Last month the final pieces of Absolute Power fell into place and all that was left was for the event to truly start. Now it has, in just as bombastic a fashion as you might expect. Much planning has gone into this and DC seems to be fully committed, which I think is a good sign. Still, this first issue leaves me troubled for multiple reasons. Let’s not wait around; time to get right into it! (Spoilers ahead).
One positive that I want to lead with is the fact that, with this story, it feels like Mark Waid wants to say something about the world, not just these fictional characters. While it has its place, I feel we have an overabundance of comics today that are less concerned with telling human stories and more concerned with saying something about the stories that have already been told. Even better for creating a "big" story, Waid is addressing something topical and relevant. False information, truth, and individual perception of the world are issues that are a constant issue at the moment, and seeing them through the lens of superheroics is, as far as I’m concerned, a solid concept to frame a story around.
The problem here is, of course, in the execution. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that something better could evolve as the story progresses but in issue one, here, we don’t see a very genuine exploration of the ideas at play. This isn’t a particularly political comic. People of any belief system could easily choose to cast themselves as the heroes and their opponents as the villains, but Waid paints this scenario with the same surface-level brush as a politician. Waller needs to turn the common people against superheroes so she pulls some magic words out of a hat. To put it bluntly, “A.I.,” “deepfake,” and “hack” get thrown around to hand-wave the plot into existence. In less than a week Waller spreads so many “A.I. videos” of superheroes suddenly murdering innocent people that the world immediately turns on them. The threat of false information like this is a very worthwhile topic for storytelling but here it’s a buzzword. I never get the feeling that Waid knows all that much about the technology behind these terms and I’m also left feeling that Waid isn’t thinking the scenario through. Would it really be this easy to change the minds of a populous that loves superheroes and has decades of proof that they are, in fact, heroes? How would people actually react if Amanda Waller, someone they’ve never heard of, showed up on all their screens and starts talking like a Nazi?
Speaking of which, it sometimes feels the themes get out of hand here. Waid goes out of his way to evoke fascism in Waller’s plans. She uses terms like “ultimate solution” (a clear parallel to the Nazi final solution) and Batman refers to her attack as a blitzkrieg. To me, this muddies the waters of this book thematically. What are we talking about here? True, fascism is tied to the control of information and the Nazis used a scapegoat to control the German people. The parallels to the plot presented here are obvious and even incessant but it isn’t enough to simply mirror historical events if they aren’t being used to say something. To use an analogy, The Crucible is a play commonly read in high school English classes. It uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor to make clear the author’s opinion of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Waid is doing something similar but it lacks that clarity. Is he using Nazi Germany to highlight modern misinformation or is it for some strange reason the other way around? What do superheroes have to do with either? My point is, it’s clear Waid wants the reader to think about these kinds of topics but it’s not clear what he has to say about them. Rather, it feels like references for the sake of it, meant to make the comic feel more dramatic.
This is, to be fair, nothing that breaks the series yet. We'll have to see where things go from here.
The are other annoyances. Green Arrow’s cliche bad guy arc or the continued insistence that the JLA is disbanded, despite the fact that literally every member of the group is still active and fighting the same threat, separated only by distance, in this comic. I could let these go, though, if the book’s thesis was more focused. As it is, it’s the art that remains the selling point.
Dan Mora is without question one of the strongest artists working in the industry today. I’m almost surprised it took this long for him to draw an event given how much hype follows him around. That hype is deserved too. He is an artist that encapsulates that perfect mix of technicality and style. His perspective and anatomy are faultless but his work is never stiff. With Alejandro Sánchez producing beautiful colors as well, the visual aspect of this event could make it worth buying for many people, no matter where the story goes.
Recommended if…
- You’ve been following the build-up over the last few years
- Dan Mora is your favorite artist
- You’d like an event that at least attempts to be something more than bashing action figures together.
Overall
Conceptually this event feels less creatively bankrupt than the last few (admittedly that’s not too hard to pull off) and I’m interested in seeing where Waid takes things. On the other hand, I worry that, in the end, this will be nothing more than a contrived mess with beautiful art if more clarity isn’t reached.
Score: 6/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
