Absolute DC Roundup – Vol 1

I enjoy comics and graphic novels, but I have always found the big DC and Marvel comics to be very unapproachable. Their comic universes are so complicated and sprawling at this point that I have never seen what felt like a good jumping-in point, despite liking many characters from both universes. So, when I saw that DC was launching a fresh new universe with a number of twists, I thought I might check it out. I decided to read the first collected volume of each of the current runs available, gather my thoughts, and loosely rank how much I recommend them to someone less familiar with major comics. If I accidentally misrepresent something about these heroes, please accept my preemptive apologies.

At the highest level (from what I have read), the Absolute Universe is a separate, parallel universe within the DC multiverse featuring radically reimagined DC characters. Despair and loss are major themes throughout all of these reimagined heroes. In particular, each hero feels like they have had a core element of their original background either taken away or radically altered, and we as the readers get to see the new (and old) directions these new challenges take our protagonists. Heroes in this universe are not revered, but exist in the shadows and are feared by the public. Yet, despite this grimdark tone on paper, I found that these stories often felt extremely hopeful, as many highlight the fact that no matter what you take away or how you sculpt the circumstances to pound these heroes down, they will still stand up gallantly for what is good in the world.

1) Absolute Wonder Woman: The Last Amazon – Starting at the top and standing head and shoulders above the rest is Absolute Wonder Woman. She is, without a doubt, one of the coolest, most badass, and most lovely comic protagonists I have ever witnessed. In this run, Diana is reimagined without her connection to her culture on Themyscira. Instead, she is raised in Hell by the archwitch Circe. I have always loved Wonder Woman’s connection to the Greek Gods and Myth, and I have always felt disappointed that it never felt super utilized in the various Wonder Woman things I have seen over the years (granted that subset isn’t large). In Absolute Wonder Woman, we see Diana leaning way more into her mystical side, drawing on powerful magics and arts. Yet she is also immensely physically imposing. I have never seen Diana depicted with such raw physical power. She radiates a quietly imposing strength in every panel she is in that manages to make her feel both deeply humble and incredibly intimidating at the same time. She is presented with a strength of heart and a purity of spirit that makes you fall in love with her immediately, and her uncompromising belief in the good in the world pulls everyone to her side almost instantaneously.

 

Aiding all of this is the fabulous art of the story and the masterful composition of the pages. I am a huge fan of the extremely wide and thin frames in this story, used to show Diana changing and growing into a hero. Her positioning and perspective in every frame always feel extremely mindful and worth close study. To top it all off, all the character designs are fabulous. I love the look of her armor, her weapons, her clothes. She is just so unabashedly cool. And before I forget, the story is absolutely delightful as well. There are modern myths to unfold and imaginative retellings of older Greek stories as well, both executed brilliantly. The whole package comes together into a comic I would recommend to every single person who will listen to me. If you had never read a comic before and never heard of Wonder Woman, I still think you would absolutely love this story, and it has me extremely excited to see where this run goes next.

2) Absolute Superman: Last Dust Of Krypton – The first collected volume of Absolute Superman really grabbed my curiosity as I thought the reimagining of Clark was quite interesting. Here we see Superman denied his childhood on Earth and instead given back a large chunk of his adolescence on Krypton. In some ways, it feels like a positive, as Clark now has a meaningful connection to his people, culture, and original parents in a way he had always dreamed of in any of his original depictions. But Krypton still falls, Clark is still thrown across the universe to Earth, and now he has a sharp sense of exactly what he has lost, and he has grown up without his adoptive parents to hammer his humanity into shape.

I really liked Last Dust Of Krypton, but to be fair, I am a big Superman fan already. One of the things I love most about it is that I have really never cared for Krypton and often found its depictions fairly boring, but the Absolute universe breathes life into Clark’s home planet in ways I had never dreamed. On top of his usual suite of powers in this run, Clark is also an engineer in the footsteps of his brilliant mother and has a suite of powerful alien tech that he utilizes from Krypton. The most iconic of these is his cape, which is made from the literal dust of Krypton and does many very cool things. Superman’s conflicts have always been more cerebral than physical to me, and while Absolute certainly doesn’t dial back on the mental, it adds new fun elements to the kicking and punching I really enjoyed. Additionally, I really enjoyed the visual design of all the tech and its futuristic sci-fi look as well. Judging by the start of the run, this story seems to be about no matter what you take from Clark, he will still claw his way back to being the most outstanding human you can imagine. A story I never get tired of.

3) Absolute Batman: The Zoo – Hitting third place and still having a really, really good time, we have Absolute Batman. The premise here is a very simple reversal. Bruce is the son of a kind but brilliant school teacher of humble means, and his villains are now the ones of extreme financial means. On the one hand, it doesn’t feel like a particularly inventive reimagining on paper, especially when compared to the other runs, but boy, is it effective. This story leans heavily into the scrappy inventor part of Bruce’s established identity and goes miles to show you that Bruce’s money was the least dangerous part of his arsenal.

In recent years, topical sentiment has made it harder and harder to come around to Bruce’s wealth, and in some ways, this story feels like a duct tape fix to that problem that falls a little short of the splendor of Absolute Wonder Woman and Superman. That being said, holy shit is this comic a lot of fun. Batman is always going to be a reliable horse to bet on, and this comic is no exception. Bruce feels much more relatable without losing any of his gruff, unapproachable charm. His rogue’s galley has all got fun new interpretations (many now as friends and allies), but the reimagining of his villains was always going to be an uphill battle due to how legendary the starting points were.

Bruce is also just an absolute monster to watch fight in this series. They made him 8 feet tall and built like a brick shithouse, and he just radiates menace in every scene he is in. I love the reimagining of his batgear as big, scary engineering projects, and it feels well integrated with his more blue-collar start than his original design. To top it all off, the larger narrative of this story is very engrossing, and this story is for sure the one I most want to know what happens next. The end result is a comic that doesn’t feel quite as revolutionary but is still an absolute dump truck full of fun.

4) Absolute Flash: Of Two Worlds – Now we run into the two stories I had a little more issue with. Up first is Absolute Flash. In this run, we follow a reimagined Wally West who is on the run in a new reality, stripped of his usual support system and powers, and must adapt to survive. A military brat raised on army bases, Wally finds himself somewhere he is not supposed to be and gets exposed to a mysterious weapon test that alters him forever. Can the fastest man alive outrun the consequences of his choices?

In all honesty, Of Two Worlds is really fun in a vacuum, but starts to feel like a less accomplished younger sibling when you look at the larger Absolute picture. Wally takes the most time to get up and running (ironically) by far, and we spend a lot of time watching him understand what is happening and not a lot of time expanding on the themes of the story. By the end of this first collected volume, we are starting to really move, but then we hit a cliffhanger. This is further damning by the comparison that every other Absolute Vol 1., except this one, feels like it has a self-contained ARC.

And yet, I do really like the new character design. Giving Wally and his supporting case a more military bent is at least visually interesting, though I don’t know where I stand on it thematically yet. I was a big fan of the redesign of his rogue’s gallery as a special forces military squad. I appreciate that the writers and artists were able to make them seem extremely scary and dangerous, while also preserving the every important wacky core of most of The Flash’s villains. But, at the end of the day, I said I wanted to judge each Vol 1. on its own, and I do think Of Two Worlds is missing something.

5) Absolute Green Lantern: Without Fear – One of the comics I was most excited about, and the only one I didn’t enjoy, Absolute Green Lantern read as a mess to me. I don’t know a lot about the Lanterns; they are one of the hero groups I was most excited to learn about as I jumped into the Absolute Universe. Yet what I found was a convoluted pile of characters that were hard to distinguish, art that felt noticeably less interesting than its competition, and a plot that was hard to follow.

Absolute Green Lantern tells the story of Jo Mullein, a relatively new Green Lantern who was originally written by N.K. Jemisin (whom I love), and I thought was going to be the focal point of the story. Instead, the story focuses on a small town encased in a force bubble by a Lantern who crash lands from space. Inside, Jo Mullein, Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner must figure out what is happening and piece together a way to get out of this strange and terrifying circumstance.

Without Fear had an interesting premise that I thought really fell short in two key areas. I think it was going for an eldritch horror setting where the Lantern Core are these mysterious and terrifying beings from beyond the stars that feel unknowable. However, I only really realized that in hindsight after finishing Vol 1. and instead spent most of my time being regularly confused as to what was happening. Additionally, the story feels like it lacks any focus whatsoever. Instead of digging into Jo like I was hoping for, we split all of our time among all of the iconic lantern characters and did none of them justice. I think the authors were going for a tribute to these famous wielders, but it instead came off as fan service that I rapidly lost interest in. It is possible I am lacking context here, and maybe this one would be a lot more fun to someone familiar with the Lantern’s history, but if that’s the case, we have just rebuilt my original problem with these comics in the first place.

HM) Absolute Martian Manhunter: Martian Vision – The five comics listed above represent the “core” of the launch of the Absolute Universe, but there are also some side projects that are getting compilation volumes as well. I managed to grab one, the Martian Manhunter run, and while I didn’t think the story was revolutionary, I do think it has the coolest art I have ever seen in any visual medium.

The brain of FBI agent John Jones has been infected by an alien consciousness calling itself “the Martian,” and its perception of reality is utterly incomprehensible to the human psyche. Now John must learn to comprehend the incomprehensible and balance multiple visions of the present, all while balancing the deeply grounded and important duties of his day job and a personal life.

If I had to pick which Vol 1. did a better job of depicting an incomprehensible horror from beyond the stars, the competition wouldn’t have even been close. And to top it off, Martian Vision did it with a spectacular deluge of color. This entire volume is magical and easily took top marks in the category of “story I spent the most time poring over every single panel.” It is hard to describe how delightful and clever the art in this run is. The smart use of light through the pages, the commitment to retro art styles reimagined for a modern story, and the absolute explosion of mesmerizing panels make this the volume I most want to read again and again. If I were to rank it in the original 5 volumes, I would put it in second place just for its art alone. However, it lacks the narrative depth to knock Diana off her throne.