Absolute Batman vol. 2: Abomination

“Absolute Batman” is a monstrous success by any modern American superhero comics standard.  The first issue has gone through eleven printings, the first collection stormed the bestseller lists, and the first issue after the ones in this volume – the origin of the Absolute Joker sold over 300,000 copies.  While you’d think that supervillain origin would juice sales, we’ve also heard that most issues of the series have been selling in that range, which is just insane to consider when you realize most superhero titles were struggling to break 100,000 copies a month when we still had sales data on them.  The other “Absolute” titles have been doing well for themselves, but “Batman” is in a whole other league.

The question now becomes, “Does it deserve this kind of success?”  After reading the first volume, I thought it was at least proof that Snyder could still write the character well after I’d been consistently disappointed by his creator-owned efforts, and underwhelmed by his other superhero work.  He, and artist Nick Dragotta, did an excellent job reimagining the Dark Knight as a more resourceful, brutal, and angrier version of himself, who relied on his own skills and knowledge, along with those of his friends.  I just didn’t think that the opening arc “The Zoo” did anything that I hadn’t seen before in “Batman” or other superhero comics.  A skillful execution of familiar elements, to be sure, but not the game-changer I had been led to believe it was.

Now we’re at vol. 2 and I like what I’m seeing a lot more.  Not only do we get some unexpected twists in regards to the superhero and “Batman” formula, but Snyder’s approach becomes clearer with this volume.  One of the reasons his tenure on “Batman” worked so well was that he made every single arc feel like an event.  Each storyline kept going bigger and bolder as it made old tropes feel new again and continued to throw crazier challenges at the title character.  I felt that again with “Abomination” and it bodes well for the title’s long-term plans.

Which begins with a two-part story illustrated by the great Marcos Martin, “Absolute Zero” that introduces – wait for it – Absolute Mister Freeze.  It picks up from the introduction of the Ark-M facility that’s being constructed by unknown parties in Gotham and Bruce Wayne’s efforts to try and learn more about it.  To do that, he turns to one of his oldest and most reckless friends, Mitchell “Matches” Malone who gets Bruce the info at a horrific cost.  It leaves Batman driven to find out who, and what, did this to his friend and to make sure this evil can’t harm anyone else.

Martin has always been an effortlessly stylish artist and that remains true as well here with the shadowy memorial in the alley drawing you in and the inventively designed fight scenes being utterly captivating.  What feels new about his work here is the level of detail which also helps draw you in, even with Freeze’s redesign being pure nightmare fuel.  As good as this two-pater looks, it’s the resolution to the story that will stick with you.  I don’t want to go into too much detail so that it remains unspoiled for anyone going in with only the knowledge of this review.  All I’ll say is that it delivers a story that manages to satisfy even as it appears to chuck the Batman Always Wins school of thinking right in the trash.  It makes me excited to see how Snyder will be building on this in subsequent stories from here on out, as well as whether or not they’ll be as satisfying.

That’s only the prelude to the main event, “Abomination” as Bruce finally makes his way into Ark-M with bigger, more personal stakes this time.  His friend, Waylon Jones, has been kidnapped by people associated with it and now he’s going to get him back.  Getting in, with the assistance of his friends Harvey, Oz, and Edward; as well as curmudgeonly black-ops guy Alfred Pennyworth, is the easy part.  The hard part comes when he realizes the scale of what Ark-M represents is much larger than what he initially thought, and that it has its own formidable guardian.  The hulking, unstoppable, brilliant brute known only as Bane.

Bane’s legacy has been a difficult one in the main DC Universe as the character was originally created for one purpose, and a lot of creators have struggled with how to make him viable beyond that.  While that’s hanging over this iteration of the character here, Snyder finds a way to respect that history while finding a way to make him into a viable threat with a future beyond this one arc.  The whole Breaking of the Bat is a key part of this arc, with Snyder and Dragotta making his torment of Bruce feel genuinely harrowing.  Yet Bane isn’t made into a one-dimensional monster as we learn his history and the reason why he feels beholden to his benefactor as well as the peace he believes he’ll find once the Bat is brought to heel.

This is all in the first half of the arc, and it’s a credit to the creators that they’re able to cram in this much without making it feel overstuffed or that they’re skimping out on key developments.  Then the halfway point comes and we get to my biggest issue with the storyline, and one that’s also kind of hard to talk about without getting into spoilers.  That’s because it deals with the thing I liked most about the first volume and how it showed characters we knew to be stalwarts of Batman’s rogues gallery – Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot, Edward “The Riddler” Nygma, and Waylon “Killer Croc” Jones – as longtime friends of Bruce’s and members of his inner circle.  Tying these familiar villains to Bruce’s personal history did feel novel and represented a potentially new direction for them to go in.

Well, their villainy could still wind up being a kind we haven’t seen before, but this volume makes it clear that Absolute Two-Face, Absolute Penguin, Absolute Riddler, and Absolute Killer Croc are definitely part of this title’s future.  One of them even plays a key part in this story, with the implication their portrayal is going to be more tragic than anything else.  I like that, but clumping their origins together like this and tying them all specifically to Bane felt a little cheap.  The rest of the volume shows that Snyder is willing to put in the work to make new takes on familiar characters work, but this feels like he’s trying to take a shortcut to getting there.

What follows thankfully doesn’t have any other major setbacks like this, even as it takes on the familiar shape of Batman and his remaining allies setting up for the rematch against Bane.  This is the volume at its most predictable but satisfying as we’re introduced to more new takes on familiar characters, including one who’s not too different from her traditional incarnation (but maybe her upcoming miniseries will change that) as well as a reminder that Batman is at his best when he’s working with those he trusts.  Additionally, Dragotta displays some of his most over-the-top work during the final fight with Bane, turning him into even more of a monstrosity than we’ve seen before or since.  It’s ridiculously violent, right down to the impossible state that Bane is left in at the end of the fight.  Dragotta delivers tremendous work throughout this volume, and even though his panel arrangement can be hard to follow at times, his commitment to making everything he draws look larger than life is as much a reason for this arc’s success as the writing.

Snyder and Dragotta have talked recently about being on this title for the long haul with a run that could potentially last up to a hundred issues.  That’s a tall order for any creative team on a superhero comic from Marvel or DC, and any number of things could go wrong before then to derail that goal.  “Abomination,” however, makes me believe that seeing these two stick around as long as possible could be a good thing.  While not perfect, this volume offered me things that I wasn’t expecting to see in a “Batman” comic as well as reminding me of Snyder’s strengths as a writer (because I really needed them).  I’d be excited to read the next volume based on what I got here even if I didn’t know that Snyder and Jock were re-teaming for the origin of Absolute Joker and that just can’t come soon enough.