When this series began, its tone was clearly something that leaned into Snyder’s propensity for over the top action and spectacle. It was camp, it was fun, and Batman fought with a battle axe while driving a giant dump truck as his Batmobile. However, as the series has gone on, I’ve noticed that it’s started leaning more and more into Snyder’s other love: horror. It was at the beginning of the Ark M arc with Mr. Freeze that the phrase “body horror” specifically started showing up in my reviews. It has only escalated from there, and now with this issue I think we’ve reached the point where it has fully become a horror comic.
I’m personally someone who is made very uncomfortable by a lot of body horror concepts. Specifically, the idea of one’s own body being mutilated or changed against one’s will send my mind spiraling into the psychological toll that would have on a person. At the same time, I’m able to recognize and appreciate when that concept is executed well, and boy does this issue not pull its punches. The opening three pages alone are more impactful than most comics I read for this site. After escaping from Bane, Waylon tells Bruce that he wants to be “saved”, except he doesn’t mean cured. He wants Bruce to help him kill himself.
This is the moment when the comic started feeling very real. When I say it’s no longer “fun”, I don’t actually necessarily mean that as a bad thing. What I mean is that it’s no longer an over the top action thriller. It very quickly starts dealing with serious and discomforting ideas. Waylon is suffering both physically and psychologically so much that he asks his friend to kill him, and failing that, tries to do it himself. The extent to which his body is made not his own and only a vehicle for dissociative torture reminds me in many ways of Harlan Ellison’s short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. In both instances, the characters are robbed of their agency and are disfigured to the point unrecognizability and only wish for it to end.
This isn’t limited to just Waylon. After last month’s cliffhanger, Bruce’s friends haven’t just been brutalized, they’ve been twisted into a cruel mockery of who they were before. Bane took each one’s sense of identity and ironically inverted it. He saw Oz’s attempts to appear taller and stronger and broke every bone in his body such that he would “heal” permanently two feet shorter and misshapen. Harvey’s attractive face was split down the middle and half burned, parodying his attempts to be both a politician and outlaw. Eddie’s brain was concussed to the point that his intelligence was replaced by a manic delirium where “facts became questions”. It would have been easy to simply make Absolute Batman’s classic rogues darker versions of what we’re used to, but now they’re his former friends whose bodies and minds have been maimed into something more cruelly recognizable to readers. And it’s Bruce’s fault.
Witnessing what happened to Oz, Harvey, and Eddie is at times extremely difficult, and a lot of that is because Nick Dragotta’s artwork. A picture is worth a thousand words, and his depictions of their suffering tells a clear story. In their faces, their body language, and the framing of each scene you feel every ounce of sadness, pain, and anger. Every page has a looming sense of dread through its use of shadows and storyboarding that makes you scared to see what might be coming next.
This is Batman’s lowest point (so far). After having only barely escaped being physically broken at Ark M, he finds himself emotionally broken by having almost everyone he cares about taken from him. At one point he’s even ready to call it quits. It’s only Alfred’s insistence that the only way out is through that he barely holds onto the resolve that seemed so indominable before. There’s only a slight glimmer of hope at the very end that things might get better, but that’s enough to keep you wanting more.
Recommended If
- You’re a fan of dark comics that pull no punches
- Body horror doesn’t bother you
- You want to see the extent to which Absolute Bane is the monster he’s described as
Overall
Absolute Batman #12 is easily the darkest issue of the series so far. It holds nothing back as it lays bare the atrocities that Bane has inflicted on all of Bruce’s closest friends. Their physical pain and mutilation is matched only by the psychological trauma that comes with it, all meticulously detailed by Nick Dragotta’s gruesome art. It’s a horrifically captivating story, but one you might not feel happy reading.
Score: 9/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
English (US) · 