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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" (#9–12)
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's kidnapping. Batman is fighting the mob. He asks Barbara Gordon for the files about Waylon, and finds that, officially, he was arrested and taken to Ark M, which J. K. Holdings has been building on the site of a burned down hospital since the 1930s. Bruce, with Pennyworth, Eddie, Harvey and Ozzie, plan on 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 infiltrates Ark M and finds a large complex of buildings hidden under it. He drops down into the facility and loses contact with Pennyworth. While exploring, he finds the skeletal remains of a human-sized bat and is attacked by Bane. The mercenary, powered up by a green steroid fluid, easily defeats Batman and says that he's going to prep him for surgery.
Bruce wakes up weeks later, naked, in an empty laboratory. The police cannot locate him. A scientist has examined him and confiscated his suit and weapons, and is recording a log. He manages to exit the room and arrives at the K.L.A.Y. biome in "Level 246", a sentient biome where Bane catches him. One month later, the doctor declares him submitted, and Bruce takes advantage of this to try and escape again. Bane finds him in a biome called "Isley Ecosystem". While Martha continues looking for him, Bruce has been injected with a steroid fluid, potentially similar to the one powering Bane. At Bane's suggestion, Bruce is given back his suit and breaks out of his cell. The laboratory staff observes as he runs into a legion of people mutated by the experiments, who ask him to "make it stop". Bane reaches and massacres the mutations, while also attacking Batman, but is then attacked by a reptile-like creature that Batman recognizes as Waylon, now mutated into Killer Croc. The two flee into the sewers and Bane declares to Dr. Arkham that he's now able to finally break Batman. A series of flashbacks tell the story of when Waylon prepared for a fight against Bibbo Bibbowski, and Bruce, Selina's partner in crime and boyfriend at the time, trained him despite knowing that he had no chance to win.
Pennyworth tells Bane's story. He was born in Santa Prisca, a small nation in perennial war, the son of a rebel leader. He becomes a leader himself until his group is captured and put in an infamously harsh prison for eleven years. Bane and his father eventually cause a revolt and escape the prison, and meet with a mysterious man in white (Joker). Bane hugs his father and breaks his spine, killing him. He becomes a mercenary and a killer, working for Joker and his allies to cause wars all around the world. He is injected with the steroid fluid that enhances his physical prowess and his brain, and becomes a living war machine.
In the present, Bane finds Batman in Gotham and quickly defeats him, cutting his arms off and severely beating him with his bat pectoral. Batman is taken back to Ark M, where Dr. Arkham operates on him, planning to turn Bruce into another Bane. It is, however, revealed that this was an hypothetical scenario, for Bane did not go to Gotham for Bruce, but for his friends.
In the sewers, Batman confronts Waylon, who has turned into a human-crocodile hybrid. Despite Bruce offering to find a cure for Waylon's condition, he instead demands that Batman kills him, but Batman refuses. Waylon leaves Batman alone and disappears in the sewers. In a flashback, Bruce and Selina rent a flat with the money they have stolen and Selina suggests that, if Waylon cannot win playing by the rules, then he should not follow them. They contact Falcone.
Bruce awakens after a twenty-day coma. Pennyworth has been taking care of him and warns him that the fluid he has been injected with, called "Venom", has modified his body beyond his comprehension. Bruce leaves to his home, where Martha informs him about the fate of his friends. They have been attacked and severely injured. All of Ozzie's bones were broken, but with such surgical precision that no vital organ has been touched. He is paralyzed and deformed. Half of Harvey's body has been severely burned and his skull has been cracked open; he is awake, and accuses Bruce of all of it. Both of them are at the hospital, while Eddie is still in his laboratory, and reveals to Bruce that Bane had defeated him in a duel of wits, opened his skull and destroyed his frontal lobe, which drove Eddie mad.
Back at their cove, Batman and Pennyworth prepare to fight Bane, when Catwoman shows up.
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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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