Some context for “Absolute DC” is necessary. Snyder isn’t just writing “Absolute Batman,” he’s one of this initiative’s architects. The big idea behind the project is flipping the familiar superheroes of DC on their head. “DC All-In Special” #1 (by Snyder and Joshua Williamson), which depicts how the “Absolute” universe came to be, literally has its back half pages printed upside down.
So in this “Absolute” world created by the God of Evil, Darkseid, Superman is an orphan on both Earth and Krypton, Wonder Woman was raised in Hell instead of Paradise, and Batman belongs to the working class; he fights outside the system instead of sitting atop it. Not to fret, though, you can read “Absolute Batman” without this context if you choose.
“Absolute Batman” #1 opens on the day that Bruce became Batman. He’s not walking out of a movie theater, instead, he’s on a school field trip to the Gotham City Zoo. The young Bruce is looking, where else, at the bat exhibit.
This Thomas Wayne is a teacher, not a billionaire industrialist/surgeon. While his class is on the trip, a gunman enters the zoo and starts firing. Thomas is shot after getting Bruce and his classmates to safety. Since Martha Wayne isn’t there, she’s spared her husband’s fate. (The shooter is not named or clearly seen in this first issue — will it be Joe Chill, the usual killer of Bruce Wayne’s parents, or someone else?)
So yes, Absolute Batman’s origin is centered not on a mugging, but a mass shooting event. This sort of topical writing is typical of Snyder. (“I always love anvil-to-the-head symbolism,” he’s said before.) In a blurb for his and Greg Capullo’s “Batman: Last Knight on Earth,” he writes about the alarm he felt about his own son having to do active shooter drills at school.
As you’d expect from a teacher’s salary, this Bruce Wayne didn’t inherit a multi-billion fortune from his father. He’s got a day job as a Gotham City engineer, Martha appears to live in a modest apartment complex, and as Batman, Bruce’s secret base is on the top floor of an empty office building, not in a Batcave.
Speaking to Polygon about “Absolute Batman,” Snyder said that Batman’s strength as a character is how he inspires people both the ones in the stories and those reading them to overcome fear and be better. So, he wanted this Batman to be one that readers would have more common ground with: “Well, the first thing would be to strip away some of the resources, some of the privilege, some of the things that make [Batman] so much a part of the system.”
It remains to be seen if that’ll head off the exhausting discourse about all the “better” ways Bruce Wayne could solve crime than by being Batman.
