There’s a house ad for Batman: Year One. To my eye, it is the single greatest piece of comics advertisement ever to exist, fitting, as it’s for one of the best comics ever to exist. It has a strong, Full body portrait of Batman illustrated by Mazzucchelli and reads:
“He’s strong, smart and relentless… Shrewd and cunning. A powerful fighter. The best detective the world has ever seen. The very best. But at what price?”
It’s one of those ads you read and you’re immediately caught up in the hype. The way it’s worded, the way it’s framed, you immediately understand that the Batman is a force to be reckoned with, and you’re left wondering how.
Absolute Batman #2 is a showcase of those attributes. It’s a showcase of how he’s a relentless fighting machine, one that doesn’t back up from it.
Issue 2 opens with a flashback to the zoo. Bruce, inside the building, calling out to his dad, trying to tell himself that he’s alright, but we get to see him lying there, dead. Bruce’s side is in red, and as we shift to his perspective, we see that it’s all red, as a bat screeches at him before multiple bats swarm him and cover him whole.
Following this, we return to Alfred, once again providing narration as we look at the Batman’s endless assault on the Party Animals.
“When I was in Special Forces, my commanders always said what makes a great leader is knowing when to advance forward and when to retreat and regroup.”
Advance Forward. Retreat and Regroup. Alfred refers to this as a quote from his commander, sure, but it’s also extremely descriptive of Batman and Bruce. In fact, it so much is, that the entire issue’s narrative hinges on those two concepts. When we see Batman face off against the Party Animals, to quote the ad once more, “He’s strong, smart and relentless… Shrewd and cunning. A powerful fighter.” He uses every resource at his disposal, and he keeps on trekking on, never looking back, forever advancing as he shows everyone on the mean streets of Gotham that he’s a force to be reckoned with.
Yet, Batman cannot just be permanently advancing forward. There’s a balance here, you can’t do one without doing the other. That’s what Bruce Wayne is for. If the former is operating on Advance Forward permanently, the latter is operating on Retreat and Regroup. Bruce has to take a step back, to seclude himself, to assess, so that Batman can remind everyone that their Dark Knight is here to save the day.
The whole issue’s modus operandi being this is so damn excellent. When we see a young Bruce, we see him retreating into himself. As he gets deeper into this Batman business, he’s retreating by seeing his mom less, all for the sake of the mission. During the real meat of the issue, in which Bruce finally goes to the poker game with Waylon, Harvey, Riddler, and Oz, he’s playing with those very tactics: Advancing Forward when he knows he can obtain information, and Retreating and Regrouping when he knows he’s pushing too far and needs to shift the conversation. Even the damn act of the Batmobile is another in the relentless act of never going back.
It’s so good, that it makes the last page hit so much more. The reveal and introduction of a new character already has my mind racing on what the implications are, and what the character dynamics are like, but that being the page that breaks the mold, that finally decides to leave whether he’ll AF or R&R ambiguous is such a good note to end things on, especially considering the character that he does meet.
All of this is possible thanks to Dragotta and Martin’s art. Like Batman, Dragotta is relentless in continuing to make this look like a Batman book you’ve never quite seen before, being bold enough to emulate Miller’s time on Dark Knight Returns while doing his own spin, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop anytime soon. Pages with 12 panels are all over this comic, with the highest going to 18, all in service of a story that also knows when it should Advance Forward and when it should Retreat and Regroup, showing just how well-tuned Snyder and Dragotta are.
Martin makes every single panel look breathtakingly gorgeous. Dark reds populate the opening pages in the flashback, and later on, as we see Batman make big moves, we see him surrounded by hues of red, making it very much his color. They take a muted turn when we see flashbacks, there’s a change in texture when the panels are looking at the news on the TV. Cowles’ lettering is the cherry on top, not once being distracting or taking away from the beautiful art, but rather always being additive.
Absolute Batman #2 is the perfect follow-up to #1. Where #1 was Snyder and Dragotta flexing their muscles, showing everyone that while they’re drawing from the best (Miller) they’re still bold enough to do their own thing, #2 is showing what that own thing truly means, an expression of perfect economical storytelling that marries the thematic nature of the character to the thematic nature of the narrative at hand.
The good stuff™️.
