A New World Team Up: Absolute Wonder Woman #15 and Absolute Batman #16 Review WC:
Olivia Lindquist ‘26 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Since the start of the Absolute Universe in DC Comics and the launch of their “Big Three”—Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman—fans everywhere have been anticipating a team up with DC’s Trinity. With last year’s release of Absolute Evil, a corrupted version of the Justice League made up of the main continuity’s worst villains, the buzz surrounding a possible crossover event has been overwhelming. DC fans finally got their wish with the combined Absolute Wonder Woman #15 and, most recently, Absolute Batman #16.
Absolute Wonder Woman’s “The Mark of Hecate” issue immediately introduces Diana of the Wild Isle as queen and Bruce Wayne as king on a redesigned chess board in the home of Diana’s main antagonist, Veronica Cale. Though labeled as a “ridiculous” chess set by Cale, it sets up the partnership between the two heroes perfectly. Fans can open the first page of the issue and spot two of the most powerful players they know of being placed in this new world. Though fans can theorize what it means, the most DC has given them at this point is an acknowledgement of the other cities on this Earth—Gateway City, Gotham City, Smallville, Evergreen, and Fort Fox—and the ways they’re different from the main continuity. When the chess board appears again later in the issue, the other pieces that can be seen are Wally West’s Flash as a bishop, Jo Mullein’s Green Lantern as a knight, and Superman as another potential bishop. This hints at a future Justice League-esque team up fans have been aching for since the birth of this universe.
*Spoilers below this point.*
For now, they have these two crossover issues. Kalyn Thompson, the writer, deeply understands Diana and Bruce’s friendship, and that’s abundantly clear across the mystery arc issue #15 follows. When Diana summons Bruce to a rooftop in Gotham with her own magical bat signal, the two immediately respect each other even though they’re wildly different people. They both have heard of the others’ work in their own cities, and readers get an excellent conversation about magic and the responsibility these heroes hold as protectors towards the people around them. Diana also gifts Bruce with a token that will alert her to his need when called upon. The unconventional panel structure consistent with the rest of the Absolute Wonder Woman issues adds a layer of whimsy to this serious team up.
The two set forth on finding a group of occultists using the Mark of Hecate, a ritual to summon Hecate’s magic and will, to commit murder. They return to the scene of the last crime—just outside of Gotham—for clues, and eventually find their way to an abandoned church that holds all the gothic horror of a good Batman story.
Diana and Bruce pull off an amazing entrance into the occultists’ lair, where they are actively trying to build a golem. Unfortunately for these occultists, Diana’s intrusion changes their goal, and she becomes possessed by the occultists—being forced to fight off Batman. Bruce, though seven feet tall and a tank of a man, is no match, and his only hope becomes that token she gave him earlier that night. As Diana comes out of her trance, the two of them learn the occultist murders and the trap was orchestrated by someone bigger and more powerful as the building implodes.
In the aftermath of the explosion, readers get a look at the more human sides of both heroes as they share a soft moment together while reeling over the fact that they have a new shared enemy. This closure alludes to their next team-up, which comes in writer Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman #16, “Bat out of Hell.”
In issue #12 of Absolute Batman, Bruce’s friend group is decimated by accidents in ARK M—the underground experimental facility below the prison—due to their subsequent kidnapping after Bruce was outed as Batman. These accidents gave his friends, the men he fights in the main continuity as rogues, irreversible changes to their person:
Harvey Dent, known as Two-Face in the main continuity, is physically deformed on half of his body; Oz, known as penguin, is practically flattened; and Bruce’s closest friend Waylon, known as Killer Croc, was physically transformed into a crocodile and lives in the sewers. This leads Bruce to find a cure for his friends’ deformities, especially Waylon’s.
After getting verbally attacked for his mistakes by his friends, Bruce uses the token from Diana to summon her with the hopes that she knows of a spell to reverse Waylon’s transformation before it’s too late. Despite not having anything that can help, she offers him passage to a realm that has the tools he needs, summing up the growing strength of their unlikely friendship.
The issue itself is very much a character study in the mind of this Batman, highlighting how much the death of his father messed him up, and how influential his fear of hurting people is on his day to day life. He blames the pain his friends are facing on himself and though partially true, it takes the spirit of his father to encourage Bruce to not get hung up on that fact.
However, his conversation with his father is cut short for the fight with the mythical creature, Akrolis. The centaur rules the purgatory-like realm Diana and Bruce are in, and grants passage to Elysium or the Underworld. This battle of epic proportions once again bests Bruce, but as he’s punted off a bridge toward his death, Pegasus—Diana’s skeletal riding partner—saves him while Diana distracts Akrolis from her friends. As Akrolis fires a magical, transforming arrow, Bruce arrives just in time to take the hit in his armor, freeing Diana up to defeat the centaur.
In a perfect conclusion, Diana carries Bruce home and gives him the magical item that he needs to help transform Waylon back into a human. Snyder has outdone himself with the slower character study he gives us in “Bat out of Hell.”