Absolute Batman paints a picture of a totally different Dark Knight who relies on his physical power and endurance more than gadgets and high-tech, million dollar toys, to the point where he takes nearly as much punishment as Wolverine and still finds a way to bounce back. Writer Scott Snyder says there’s a simple reason behind why Absolute Batman takes so much punishment: “Because he can take it.”
“We love beating him up,” Snyder jokingly tells NPR in an interview alongside series artist Nick Dragotta. “No, I mean, you put him through it because he can take it. Ultimately, like, you can’t really break these characters. You push them against the things that you’re most afraid of in the world.”
For Snyder, those fears culminate in the danger of mass shootings, a reality all too present in his life as a parent of school age children. The writer explains that he looks for real world touchstones to drive the story of Absolute Batman, in order to make him feel relevant to modern audiences.
“That’s why it was important to us, for example, to have him formed instead of, you know, through a mugging in an alley, through a mass shooting in this one. That was one of our deal-breakers with DC, was, if we do the book, that has to be part of the origin because that’s the world our kids grow up in,” Snyder states.
“And it doesn’t mean the book has to reflect the real world in every way. Part of the fun of it is that it’s completely outsized and exaggerated and full of comic book bombast and lunacy. So we want people to have a lot of fun with it,” he continues. “But beneath the surface, we just want it to feel relevant in the way that Bruce is going up against things that all of us, but especially young people, are afraid of and showing that they can get through it and be better on the other side and change things.”
The Absolute incarnation of Batman is a massive, brutal fighter who carries an ax as a bat-symbol, almost like a Conan the Barbarian style take on the character, who is just as good at dishing out the pain as he is suffering through it. In one of the titles most hair-raising arcs so far, Bruce Wayne is captured by Bane who literally takes him apart and reassembles him piece by piece in order to break him.
Absolute Batman continues every month from DC.