Some context for “Absolute DC” is important. Snyder is not simply writing “Absolute Batman,” he is one among this initiative’s architects. The large thought behind the undertaking is flipping the acquainted superheroes of DC on their head. “DC All-In Particular” #1 (by Snyder and Joshua Williamson), which depicts how the “Absolute” universe got here to be, actually has its again half pages printed the wrong way up.
So on this “Absolute” world created by the God of Evil, Darkseid, Superman is an orphan on each Earth and Krypton, Surprise Lady was raised in Hell as an alternative of Paradise, and Batman belongs to the working class; he fights outdoors the system as an alternative of sitting atop it. To not fret, although, you possibly can learn “Absolute Batman” with out this context in the event you select.
“Absolute Batman” #1 opens on the day that Bruce turned Batman. He is not strolling out of a movie show, as an alternative, he is on a college area journey to the Gotham Metropolis Zoo. The younger Bruce is wanting, the place else, on the bat exhibit.
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This Thomas Wayne is a instructor, not a billionaire industrialist/surgeon. Whereas his class is on the journey, a gunman enters the zoo and begins firing. Thomas is shot after getting Bruce and his classmates to security. Since Martha Wayne is not there, she’s spared her husband’s destiny. (The shooter is just not named or clearly seen on this first subject — will or not it’s Joe Chill, the same old killer of Bruce Wayne’s mother and father, or another person?)
So sure, Absolute Batman’s origin is centered not on a mugging, however a mass capturing occasion. This form of topical writing is typical of Snyder. (“I all the time love anvil-to-the-head symbolism,” he is stated earlier than.) In a blurb for his and Greg Capullo’s “Batman: Final Knight on Earth,” he writes concerning the alarm he felt about his personal son having to do energetic shooter drills at college.
As you’d count on from a instructor’s wage, this Bruce Wayne did not inherit a multi-billion fortune from his father. He is bought a day job as a Gotham Metropolis engineer, Martha seems to reside in a modest residence advanced, and as Batman, Bruce’s secret base is on the highest flooring of an empty workplace constructing, not in a Batcave.
Chatting with Polygon about “Absolute Batman,” Snyder stated that Batman’s power as a personality is how he conjures up individuals each those within the tales and people studying them to beat concern and be higher. So, he wished this Batman to be one which readers would have extra widespread floor with: “Effectively, the very first thing can be to strip away a number of the assets, a number of the privilege, a number of the issues that make [Batman] a lot part of the system.”
It stays to be seen if that’ll head off the exhausting discourse about all of the “higher” methods Bruce Wayne may resolve crime than by being Batman.