Comic Books

[Polident]

Maybe funniest moment is Bane telling Bruce how Venom makes you more jacked and epic and shit. But Bruce in the Absolute Universe is 6-9 and 421 pounds of pure muscle already. (Plus he inexplicably knows all the martial arts he does in the normal universe.) How much more jacked is he supposed to get? Also, Bane is somehow BIGGER than this?!? Diana is also giant in this universe, not just TALL like normal Diana. So is Ra's who is also epic jacked and probably should consider getting on Venom if he isn't since in this universe it makes you know and remember everything you read. Kal-El might be more normal sized depending on the issue.

I’ve only read Absolute Batman and it’s definitely like the directive is “TO THE MAX!”

As you said, Batman is a brick shit house. Bane still towers over him without venom. With venom he’s probably approaching 20ft tall and 2000lb.

Last issue I read was Alfred 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

fantasizing about how Bane would cut off Batman’s arms and shatter his skull to become Spawn or something. It is all so over the top. 

[benji]

I haven't read any of the absolute stuff, but AFAIK the darkseidness is all the heroes lost their safety nets, so Superman was never raised by loving kansas farmers, Batman was never rich and Wonder Woman never had the Amazonian upbringing.

And basically none of those matter in the books. Bruce still has everything as if he was rich and has a much larger safety net of people. Superman was now raised by Kryptonian farmers with basically the same moral code and comes to Earth as a tween. Wonder Woman was taught everything relevant by Circe and the Gods and has literally all her man's world people from the regular books. The only trouble Bruce and Kal-El seem to have comes from their being rookies. If those two books didn't spend so much time telling you through exposition that this is a CRAPSACK WORLD it'd be hard to tell what Darkseid's influence is supposed to be.

I think you undersold the Ultimate universe a bit too, it did some crazy shit and was more intended as a fresh jumping on point that hit most of the continuity story beats that made the originals popular, but was never chained to any continuity beyond the loose idea - so Tony Stark is an alcoholic playboy genius because he has a brain tumour that could kill him at any moment, Thor claims to be a god, but a lot of people think hes just crazy and using stolen tech, the Hulk is much closer to a Mr Hyde figure, Cap is a MAGA asshole, Hawkeye is a black ops wetwork dude etc.

My point is that the characters are not distinctly different, they are almost all recognizable as those characters and you can easily trace how the different circumstances of the universe probably have led to those changes that do exist. In the Absolute Universe Batman is only Batman because he's supposed to be Absolute Batman and Snyder writes him as if he's regular Batman. It's completely the inverse of how Ultimate did things, there's no reason this Bruce Wayne should be totally the same (but gigantic) but he is because he has to be Batman. Darkseid's influence has changed all kinds of other people in the world, at least initially, even in many cases for the better but this didn't seem to effect Bruce in any way. I'm not even sure that Bane is necessarily any worse or different, The Joker might not be worse, Freeze is a victim of others now, etc.

[Eric Cartman]

yeah I've heard jokes about Batman Reacher being dumb AF but most people seem okay with the Supes and WW changes - Ive heard the Martian Manhunter take is pretty interesting too, even if it sounds a lot like Shade The Changing Man to me

[benji]

Superman and Wonder Woman seem like they certainly have more room to grow and I am more favorable to those. The main problem with Superman is that it's just turning it's wheels through 11 issues, almost nothing has happened since the second issue but a dumb little reveal that came before anything even happened. I do actually like that Wonder Woman is having Diana establish herself as a hero and everything before she ever meets the Amazons, though I doubt they're going to be any different from what we've seen in the regular books too.

I read Flash and Green Lantern and these are much better too. Although the setup of the light spectrum sounds pretty fucking dumb. Flash might be the best setup of these even if it's not the best storywise, it kind of perfectly nailed the immediate setup for things that will happen in the near term while planting seeds for stuff that can be pulled in down the road. I appreciated that its "name dropping" was more in the sense of if you know Flash stuff you know what this is hinting at even though it will obviously be different in some way. None of the others did very much of this but Batman teasing The Joker and that his friends will become his rogues. I think it's also the only one that had a real flashback to earlier in the Absolute Universe, even if it was just to push some RANDOM DUDE named Jay Garrick into the Speed Force in 1944.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

why is joker a monster what's happening

why isn't comics like the animated series

I'm scared 

[Polident]

I’m interested to see what dumb reason there is. Previously when Joker appeared or was talked about, the twist was he’s normal and rich but never laughs? He’s such a force he manages to “own” Bane by speaking a single sentence. Then he’s like sitting in a pile of fetuses? Now he’s a dragon?

The last issue was so goofy 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Bane manages to break all the bones in Penguin’s body so…he resembles a penguin? Then he randomly decides to burn exactly half of two-face’s body. Riddler, he slaps a computer on brain or something. It was taking too long to have these characters be the classic villains. Get it done in one issue! 

[benji]

I think with Riddler he just smashed his brain through his skull and that was Ridder's "fix" for this thing that totally didn't kill him instantly.

Snyder had ten issues and never established Harvey had this poker chip thing that will become his coin.

[benji]

Somehow this panel got drawn, inked, colored, lettered, edited and published with nobody noticing that Deathstroke has both his eyes.  

[benji]

Maybe funniest moment is Bane telling Bruce how Venom makes you more jacked and epic and shit. But Bruce in the Absolute Universe is 6-9 and 421 pounds of pure muscle already. (Plus he inexplicably knows all the martial arts he does in the normal universe.) How much more jacked is he supposed to get? Also, Bane is somehow BIGGER than this?!? Diana is also giant in this universe, not just TALL like normal Diana. So is Ra's who is also epic jacked and probably should consider getting on Venom if he isn't since in this universe it makes you know and remember everything you read. Kal-El might be more normal sized depending on the issue.

Cover of latest Absolute Superman:

[benji]

Absolute Evil already brought all the strands together that I mentioned, but I liked how it did it. Also made a better case than the Batman book does for how Bruce is able to operate. Although the Joker's lecture was a bit  I do like the idea that the heroes are this universe's chaos to its natural order. I will say that it didn't exactly make this argument, it instead suggested merely a different order and hierarchy. In fact I would say this is ultimately what the rest of the Justice League's concern is, whereas the Joker seems genuinely concerned about the threat heroes pose to things conceptually. Which is arguably a perfect inversion of the standard Joker. He's probably the lone villain they can completely invert and yet remain the most insane villain.

And while it's probably just a throwaway line as part of a metaphor, I hope they do make Joker an actual evangelical following God's Word. Obviously, just this world it's not Christianity (or whatever), it's Darkseid. The Religion of Crime in the regular universe was a great idea that really wasn't utilized to the extent it should have been. (Not helped by most writers except Morrison and Rucka treating it as just some supervillain scheme.) And it was kind of dumb that it was dropped by its followers after Final Crisis when that proved it was literally true.

[benji]

In The Demon series from the 1990's: https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/The_Demon_Vol_3

• There's a storyline featuring a Guru Chud cult leader.
  
• Etrigan runs for President as a Republican and is basically Trump.
  
  
  
  
• Etrigan teams up with a dead Confederate general to fight dead Nazis and beats a bunch of Nazi Demons to death while lecturing them about how hate is wrong. (Slavery is never mentioned in any of the three issues.)
  

[Eric Cartman]

Etrigan teams up with a dead Confederate general

The Haunted Tank looooooooong predates The Demon, and I assume is an Ennis deep cut because he fucking loves war comics so probably read some of the silver age stuff along with stuff like Sgt Rock / Unknown Soldier / Enemy Ace etc.
Its kinda weird how much WW2 anthology stuff comics used to have back in the day, actually

Demon v3 is pretty great Ennis (you didn't include Master Baytor, the demon who can emit a white gunk that solidifies on people) and 'hells hitman' is a pretty fun hook to do something with - also directly spins off into actual Hitman which is even better Ennis.

[benji]

Yeah, I knew the reference, I just thought it was amusing that today you would absolutely do the very cringe anvil lecture from how a hell demon who has done genocide has standards and that Nazis go too far because they hate and are bigoted. But you would never in your life dream of having a Confederate be a hero of that same (or any) story.

I actually read Hitman before, long ago, and was not aware that the great Baytor (who is... Baytor) was such a storied character. Hitman is a lot better than his Demon stuff, although quite a bit of the Demon stories involve him.

[Eric Cartman]

I just thought it was amusing that today you would absolutely do the very cringe anvil lecture from how a hell demon who has done genocide has standards and that Nazis go too far because they hate and are bigoted. But you would never in your life dream of having a Confederate be a hero of that same (or any) story.

true progressive non binary leftist