Last we left off, Batman was in a very bad way. He only just barely escaped Ark M's tortuous prison with plenty of scars to prove it, his friends have all been mutilated into cruel mockeries of their former selves, and Bane is preparing to finally break his body and spirit. If there were ever…

When this series began, its tone was clearly something that leaned into Snyder's propensity for over the top action and spectacle. It was camp, it was fun, and Batman fought with a battle axe while driving a giant dump truck as his Batmobile. However, as the series has gone on, I've noticed that it's started…

Something that Absolute Batman focused on in its first arc was using its villain to both create parallels with Batman and also subvert traditional expectations for the characters. This new Bane origin story shows that what was true for Black Mask is even more so for him. His story is a sympathetic tragedy that acts…

With Batman captured inside the Ark M facility and Bane revealed as the monstrosity that he is, Bruce must now find a way out before he is totally broken. What this comic does more than anything else is take Batman to his lowest point in order to test his resolve in a crucible of desperation.…

With the horrors of Ark M revealed, Batman launches a crusade to put a stop to it and save his missing friend. The bulk of the issue is centered on Bruce's search for Waylon, though "investigation" would be a strong word. Given the danger that Waylon is in, Bruce takes a far more physical approach…

With Black Mask out of the way, last issue introduced the next threat looming over the horizon: the Ark M facility and whatever it is that's going on inside. Supposedly, this issue "concludes" that two-parter before an impossibly even larger Bane shows up next month. I use scare quotes there because this issue is less…

So far just about everything in this series could be summed up with the word "extreme", but this new arc injects a healthy dose of "weird" to go with it. This issue and the next are another guest artist intermission, and Marcos Martín along with colorist Muntsa Vicente help create an eerie sense of unease…

With this issue, Scott Snyder wraps up the first arc of his wildly popular Absolute Batman series. DC has to be happy with how the entire Absolute line has been turning out, but this title particularly has dominated the sales charts since it debuted. At first glance, it'd easy to write it off as a…

Batman's war against Black Mask and the Party Animals gang comes to a boiling point as he pushes the limits of their "truce". The continuous, back and forth antagonism between them has become a running theme of the story. Both rely on theatrics and shock and awe tactics to achieve their goals, and now they're…

This series has already shown Bruce's inciting moment of Thomas Wayne's death, but there's a long way between that and the Batman we see in first issue. With no billionaire trust fund to allow for globetrotting training or high end gadgets, he can't rely on the traditional origin fans have become familiar with for the…

Can something be both dumb and cool at the same time? Can its "dumbness" make it cooler? It's a question that Scott Snyder has been toying with for the past decade with Batman, and has become a reoccurring theme throughout his work on the character. Batman is arguably a brand just as much as a…

Scott Snyder continues to build out the world of Absolute Batman as we get a closer look at not just Batman, but also the supporting cast that surrounds him. While the first issue sometimes felt like nonstop, high-octane fighting, this one takes an opportunity to settle in now that its tone has been established. That's…

This ain't your dad's Batman. If there's one thing that Absolute Batman makes abundantly clear from the very beginning, it's all the ways in which it's different from the mainline character. This shouldn't come as any surprise, given the lengths to which DC has gone over the past few months emphasizing their Absolute Universe's darker…