We've Met Absolute Batman, but What About Absolute Joker?

Absolute Batman is undoubtedly one of DC’s biggest comic book launches in years. The first issue was the best-selling comic of 2024, and the series has remained atop the sales charts ever since. Clearly, readers are responding well to this bold and often surprising reinvention of the Dark Knight.

Now that creators Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta have wrapped up their first story arc, “The Zoo,” they sat down with IGN to discuss all the ways in which Absolute Batman up-ends the traditional Batman mythos. Read on to learn more about designing this impressively buff Batman, why having a mother changes everything for Bruce Wayne, and what to expect as Absolute Joker emerges from the shadows.

Warning: full spoilers for Absolute Batman #6 ahead!

Designing Absolute Batman

The Absolute Universe’s Batman is nothing if not an intimidating figure, between the bulging muscles, the shoulder spikes, and the various other embellishments to the traditional Batsuit. There’s a reason we included Absolute Batman among our list of the 10 greatest Batman costumes of all time. To kick things off, we asked Snyder and Dragotta how they cooked up this hulking vision of the Dark Knight and how they sought to reflect the notion of a Batman who lacks the wealth and resources of his traditional counterpart.

“Scott's initial idea was to go big,” Dragotta tells IGN. “I mean, that was his first direction to me, was this is going to be the biggest Batman we've seen yet. And believe me when I tell you, I drew him really big at first, and then when Scott saw it, he was like, ‘Nick, I want to go bigger.’ And I was like, ‘Scott, we're getting into Hulk-like proportions now.’”

Dragotta continues, “I think that was the impetus for the design, was just go big, bold, iconic, and hit the themes of who this character is. So down to his emblem, down to every piece of his suit, he's a weapon. It's all a weapon. It's no longer just a utility belt. It's just everything's a utility on this Batman. And that continues to, I think, drive the design and it'll evolve and change in the future.”

"Down to his emblem, down to every piece of his suit, he's a weapon. It's all a weapon.

For Snyder, making Batman enormous was an immediate necessity. If the classic Batman has an actual superpower, it’s extreme wealth. Without endless piles of money to throw at Gotham’s criminal element, this Batman needs to make up for it with sheer, physical presence.

“When the classic Batman shows up, something we often don't talk about is that he's really intimidating to bad guys because he's an amazing fighter and he's an amazing detective and he's big and he's all of those things and he's got the theatrics, but some of it is money too. He shows up in a car or a plane or in a suit that says, ‘I have more than you do.’” Snyder says. “And that's a good way for him to intimidate everybody, the super-criminals he goes up against. When Riddler sees him and he's in some incredibly high-tech suit that can do all kinds of things that you didn't think it could, that says, you should stop your criminal ways in its own right. So if this Batman doesn't have those things, then one of his actual tools feels like it would be his size, his physicality, the violence that he brings to a fight, the utility of every piece of his suit, that he's always scary, that anything in him can hurt you.”

Snyder continues, “I think one of the underlying themes of the villains he's up against is that they don't think they can be touched. They all have the resources that he doesn't... The Black Mask has tons of resources, so everyone with him represents that. And in the second arc, it'll be even more. So he keeps going up against bigger and bigger stuff, so he needs to be this force of nature that says, ‘You don't think I can touch you, but I'm going to. I'll punch you.’"

It’s safe to say the bulky, musclebound Batman of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns also helped inspire Absolute Batman. Dragotta makes that influence plain during one particularly striking splash page in issue #6, which offers its own take on Miller’s iconic (and surprisingly divisive) Dark Knight Returns cover and the image of Batman leaping through the air while silhouetted against a lightning bolt.

“For me, Frank Miller and [Batman: Year One’s] David Mazzucchelli's Batman is everything and a huge inspiration, not so much the drawing, but the storytelling and the way they lay out their stories and tell them,” Dragotta says. “So yeah, Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and that's a definite homage. And it just felt right and it felt necessary to give that little nod.”

Giving Batman a Family

Absolute Batman reworks a great many elements of the Dark Knight’s mythology, beyond just stripping Bruce Wayne of his wealth and privilege. But easily the biggest change to be introduced in the series so far involves the reveal that his mother Martha is still alive and well. No longer is Batman a lonely, wounded orphan. He has a mother, which means he has a lot more to lose in this universe.

“It was probably the thing that I went back and forth on the most originally,” Snyder says. “I knew that if one parent was alive, it would be Martha because it felt like he's had such a relationship with Thomas in different universes, and Thomas is sometimes Batman, and ‘Yes, father. I shall become a bat.’ It's very paternal in terms of his relationship to his parents in a lot of ways. So it felt like Martha would be a lot more interesting here. But once she entered the book and we started trying it out, and so much of the book is instinctual, it's Nick and me figuring it out as we go. We have a big plan. It's planned through Issue 24 and its general structure, and that keeps growing.”

Snyder continues, “That said, it's also really how things are feeling as we go, which is a huge joy and thrill of the process. And she just took on this incredible life where it was like she's the moral compass of the book. Bruce is absolutely his own moral force, but he's still young and too idealistic in some ways and not idealistic enough in other ways. And she is both this incredible source of strength and a real vulnerability because having her walking out in the world and capable of being hurt is this weakness, as much as it's a strength. And so it adds this whole dimension to the character that's such a core part at this point of the DNA of him and of the book. I can't imagine ever having not done it because it's one of my favorite things, but it's a really exciting and unpredictable relationship.”

Another fundamental change was also introduced back in issue #1, as readers learned that Bruce was childhood friends with a group that included Waylon Jones, Oswald Cobblepot, Harvey Dent, Edward Nygma, and Selina Kyle. All of these characters are integral parts of Batman’s rogues gallery in the traditional DCU. But here, they’re basically an extended family to Bruce. Snyder teases that we’ll learn more about how these characters influenced Bruce’s evolution into Batman in upcoming issues.

“The whole idea was if he can't travel the world, if he can't train with the League of Shadows or League of Assassins and Henri Ducard and all these people that make up Bruce's worldly training, then who does he train with? Who does he come up with?” he says. “And so the first real mention of it is in the next issue in #7, but this is who he learned to be Batman through. He learned the city's underworld through Ozzie, through Oswald Cobblepot. He learned how to fight from Waylon Jones, from Croc. He learned the high-level detection and logic and algorithmic thinking from Eddie. And he learned the politics of the city from Harvey. And he learned, I don't want to give too much away from Selina, but a lot from Selina, which is all coming.

“So in that regard, they're all part of Batman. And that's where it came from, was this idea that, look, he should be friends with these guys because he's growing up with them. And at first it was just fun, like, ‘All right, he'll be friends and then they'll turn into the villains.’ But when we started exploring their relationships again, that and Martha became the core heart of the book - his relationships to his friends and to his mother and how that grounds him and also strengthens him and makes him more vulnerable and all of that oscillates. It's a huge factor for us. My favorite scenes, half the time, to write are the scenes with him and his friends and him and Martha.”

Absolute Batman vs. Absolute Black Mask

As we see in “The Zoo,” Absolute Batman is beginning to make his presence known in the city just as a new generation of costumed supervillains is also emerging. There are hints to villains like Bane and Joker (more on both in a bit), but this opening arc focuses mainly on Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask. Sionis is introduced as the leader of the Party Animals, a nihilistic, hedonistic gang hellbent on celebrating as Gotham City burns around them.

Black Mask isn’t the most obvious choice of villain for a Batman origin story, but he’s one that Snyder feels was the ideal fit for “The Zoo.” In fact, Snyder and Dragotta initially toyed with introducing a brand new villain before settling on revamping Black Mask instead.

“We felt like there was a lot of material there that was like clay, that we could mold the way we wanted,” Snyder says. “And the core thing about him is that he has this death face, this skull, and we wanted a villain who was about this nihilism that felt like, look, the world has been bought and sold and carved up and we're past the Doomsday Clock midnight, so let's all party and have fun and get what we can off the scraps off that big table up there. And that's all that's left to do. And if you don't feel that way, then you're crazy. But we're all dead already, so let's have a big dead party. And it just felt like his whole aesthetic spoke to that. And so that's why it was like, look, we'll write him like a creator-owned character. We'll stay true to the DNA, which is that he's a crime boss, but ultimately we'll get to make him really our own. And again, all credit to what Nick was able to do to really transform him into something that was entirely fresh in my opinion.”

The Batman/Black Mask rivalry reaches a fever pitch in issue #6, as Bruce storms Sionis’ yacht and delivers an epic beatdown. Even as he pounds Black Mask’s head with a bowling ball, Batman screams, “Tell me again how I don’t matter! I love it!” It’s important to note that Batman doesn’t go as far as killing Sionis (that seems to be a line he still won’t cross in the Absolute Universe), but their fight leaves the villain thoroughly battered, defeated, and with both eyes gouged out by Batman’s razor-sharp ears. It’s a fight that speaks directly to the underdog quality of Batman in the Absolute Universe. Nobody takes him seriously yet, but that’s their mistake.

“Honestly, when I put that in over Nick's art, those lines weren't necessarily there in the original back and forth,” Snyder says. “It really rang to me like these are my favorite lines in the issue. It's like the thesis to me of our Batman is that he says, ’Tell me I don't matter. Tell me I can't make a difference. I love it. I f***ing love it.’ And [he’s] punching you. That's who he is. He'll take everything you tell him about this world being impossible to change, and he'll use it as fuel. Yeah, he has some seriously down moments coming up where a lot of doubt fills him about that. But at his best, that's what he's communicating is just this, ‘I don't care if you say to me it's impossible, I don't believe it.’"

The Threat of Absolute Joker

Where Batman goes, Joker invariably follows. More than any other villain, Joker is the dark inverse of the Caped Crusader - the chaos to Batman’s order. Snyder and Dragotta have made no secret of the fact that the series is building towards a confrontation between the two characters. Absolute Joker is first teased at the end of issue #1, which reveals him to be everything Batman traditionally is. He has extreme wealth. He’s a worldly traveler who’s trained under the finest teachers and martial arts masters. And he never, ever laughs.

“The Zoo” ends with another brief Joker appearance, as we see the Clown Prince of Crime wrapped in what appears to be a cocoon of dead babies and ordering his manservant to summon Bane to deal with the Batman problem. He’s aware of Gotham’s new protector, even if he’s not ready to deal with the problem personally just yet.

“The initial idea was if this is an inverted system, then Batman is the one that isn't order and part of the powers that be, he is the disruption. Who would be the system? It would be Joker. And so it was built into the DNA of the take,” Snyder says. “Those two things to me are always in relation. I've never written a Batman story, even if Joker isn't in it, where I don’t think about where Joker would be in relation to this take on Batman. He'd always be at the opposite end of the spectrum.”

One of the interesting things about Absolute Joker is the implication that he’s already evolved into a psychopathic supervillain independent of Batman. This isn’t a retread of the classic Killing Joke origin story, where Joker is an ordinary criminal who suffers one profoundly bad day and transforms after Batman fails to save him. Will Joker continue to evolve as he encounters Batman face-to-face?

“I don't want to give too much away,” Snyder says. “All I'll say is that this Joker is already really terrifying by the time he meets Batman. But his relationship with Batman is part of something that really evolves as the series goes.”

“Yeah, let's just say he's been there. This Joker's been there,” Dragotta teases. “And I think the clues we've planted is just how powerful he is. So when you see JK Industries, Ark-M - Alfred has hinted that there are Arks all over the world. There's a master plan that... yeah, I don't want to say anything. His storyline is coming up.”

Dragotta continues, “I'm back on #9. We got Marcos Martin for two issues, who just does a killer job with Mr. Freeze and the group's dynamic, Bruce and his friends. And then we get back into what's going on below. Already spoiling stuff, but with Ark-M, and then we're going to get into the Joker's storyline. So I think less is more, and just the fact that you're bringing up that image [from issue #6] is telling me we're doing our job. We want people to wonder what's going on and just hold on.”

What to Expect From Absolute Mr. Freeze and Absolute Bane

As Dragotta mentions, the series is taking a bit of a detour in issues #7 and #8, as Marcos Martin (Batgirl: Year One) steps in for a short arc that introduces Mr. Freeze to the Absolute Universe. Judging solely from the cover to issue #7, this looks to be another radical reinvention of an iconic Batman villain, one that leans far more into horror.

“These two issues with Marcos, I'm really excited about,” Snyder says. “Nick has been the real guiding light to me about the aesthetics of the series and bringing in artists that are very story-forward, that are non-traditional superhero artists in that way too, to really keep with the theme of the whole book being something you haven't seen. And with Marcos… I'd never worked with him before, but he really comes in looking for the emotional heart of the story. With these two issues that he's doing, Mr. Freeze I think speaks to the same kind of thing Bruce is struggling with. Bruce is struggling with having told his friends that he's Batman and the fact that he never expected to survive the first arc. He had a plan that he would go down with the ship, literally. And so now he almost doesn't know what to do with where he is.”

Snyder continues, “Mr. Freeze is this character who has been through something similar in his own way, but has taken a dark path after that. And I would just say it's a very twisted version of him. Very twisted. And I love that. I feel like, again, I was always nervous about redoing villains in the main universe because they have such legacy and such beloved history. But in this universe, this is ours. This is like our creator-owned Batman. And so you always have the main universe for the takes that you know and love. Over here, we're going to go dark. We're going for it.”

Again, issue #6 also makes it clear that Batman will be facing off with Bane in the very near future. Which raises an interesting conundrum. Bane is a very intimidating and physically imposing villain. But when you have a Batman this massive, do you attempt to go even bigger with Bane? Or do you defy expectations and slim down this powerhouse into a smaller but still ruthless and cunning foe?

“Bane, the one thing I'll say is he's really big. That's it,” Snyder says. “People were like, ‘Oh, he's going to be small.’ He's not going to be small. He's not small. We wanted someone who makes Bruce's silhouette look smaller.”

Finally, there’s the question of the larger Absolute line. Absolute Batman launched alongside Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman in 2024, and DC is adding at least three new titles in 2025 - Absolute Flash, Absolute Green Lantern, and Absolute Martian Manhunter. While the Absolute books have been telling fairly standalone and self-contained stories so far, Snyder has teased that things will change as we get deeper into 2025.

“You'll see hints, I think, that Bruce is aware of stuff happening in other places in our Absolute Universe,” Snyder says. “But right now, even today, we're doing planning meetings about how these characters are going to interact in '25 into '26. When I said that before, I think some people took it to mean that we're looking to cross with the main universe and we're not looking to do that. What we're looking for is to start to show the ways in which these characters are beginning to affect each other and how the villains affect each other in this world. So that stuff you will see happening in '25.”

Absolute Batman #6 is in stores now. You can preorder the Absolute Batman Vol. 1: The Zoo HC on Amazon.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.