DC Comics
If comic fans thought Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's "Absolute Batman" was inescapable before, get ready. At today's DC Studios Animation Panel at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, it was confirmed that "Absolute Batman" is being adapted into an animated series, with Snyder himself showrunning.
It's a no-brainer choice, really. "Absolute Batman" has smashed comic book sales records, and culturally, it's broken containment in a way I've never seen a new superhero comic do before. Celebrities from Jack Quaid to Method Man are praising the book. Purely anecdotally, I've even seen people reading new "Absolute Batman" issues at coffee shops.
What makes the series stand out? "Absolute Batman" fundamentally reshapes the Dark Knight and Gotham City to better align with where the real world is. This Bruce Wayne isn't a multi-generational billionaire, he's a working class kid who grew up in Crime Alley. "Absolute" Batman's origin is that Bruce lost his father Thomas in a mass shooting at the Gotham Zoo. Unlike the traditional Batman, his mother Martha is still alive, and Bruce's childhood friends — Selina Kyle, Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent, Eddie Nygma, and Ozzie Cobblepot — are revisionist takes on classic Batman villains.
Bruce is 24 years old, and he carries the all-too-real rage this generation feels at an unjust world. To read "Absolute Batman" is to see someone swing an axe at that world's foundations. Snyder has consistently said his goal with "Absolute Batman" is to make a Batman who faces the same anxieties about the world that his sons do.
In a recent Substack post, Snyder pinned this as the way to keep superheroes enduring and relevant: "Instead of echoing or assuming that the origin that we've said before is the same origin, do it in a way that makes it feel like it belongs to this generation."
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