{"id":703010,"date":"2026-04-03T23:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/703010\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T23:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:00:19","slug":"dcs-absolute-batman-makes-superstars-out-of-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/703010\/","title":{"rendered":"DC’s Absolute Batman Makes Superstars Out of Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt the end of January, comic\u00a0artists\u00a0Nick Dragotta<\/a> and Daniel Warren Johnson<\/a> sat at two separate tables in a small conference room at a Marriott Hotel in Monterey Park, Calif.\u00a0From morning to deep into the night, they signed comic book after comic book, while workers carefully took the issues and placed them into holders to be graded and slabbed for preservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFueled on coffee and with breaks for lunch and dinner, the two men signed more than\u00a015,000, maybe even upwards of 20,000 comics, in a span of four days under the watchful eyes of reps for a signing and grading company charged with handling the comics.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite being bleary-eyed, it was a relatively quiet affair for the duo, who have been friends since the 2010s. The days were peppered with light conversation under the whirring of miniature fans that dried the ink on the comics\u2019 covers.<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta, who is the regular monthly artist for DC\u2019s Absolute Batman title, and Johnson, the indie creator who last year wrote and drew the Absolute Batman annual, have emerged as two of the biggest artists that the comics world has seen in a long time. They are at the center of a seismic shift in the industry.<\/p>\n

\n\tCall it the return of the superstar artist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor most of the 21st\u00a0century, comics, despite being a visual field, has been a writer-dominated medium. Even though some\u00a0artists\u00a0gained a degree of popularity, it has been authors such as Brian Michael Bendis, Robert Kirkman, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Brian K. Vaughan that have been the stars in the field, rising off a platform built by a previous generation of wordsmiths, names such as Alan Moore and\u00a0Grant Morrison.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta, Johnson and a handful of others that include names such as Hayden Sherman, Jorge Jimenez and Peach Momoko, have become among the biggest artist names in the comics industry since the early 1990s, when a group of\u00a0artists\u00a0led by Jim Lee<\/a>, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld quit Marvel Comics and created Image Comics. It was comics\u2019 Beatlemania when those\u00a0artists\u00a0made store appearance in places such as L.A.\u2019s Golden Apple. In response, Marvel and DC clamped down on the power of\u00a0artists\u00a0and raised the voice of the scribes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCertainly in the \u201890s, artists and Image artist ruled the land,\u201d says Lee, who lived through the artist reign of the 1990s and has been the DC chief since 2010, first as co-publisher and then sole publisher. He has seen the vagaries of the comic industry ebb and flow, including the rise of the writer class. Lee described the current state as a \u201cgetting back to a balance where both artists and writers are driving sales, driving fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe return of the artist as superstar \u201cis good for the business, it is good for the artform,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHayden Sherman and Jorge Jimenez are among the new generation of star artists<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of DC (2)<\/p>\n

\n\tKey to the rising artists phenomenon is the runaway success of DC\u2019s Absolute line. Launched towards the end of 2024, the line led by Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman, reinterpreted characters and origins in a truly sweeping way.\u00a0Unlike other so-called \u201crelaunches\u201d that DC or Marvel have done, this one has reinvigorated publishers and retailers alike, unexpectedly brought in new readers, and created name artists who can turn a simple three hour signing into a caffeinated, we\u2019re-still-signing-at-midnight mania, as Dragotta and Johnson did late last year in an Oakland, Calif. comic shop. Or have hundreds upon hundreds line up in a shop in Spain<\/a>, as Jimenez did in February. And they are now capitalizing on that newfound mainstream recognition.<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta still recalls his reaction to Scott Snyder\u2019s radical Absolute Batman pitch that would change the course of his career.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe real hook was when he said, \u2018Bruce\u2019s parents will die in a school shooting,\u2019\u201d says the artist. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018You really going there?\u2019 And he was like, \u2018Yeah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Absolute Batman, Bruce Wayne grew up in a blue-collar part of town, no butler, no Batcave. In Absolute Wonder Woman, drawn by Hayden, who is also part of this artistic new wave, Diana Prince is raised in Hades by the sorceress Circe to be a witch, not on Paradise Island by caring Amazonians, and flies on a skeleton horse.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe line has been so seismic for DC that the company has overtaken market share over longtime rival Marvel for the first time this century. It has sold almost 12 million units since its launch. In the case of Absolute Batman, sales continue to rise, bucking normal publishing trends that see a drop or leveling off of sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a tweet in February, writer Snyder wrote<\/a>, \u201cJust heard that sales on Absolute Batman 17 actually went up from 16, which is crazy. To have sales going up or even holding at this point\u2026we don\u2019t know how to wrap our heads around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbsolute Batman is now consistently selling 300,000 issues a month, a monster number in the comic book publishing field.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Absolute comics have restored faith in the comic industry and retailers alike,\u201d says Ryan Liebowitz, the owner of LA\u2019s Golden Apple Comics, who said that first-time comic book readers are part of the movement. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen anything like this in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it\u2019s not just the comics that are selling. Artists in today\u2019s comic industry have new revenue streams that did not exist in prior generations. Signings, which were once gratis, can be a major money maker. Runs of limited editions variant covers another. And, the biggest is the sale of original art.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original comic art for Dragotta, Johnson, Sherman, and others is selling out as soon as they drop on the online store run by Felix Lu, a former Hollywood assistant-turned-comic art dealer, and commanding prices that are more in line with classic artist from the 1970s and 1980s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is a moment,\u201d Lu says. \u201cWe will look back on this and see that this was a special time.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta\u2019s cover for Absolute Batman No. 1 sold for $70,000 in late 2024, when the title was less than a month old. It was a record sale for a modern age cover and would probably sell higher now in light of the title\u2019s explosion in popularity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother change: initially, collectors bought individual art pages but now complete issues are being snapped up at a time, with aficionados paying well into six figures.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re getting vintage values now,\u201d notes Lu.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo days into his marathon signing with Johnson, I ask Dragotta what the biggest change in his life in the wake of the book\u2019s success. He chuckles, and replies candidly: \u201cMoney.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0***<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNick Dragotta signing comics<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBorys Kit\/THR<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta and Johnson could not have arrived at this moment from more different routes, except that both involved lots and lots of drawing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta grew up in New Jersey in a blue-collar household with parents who were encouraging, taking the family to art museums in Philadelphia and Broadway shows in New York. He went to vocational school while working in a chemical glassware factory. Before that he worked on farms with his brother.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was always drawing, but never realized one could do it for a living until he went to a comic convention and saw a booth for the Savannah College of Art and Design, which put him on a path to study sequential art. After graduation, he stayed in Georgia, snagging a job in a studio that did coloring for comics. \u201cThis was the \u201890s,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIn Georgia, you could live like a king if you made ten grand a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough showing his work at conventions and meeting editors, he finally got his first comic gig. It was for Marvel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was awful. Just awful,\u201d he says of this work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut little by little, he nabbed assignments here and there. He drew a silent issue of Fantastic Four which centered on the memorial for hero Johnny Storm (don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s comics, and Storm would eventually be resurrected). He was lucky to be paired with writer Joe Casey and the two created America Chavez, a young Avenger that was a key character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Yet, even then, he and his family was getting by on credit cards.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen in the 2010s, he co-created and drew East of West, a sci-fi Western monthly comic from Image that ran for years. It was a modest success and he finally felt like he was making money in comics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe counts Batman as the biggest break of his career.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI know it\u2019s late,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tDragotta is 50 years old. And a walking clich\u00e9: an overnight success years in the making.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tGrowing up in Massachusetts, 39-year old Johnson got into Power Rangers and Transformers as a child, loving the toys and shows. He taught himself to draw the characters.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the age before Google, he had no reference to the tricky architecture of the humanoid robots that turned into cars and trucks, so he drew and drew until he thought he was close to getting it right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRaised in a strict Christian household and home schooled from third to 12th\u00a0grade, Johnson\u2019s interests butted up against the will of his parents.\u00a0Certain music wasn\u2019t allowed. Some comics were tolerated. Many were not. Once, his grandparents bought him a few Superboy issues in which the hero wore a leather jacket (hey, it was a \u201890s look).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy parents took a flip through it and they were like, \u2018No,\u2019\u201d he recalled. His father took those comics away and instead bought him a Spider-Man \u201cthat specifically had no punching on the cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne defining moment was when a teenage Johnson and his father were in a comic shop and Johnson was intent on buying a copy of Battle Chasers, a comic known for shapely and busty heroines and plenty of violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHis father was appalled at the mixing of sex and violence. \u201cThis is horrific,\u201d the father said. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t buy that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson stood his ground. He said, \u201cDad, I\u2019m buying this\u201d and put his money down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe was a good dad. I think he was just trying to be really careful with the visual that I was taking in,\u201d says Johnson. \u201cAnd eventually I just had to go my own way with it. We would always have this back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe studied art at Chicago\u2019s North Park University, but even when he began discovering comics beyond the superhero genre such as Spawn, The Walking Dead and Hellboy, a future in the industry was still not on his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHis job as an art teacher in a middle school changed his trajectory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of my seventh graders stabbed another seventh grader in the head with a mechanical pencil. It was like a Tarantino movie, with the hose of blood coming out,\u201d he recalls. It was his first day. It went only downhill from there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the encouragement of his wife, he quit and took any job that was visual. Graphic design, storyboarding commercials. And in that mix was a web comic titled Space Mullet. He was off to the races, doing indie creator-owned work with the occasional assignment for Marvel and DC, building a fanbase and being nominated Eisner Awards, the comic industry\u2019s equivalent of the Oscars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was when he rekindled his childhood love of Transformers, launching the eponymous comic under Skybound\/Image in 2023, that he powered his first major breakthrough. As both the writer and artist, he transformed a licensed comic, a type of endeavor that is not normally known for artistic achievements, not just into a massive sales hit \u2014 the first issue sold over 100,000 copies \u2014 but also, unbelievably, into an Eisner Award winner. Two, in fact. One for best continuing series, one for best writer\/artist.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was already skyrocketing in popularity when DC came calling, offering something in the Absolute world. At first, he declined their advances, but as he says, \u201cthe election and inauguration happened and then I had an idea.\u201d That was the beginning of 2025. By the end of the year, Absolute Batman Annual No. 1 was in readers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n

\n\tAgain with powerbombs and chokeslams, not to mention one arm being snapped in mid-Hitler salute, Batman took on white supremacists. Like the main Absolute Batman, an energy pulsated through the pages, giving it an urgency and a nowness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comic sold a walloping 150,000 copies. It then breezed through a second printing and is now on its third.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNick Dragotta signed comics<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBorys Kit\/THR<\/p>\n

\n\t***\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new class of artists are not detailed illustrators like previous names such as Neal Adams or Lee but are influenced by manga and anime.\u00a0 (Dragotta admits that\u2019s almost all he reads nowadays.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd after years of comics being the domain of middle-aged male nerds, the audience for the books is younger and more diverse than before, thanks to Gen Z growing up on non-superhero graphic novels such as Dav Pikey\u2019s Dog Man and the works of Raina Telgemeier. Their fervor can be seen in YouTube videos and launch comics trend on TikTok.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s one of the first times we\u2019re seeing social media having an impact on store sales,\u201d says Golden Apple\u2019s Liebowitz. \u201cIn this instance, the people are talking about this thing called Absolute Batman or Wonder Woman or whatever, and rushing into local comic books stores to find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOr as Lu put it: \u201cOne thing we haven\u2019t seen is that the kids are back. I didn\u2019t think we\u2019d see that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike with most cases of popularity or art trends, it\u2019s hard to know where this one will to or how long it will last. Dragotta is committed to Absolute Batman for the foreseeable future, which will give the title a cohesion rare in modern comics (not counting the occasional fill-in issue or two by other\u00a0artists, which allows him to catch up on his schedule).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson, always the rebellious spirit, is taking a \u201cone for them, one for me approach\u201d and is working on a creator-owned sci-fi book, of which he declined to reveal details. He is aware that he is \u201chaving a moment,\u201d and wants to make the most of while he can.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know how long my vision will be relevant when it comes to the comic industry and the kind of stories people want to read,\u201d he says. \u201cFor as long as that is true and for as long as people resonate with the things I\u2019m making, I\u2019d like to throw as many stories through the window before it shuts, before my time is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbsolute Batman Annual no. 1<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of DC<\/p>\n