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Absolute Batman
Comic book series by DC Comics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Absolute Batman is a superhero comic book series published by DC Comics, based on the character Batman. The series is written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Nick Dragotta, and began publication on October 9, 2024, as the first title in DC's Absolute Universe (AU) imprint.[1]
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Premise
The series stars a 24-year-old blue-collar civil engineer named Bruce Wayne, who operates at night to fight crime as the vigilante Batman with his own self-designed equipment and armor. While doing so, he is stalked by an MI6 agent, Alfred Pennyworth.[2]
Publication history
By July 2024, a Batman-focused comic book series written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Nick Dragotta was in the works as part of DC Comics' Absolute Universe (AU) imprint,[3] which is overseen by Snyder.[4]
Absolute Batman began publication on October 9 of the same year, as the first title under the AU imprint.[5]
Plot
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"The Zoo" (#1–6)
Alfred Pennyworth is sent to Gotham City to investigate a terrorist group called "The Party Animals", led by criminal mastermind, Roman Sionis. While in Gotham, Alfred unsuccessfully tries to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Julia, and receives word that his previous target, the Joker, an elusive billionaire, has escaped his agency's surveillance.
Bruce Wayne in this world grew up in Crime Alley, Gotham's slum district, and is friends with Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent, Edward Nigma, Oswald Cobblepot, and Selina Kyle. As a child, Bruce Wayne wins an engineering competition and his class wins a trip to the zoo, where they are accompanied by Thomas Wayne, Bruce's teacher and father. During the trip, a gunman opens fire on the class in a mass-shooting incident, and Thomas is killed shielding his son. Traumatized by this experience, Bruce becomes a juvenile delinquent before winning a university scholarship to study various subjects to prepare for a war on crime as the "Batman".
His first public appearance as Batman occurs at a town hall meeting where the Party Animals attempt to kill Mayor James Gordon. After Batman defeats the gang, Pennyworth attempts to engage Batman, but is disarmed. Pennyworth discovers Batman's true identity, but defies orders to kill Wayne in front of his mother. Pennyworth then tracks Batman to his penthouse headquarters, but Batman defeats him and escapes. Pennyworth's agency changes their orders to allow him to track and protect Batman in order gain more information on Sionis, but then rescinds the protection as Batman's attacks gain more public attention.
Sionis sends the Party Animals and the Gotham police force to attack Batman, but Batman escapes and forms a partnership with Pennyworth, who offers to share the intelligence he has collected about the gang. Batman refuses his offer and ejects him from the gigantic, dump truck-sized Batmobile they used to evade pursuit by the police and gang members. Wayne gains information from Nigma and Dent about the Party Animals' high-tech masks and Sionis's "ArkM" fund, which is connected to Gotham's mayoral challenger. Pennyworth deduces that Sionis's attacks on Gotham are preparing the city to host a black site prison. Batman is contacted by Sionis, who offers him a two hundred million dollar cash payment to stop attacking the Party Animals. Batman accepts the deal.
When Batman meets Sionis atop a skyscraper to finalize the exchange, Batman records Sionis's confession and sends it to Gotham's news channels. The Party Animals attack Batman with guns and a flamethrower, sending Batman over the edge to the street. Batman's technologically-enhanced cape becomes a parachute and saves him from the impact. Wounded, Batman encounters police officer, Barbara Gordon, who allows him to flee into the city sewers. Batman asks for Pennyworth's help to continue the fight, but Pennyworth refuses and blames Batman for escalating the violence in Gotham. Sionis airdrops crates across the city with weapons and masks which identify high profile targets and cash rewards for their execution. Batman reveals his secret identity to his friends; they help dress his wounds and transport him to Sionis's yacht headquarters. Batman defeats Sionis in combat and destroys the yacht's computer servers, disabling the masks and the cash reward system. Pennyworth rescues Batman from drowning. In an epilogue, the Joker is revealed as the mastermind behind Sionis's actions, and he calls for Bane to engage Batman in Gotham.
"Absolute Zero" (#7–8)
One month after the Party Animals attacks, Gotham is hit by a heavy snowfall. Hamilton Hill has defeated Jim Gordon in Gotham City's mayoral elections and placed the city under martial law, and the massive black site Ark M is being built off the coast of Gotham. Eddie, Harvey, Ozzie, and Waylon gather in Crime Alley for a memorial to Marshall "Matches" Malone, a late friend of theirs. Bruce, whom they have not seen since the attacks, arrives and says that he knows how Malone had been doing lately and how he died: Bruce had contacted Matches some time before because Bruce needed his help to retrieve papers related to Ark M. Matches infiltrated Ark M and discovered they were already putting people in, but then suddenly died from excessive bleeding, possibly from a biological weapon.
Pennyworth confirms that Matches was killed by a bacterium. Bruce investigates Ark M and the papers, which lead him to Dr. Victor Fries, a pioneer of cryotechnology. He infiltrates his company V-Core and meets with Fries's son, Victor Jr., who reveals that the company is researching a method to revive dead bodies, including the frozen bodies of his parents, Victor Sr. and Nora. He claims to have been revived himself, after being frozen by his parents as a child, when he was diagnosed with a rare terminal disorder. Bruce catches a glimpse of the research data, which includes information on a prehistoric bacterium, when Fries suddenly turns into his Mister Freeze persona, a humanoid mutation based off ice.
Fries drags Bruce into a laboratory and fills him with freezing fluids to make him drop into hypothermia. Bruce has a flashback of the Zoo incident, where Matches was the kid that kept his dad out of the shelter. Meanwhile, Fries is revealed to have caused the snowfall to track the city's population's DNA. Batman breaks into his laboratory and attacks Mister Freeze with a flamethrower, but is overwhelmed by a legion of frozen people controlled by Fries and injected with the bacterium and frozen. Batman barely escapes. Meanwhile, Waylon is kidnapped from his gym by people who immediately contact Bane.
"Abomination" (#9–14)
Two Middle Eastern countries, Kahndaq and Qurac, end a century-long oil war. Bane, a colossal mercenary hired by The Joker, kills one of the leaders and forces the other to declare an escalation of operations. He receives a call and leaves immediately to Gotham City.
Two weeks have passed since Waylon was mysteriously kidnapped, and Batman has been spending the time fighting Gotham's crime families. He obtains files from Barbara Gordon and discovers that he was taken to Ark M, one of several facilities built by J. K. Holdings. Bruce, Pennyworth, and his friends conduct a plan on breaking into Ark M and freeing Waylon. Meanwhile, Jim Gordon and Martha Wayne clear off the campaign office and Jim declares that he is not running for mayor anymore, suggesting Martha should do it instead. Batman discovers that Ark M is a massive complex of buildings, and gets ambushed by Bane, who easily defeats Batman.
Bruce wakes up weeks later, naked, in an empty cell inside Ark M. He escapes using a lockpick embedded in his teeth, and gets captured again by Bane in the K.L.A.Y Biome. After another month inside the laboratory, he escapes again, this time using collected feces and a feeding tube attached to his stomach to escape, but Bane finds him in the Isley Ecosystem, mass of mutated subjects that resemble a forest, and incapacitates him again. By the third month, Bruce has undergone surgeries to have venom like Bane's inside his system. At Bane's suggestion, Bruce is given back his suit in an attempt to fully break his spirits, but he decides to don it and escape. Bane catches him by surprise and fights him again, but is then attacked by a mutated Waylon, now resembling a giant crocodile. Bruce and Waylon flee, and Bane decides to head to Gotham to "truly" break him. Waylon demands that Bruce kill him to put him out of his misery, but he refuses, promising that he will find a cure. Waylon leaves him alone and disappears in the sewers.
Bruce awakens after a twenty-day coma, having been rescued by Pennyworth, and returns to Gotham. He learns from Martha that bane has mutilated Ozzie by breaking all his bones, and Harvey by severely burning his body and splitting his brain in two, and Eddie by destroying his eyes and frontal lobe, driving him insane, all in manners that didn't harm any vital organs. Harvey blames Bruce for risking the city and the lives of his friends by becoming Batman, and Eddie tells Batman that he's been challenged by Bane too. Batman and Pennyworth prepare to fight Bane, but are ambushed by Catwoman, who seeks to help Bruce.
In the past, Waylon gets ready to fight against boxer Bibbo Bibbowski, and asks Bruce to be his trainer. Selina, Bruce's boyfriend and now a partner in crime, believes that he has no chance at winning, but after hearing Bruce say he won't be able to talk Waylon out of the fight, she tells him to play against the rules. The two meet with Falcone and make a deal, offering him the money they stole.
After sleeping together, Batman and Catwoman track down the Red Hood Gang, a group of outlaws and hackers that Batman had a loose alliance with. They fight, and in a burst of rage Batman activates his venom, knocking over a ferris wheel with a gang member wielding a rocket launcher inside. Bruce tells the gang that he wants to destroy Ark M and that he needs their help, a sentiment that the leader, Harley Quinn, agrees with. Bruce hijacks the TV channels and publically calls out the Ark experiments, and challenges Bane to a fight at the old Veterans' Arena.
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Collected editions
Reception
The first issue of Absolute Batman had a print run of around 250,000 copies and by the end of 2024, Absolute Batman became the best-selling comic of 2024, with combined sales of first, second, third and black-and-white printings, selling just under 400,000 copies. Within the first eleven months, the first issue went through eight printings, with subsequent issues being reprinted as well.[6]
Absolute Batman was praised for its writing and art, being called "a bold reinvention" of the character[7] and "a masterwork of action storytelling",[8] yet criticized for "the flat characterization of its villain"[9] and the story's lack of consequences.[8] Comicbook.com gave credit for the "insane story" and "genuine appreciation for the emotional core of the character".[10]
In September 2025, Absolute Batman reached #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list.[11]
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References
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