Absolute Batman is in a turbulent period, at least for me as a collector. After a year and a half […]
Absolute Batman is in a turbulent period, at least for me as a collector. After a year and a half of extreme hype, DC has taken something incredibly fun and squeezed it to the point of exhaustion.
The comic itself? A masterpiece. Each and every issue somehow tops the last. But part of the fun has been the collecting, something happening parallel to the book and the story. When you fuck up that side of it, you suck the life out of the party. You become the energy vampire in the room.
That’s where I’m at with Absolute Batman. I’m frustrated, I start losing interest, and then the next issue comes out. I read it and remember why I love this comic so much.
I wrote about why it’s so addictive back in June, particularly how this working-class Bruce Wayne and the constantly evolving mythology keep pulling me back. Issue #25 brings all of that together.
It’s a goddamn marvel.
Before we get into the issue itself, I want to explain why the collecting has started to feel so exhausting, because it was something I really enjoyed.
The cover reveals, the stress, the purchase. Hoping you could get a copy before it sold out in half a second. That was actually really fun. We’ve covered that collecting frenzy extensively here on Dread, and I was right there in it with everyone else.
Remember Zoe Lacchei’sglow-in-the-dark Joker cover, with those razor-sharp teeth and that snake-like tongue revealing themselves when the lights went out? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. A cover that gives you something different to get excited about.
When you like something a lot, you want to buy more of it. Buying feels good. With music, you want the B-sides and rarities and live albums from bands you love. With comics, it’s the same thing. You want merchandise and shirts and alternate covers. You want to celebrate artists you love. It’s part of the fun.
But when it starts feeling predatory, it stops being fun.
To me, the constant push to sell more and more premium variants has become an attempt to milk every fucking dime out of that enthusiasm. Eventually, longtime collectors start checking out, and newer buyers can end up paying prices the market isn’t supporting.
When you pay $60 to $100 for a cover, only to see copies available for less by the time yours ships, it feels like you overpaid. I’m not expecting every comic I buy to become an investment. But scarcity is part of the sales pitch, and you can’t keep leaning on that pitch while making the books increasingly available.
DC’s retailer terms require a minimum of 2,000 copies for Absolute Universe exclusives, with at least 1,000 carrying full trade dress. That total can be split across approved versions, so it doesn’t automatically mean 2,000 copies of every individual cover. But it does mean collectors need to look beyond whatever quantity is being offered in one particular drop.
And that’s another thing that bothers me. “We’re putting this many online” isn’t the same as “this is how many exist.” If copies are being held for conventions or other sales channels, say that plainly. A small online allocation shouldn’t leave people thinking they’re buying something with a smaller total print run.
DC has also made a point of saying it wants to discourage price-gouging. As Popverse reported, the company strongly encourages retailers to keep unsigned exclusives within five times their listed cover price and can discontinue future exclusive sales to retailers exceeding its guidelines.
Okay, but DC doesn’t get to put this all on the retailers. The publisher is helping create the economics of this market. You can’t keep feeding the machine and then act like the people at the end of it are the entire problem.
And then there’s the printing. Some of these fucking foil covers look like garbage, and we’re being charged a premium for them. The design might look great on a screen, but I’m buying a physical book. The thing that arrives needs to look good, too.
So many of the covers have become obnoxiously bland and generic. Go through the variants for issues #23 and #24 and look at how much of it starts to feel the same. There are a couple of standouts per issue, and #25 had some nicer ones for the milestone, but a lot of this stuff looks phoned in to me. I don’t feel the passion in it.
As a fan and collector, I’m enraged by how much of the everyday fun has been sucked out of this. I liked having something to look forward to between issues. I liked the hunt. Now, too often, it just feels like another expensive thing being pushed at me.
Then I read the next issue and remember that all the collecting bullshit doesn’t really fucking matter to why I love Absolute Batman. It was something fun happening alongside the reading. The comic is the reason any of this exists.
And co-creators Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta have just delivered something extraordinary.
MAJOR SPOILERS FORABSOLUTE BATMAN#25 FOLLOW.
Absolute Batman #25 is a fucking masterpiece. A masterpiece. It perfectly encapsulates these first 25 issues and puts a stamp on a two-year run that I consider flawless.
Every single thing that has happened feels like it has led to this issue, and they stick the landing in a way that is just un-fucking-believable. Every question I’ve been waiting on gets answered. Every motive comes into focus. The confrontation between Bruce Wayne and Jack Grimm/the Joker delivers in spades.
Absolute Batman
"Jack Grimm" https://t.co/xzjhxFbp3W
We’ve been following this descent into horror for months, from Batman going fullEvil Dead with chainsaw arms to the grotesque reinventions of his enemies. All that punishment, all those monsters, and all those questions about the man behind it have been building toward this confrontation.
We finally understand why the Joker is doing what he’s doing. And it isn’t just that his motive is spectacular, timely, and relevant to what so many people are struggling with right now. It’s how well it’s written and executed within the story.
The Joker wants Batman to make him laugh.
That’s what he’s demanding from Bruce. He wants to hear the same thing every warrior before him has said: that they’re going to stand in front of the weak and the poor and the helpless, fight the powers that be, and change things.
To him, that’s the funniest fucking thing in the world.
Nothing feels like it’s stopping to get overtly political in your face. But the idea is there: our history is written by the rich and powerful. They control everything. They’ve always controlled everything.
Here is this demonic Joker, telling Bruce he’s been alive much longer than he thinks, standing in front of cases displaying the armor of warriors who came before him. He says someone truly funny comes along every century or two. Sometimes he has to help them, guide them, but he’s hoping Bruce might be the best of them all.
“The funniest of all the great clowns.”
That’s such a nasty way to turn the whole thing around. Batman is the clown. The people who stood up before him were clowns. Their belief that they could stop him is the joke he wants to hear again.
And Dragotta makes that imbalance impossible to miss. This enormous version of Batman, who has spent the series tearing through people and monsters, looks small beside him. The Joker towers over Bruce, all stretched limbs, horns, teeth, and that fucking tail. Behind them are the remnants of other people who apparently thought they could win.
Then he spells out exactly which joke he wants.
“The ancient one about the man who thinks he can change it all. Stop the strong from ruling the weak, the old from eating the young.”
That last part. The old eating the young.
He wants Bruce to tell him he’ll build something new and glorious over his bones. He wants that declaration of hope because he finds the idea ridiculous. It’s a speech that would normally be the triumphant moment in a superhero story, and the Joker is practically begging for it as entertainment.
It’s hard to read this, especially with what we’re going through economically right now, and not feel that punch to the gut. That feeling of helplessness.
Bruce is standing there as a beacon of hope while all the people he loves sell out and give in. The Joker’s version of history tells us the powerful and the rich will win in the end. He believes he has watched it happen enough times to know how this ends.
But Bruce Wayne is going to fight the fight. Batman is going to fight the fight. He’s going to keep trying to be that beacon of hope in a hopeless universe designed to strip everybody down, soak them in fear, and leave them with nothing.
And then, after this confrontation, Bruce is left understanding just how overmatched he is. He escapes, but he’s wondering why. Why would Grimm let them leave when he finally had them in his grasp?
Then you get that final reveal.
Selina, Bruce’s friend from childhood and on-and-off romantic partner, is pregnant.
It’s one of the most painful, gut-wrenching, mean fucking endings to an arc I have ever read.
The whole thing spins around again. Bruce asks why they were allowed to leave, and then we see that he and Selina are having a child. To me, the implication is that the Joker’s attention can now turn to that child. He doesn’t explicitly say it. That’s what the placement of the reveal suggests to me, and it’s fucking devastating.
Especially after that line about the old eating the young.
Because now the fight doesn’t stop with Batman. It can follow his kid.
If that isn’t the darkest reflection of how it feels to live in today’s society, with these fucking oligarchs holding all the money and all the power, I don’t know what is. The fear isn’t just what they’re doing to us. It’s that they’re coming for our kids, too. They get to shape the world our children will have to survive in.
That’s what makes this ending hurt so much. After everything Bruce has endured, after everything he’s fighting for, the story leaves me thinking about what happens to the next generation.
What a fucking story.
Snyder and Dragotta have landed what I consider one of the greatest comic book runs in the history of comics. The buildup, the confrontation, the motives, the final reveal… it all comes together. I’m angry about the business surrounding it, and I’m completely in love with the book.
There’s a break coming before the next numbered issue. #26 arrives in January with a Barbara Gordon spotlight, before Snyder and Dragotta’s main story continues in February. That gives us a little time to breathe, and hopefully DC uses some of that time to fucking recalibrate. The greed surrounding the collecting has become too much for me.
But if you haven’t read this series yet, I implore you to go pick up the collected editions and read them.
You can start with Volume One, which collects issues #1–6, and keep going from there. Forget the premium covers and the drops and the secondary-market bullshit if none of that interests you.
