big reveals, neither of which I 100% trust as true, but at the same time, that’s the theme of this issue, isn’t it? What is true and what we believe to be true can become the same, even if they aren’t empirically.
Will: And it can be terrifying when we can no longer trust what we think we know. There’s probably some law written somewhere that we can’t get a quiet issue of Absolute Batman, which is fine — some things just aren’t in this book’s DNA. But you’re right in that this is a different sort of story, if only because we’ve got guest artist Werther Dell’Edera sliding in for the regular Nick Dragotta.
We’ve got a heap to puzzle through with those two reveals, but I’ll start with my impression (neither good nor bad) that Scarecrow looms over this story in an interesting way — being the center but never taking focus. I sure hope we get a heap of him at some point, because I tell ya, I’m still nuts for the guy.
Matt: We get a little more detail here, furthering that he is more than just the gas-wielding nutty professor of the Prime Earth. Harley describes him as someone who can use makeup, deepfakes and any other tool to alter your reality. And that he has agents all around. This makes Scarecrow the Varys to Jack Grimm’s King of Westeros (to use a Game of Thrones analogy), the master spy. And as this is new information, it means that pretty much anyone we have seen is now someone we can’t trust, because they could be one of Scarecrow’s little birds.
And I don’t think I have ever found Scarecrow scarier than in the one panel we see him in this issue. That wide smile? No other Scarecrow smiles like that, and it is creepy as all hell.
Will: Tactically, it’s a brilliant decision, showing so much restraint with the character, which just makes me want more. Alas. Which one of the reveals do you think we should start with?
Matt: Let’s just talk about the Robins before we get into the big reveals. We’re really slow-rolling the personalities of these characters, except for Dick (the leader) and Jason (the hothead). It’s something of a catch-22. I need more to make me care about these versions, but there’s so much else going on I don’t want to take a break from all the more fleshed-out characters to get that additional information about the Robins. And every scene with them just seems to come down to Jason being an a-hole.
Will: Yeah, these Robins are not working for me as a group. If it were up to me, I’d get to the next part of their story as quickly as possible, so let’s move Dick off to whatever he’ll be doing, get the big Alfred vs. Slade confrontation and move past this team stuff already.
Matt: I think there’s a Law & Order sort of thing you could do with these characters, where they each are on separate cases and each issue sees them working in different combinations to better spotlight who they are as individuals. But when it’s five characters constantly talking over each other, only the loudest voice (Jason) really gets to stand out. And the fact that Harley is running rings around them — because let’s be honest, Batman is being a bull in a china shop and not thinking — doesn’t make them any more endearing.
Will: We’re also wired to want these characters to succeed, which they obviously won’t be doing since they’re squaring up against Bats. If this was wrestling, I’d say they’ve been booked in a tough spot that’s made getting over all that more difficult.
Matt: So on to Harley. What a completely different and screwed up origin! And I don’t mean screwed up in the, “Scott Snyder, you screwed that up!” sense but in the, “Damn, I didn’t see that coming” sense.
Will: Just all sorts of fucked up, innit? But sort of raises the question: Is a more conventional Harley Quinn floating around somewhere in this story, and will we see her? I get the sense that we won’t — simply because I think we’ve seen the most interesting bits of what that character could be — but since we could literally have Joker’s Daughter on our hands here, it’s at least possible.
Matt: Harley’s mom seems to be the more traditional Harley, and this Harley is the more modern, more empowered version. Giving her a personal connection to Grimm, and her hating or standing opposed to her parents, makes her an interesting counterpoint to Bruce, who lionizes both of his.
And this book never skimps on the body horror, huh? The Brundle-Tweeds and the Calendar Man doing his Baby New Year pulling himself out of Father Time thing are sure on brand. And Dell’Edera is a great choice for this as a fill-in artist. He’s mastered creepy monsters and gore over in Something Is Killing the Children, and he brings that eerie sensibility here.
Will: Jesus Christ, talk about doing a lot in one panel with the Calendar Man bit. Heckin’ gross but perfectly on brand with the book and the horrors of Ark M.
Matt: And it’s a subtle little moment, but having Grimm call Harley’s mom, the Dr. Arkham we’ve seen running Ark M since arc 2, “Pudding,” struck me as a nice inversion. It takes something we’re so used to from the Harley and Joker Prime relationship and shifts it to Joker’s manipulation rather than Harley’s obsession.
Will: A devastatingly effective inversion there. I might have to backtrack on my earlier statement that there might not be much left to show in her story — whatever would pass for Absolute Batman’s version of “Mad Love” would have to be disturbing.
Matt: And speaking of inversions, the devastating switch from young Harley defending herself from monsters as a child with, “Even if it’s not true, it’s true” to doing her best to not believe that her parents are the monsters with “Even if it’s true, it’s not true” is some damn fine writing. I won’t say we forget how good a writer Snyder is under all the big action, but the fact that we don’t get as many of these quiet moments makes them stand out all the more when they pop up.
Will: This is different than his seminal Batman run (obsession with mechas not withstanding), but the same storytelling bones are there. Speaking of bones…
Matt: Good segue. I also have to give Snyder credit for having me completely unsure if the big, final page reveal is just a Scarecrow mindfuck or if *SPOILERS* Thomas Wayne has been alive all along and Jack Grimm’s prisoner. It’s the kind of thing that this book would absolutely do, just completely flip the game board, but it seems so neat that it just has to be Scarecrow trying to get deeper into Bruce’s brain, right? Or maybe not? Dang, I hate it when I just don’t know.
Will: We already had Schrödinger’s Martha, so why not throw Thomas into a liminal “is he dead or not?” space, too? I’m a heavy lean toward fuckery, especially considering how Harley explained Scarecrow’s tactics, which would include this very thing. And how many stories have we seen in which Thomas was disinterred to fuck with Bruce? Dark and awful. Two thumbs up.
Bat-miscellany
- This week’s BatChat podcast walks the mean streets of Gotham with three stories starring members of the GCPD.
Buy Absolute Batman #22 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.
