Absolute Batman #1-13 /// My review

 

It probably comes as no surprise to most of you reading that I enjoy Batman comics. As a player of Cyberpunk 2020 and consumer of cyberpunk culture, I'm deeply invested in the slightly dystopian technobabble of modern Batman comics.

I can trace my personal journey to a contingent point of no return, namely the launch of the Dark Knights: Metal run written Scott Snyder and penciled by Greg Capullo. This spiraled into an obsession for me, as I had briefly read Watchmen as a kid (and understood none of it), loved Alan Moore's V for Vendetta and was familiar with some Batman storylines through my childhood memories of BTAS and Justice League. I won't speak at length about my journey reading comics - but Dark Knights kickstarted it and, a few months later, I was crawling at DC's doorstep for more White Knight.

One of my favorite types of comics are Elseworlds and the like, where the main run of a character isn't touched - rather, a single author gets to throw a jab at the cannon, twist it to his liking and produce lore-defining content. To that end, hats off to DC's Black Label, as it captures the essence of characters while changing them enough to give a new perspective.

That's why I enjoy going through Absolute Batman all over again every time I get my hands on a new issue. More often than not, what becomes most attractive in all these stories is the way authors hint at problems with the contemporary living space in ways that fit in-universe.

 

Absolute Batman is young and always grinding. He is the embodiment of what a new generation of young men want to be (strong, always in the gym, always on the grind). He's mad at the system and his first enemy isn't some crazed lunatic who wants to kill people just cause. In fact, it's so much more insidious: it's people like him, the blue-collar workers who, out of desperation and greed, turn towards the easy money of the Party Animals gang (nice way to integrate Black Mask, btw!). 

It's a stroke of genius from Snyder, I'd argue.

Just like Matt Reeves' Batman is depressed and obsessive (and his theme matches that with Nirvana) because of the way that his parental role models turn out to be linked with the criminal underbelly of the city, Snyder's Absolute Batman is fighting against the city that raised him with the exact same tools. Absolute Batman is gritty, close to the ground and violent without being bombastic. A BAT-AXE is cool and edgy, yes, but it's also rough, unsculpted. This Bruce Wayne fights fire with fire, he's been raised by a city who offers its residents a difficult choice: survive payslip-to-payslip or grift and murder for millions of untraceable cryptocurrencies. Chaos for the sake of chaos, or just to maintain the status quo - the rich get richer.

Under the bulky appearance of a Batman who's been hitting his protein goals a bit too hard is a genuinely captivating character, one who exudes both style (batmobile dump truck) and substance. 

tell me this picture doesn't go hard. because it does. i have no words. this batman is just so cool.

  

 Angles like these make me want to install Arkham Knight again and become good at actually playing the game just so I can feel a fraction of what it's like to be Batman. it triggers something in me that i cannot stop. i wish i was this cool.

 

extensible knife bat ears 

brother, how do you even come up with that?

 

 

The beauty of this comic, however,  comes exactly from core elements that Batman retains in any installment. He is an obsessed crusader, an ideologue whose inhuman volition and genius keep him tightly-knit at all times.  His weakness is his passion for his work and his true superpower is his seeming inability to ever back down. Every single moment is planned, he eats just enough, he sleeps regularly but never too much. He is not human, but a machine of justice, set in motion by vengeance and by sheer fucking will.

And that's what's so intriguing to me - but also why I despise Batman. 

His core is unattainable for the average human - Superman's defining moral characteristics are so clearly separated from his superpowers, for example. He is kind, he believes in second chances, but that has nothing to do with the fact that he can fly or shoot lasers out of his eyes. Superman would still be a good []Man without his powers. But Batman is portrayed as if he is "just a guy", especially in the Absolute Batman reiteration - he's not even an ultratrillionaire! But his willpower/volition/motivation is impossible, especially thrown in the bucket with an ideological reason. 

You're telling me a shrimp human fried this rice had this obsession without ever stopping/failing? After a traumatic childhood event? How? Teach me! I want to obsess over my trauma like Batman. Please.

 

And it gets worse. Batman's entire aura - his mantra - protects the status quo.

Not because he is fighting to preserve and fix the broken systems of government, of politics, of the rich and powerful. Not because he's "the only good cop" in a rotten system. These are all valid points, but Batman - Absolute Batman by excellence - proves that you CAN make it if only you try HARD ENOUGH. This conception upholds the individualistic and neoliberal ideals that construct our environment. You can be rich, you can be morally good, you can be successful - even in this broken system - if you are near superhuman. If you dedicate all of your effort into doing what needs to be done, nothing can stop you. A pipe dream. They try to show that the Bat is flawed because he is too idealistic, too much of a perfectionist, but isn't that the exact reason why he flourishes? Because he does not distress the status quo, because he is still part of cop culture, because he's vanquishing evil. 

absolute batman (pictured) absolutely kicking a child 

After the end of the first story arc ("The Zoo"), things begin to be more Batman-like. Bane is revealed, and he's even more muscle than usual, but he's still out to break Batman's back. And now, Joker seems to be the Clown Prince of Everything, the shady billionaire of a corporation hellbent on building black sites where abominations are created by twisted researchers, all hidden from the public eye.  

This, for me, undercuts the interesting dynamics that the Party Animals were creating. Instead, we have a big villainous plot which currently has no purpose besides pure unadulterated evil. There's nothing political, subtle or fascinating about Evil Corporation experimenting on people. We've seen this done before, we've seen it in real life to the point that people have grown to assume that it's just "something that makes the world go round".

And then it gets really good again. The precision of the pain inflicted by Bane to each of Bruce's childhood friends, the perfect linkage with each villain's look and feel, blows the mild evil story out of the water. Bruce is being hurt once again, twice tested - experimented on and psychologically tormented. 

However, I fear that it might be in service of the "wow" factor, of creating immediate thrills from seemingly nowhere. Batman was so prepared, then he lost all of his preparedness in a flash the moment he was imprisoned in ARK M.

 

Then, in #13, Harley Quinn is introduced. I have very mixed feelings about this, especially since her design is a bit too edgy with nothing to really show for it. She's the leader of a vigilante gang known as the "Red Hood" (ain't that a kick in the head) and Batman enlists her to fight the Evil Corporation.

Overall, I really believe that Absolute Batman started off very strong, then began a slow descent into fan-service. Recognizable characters are being introduced at a very alarming rate (in the span of #11-13, Harley Quinn, Two-Face, Penguin & Riddler all were created/revealed), which makes it feel more and more like a blockbuster romp, very ungrounded in reality. I'm not saying that Absolute Batman was grounded in reality - but now, there's no reason for the civil engineer day job of Bruce Wayne. It's all in service of setting up Joker as a billionaire villain - which is something DC's other super-dude has had plenty of in the past century of comics.