The year 2025 saw three major superhero movie releases. Two from Marvel—Thunderbolts/New Avengers and The Fantastic 4: First Steps—and one from DC Comics, the long-awaited Superman reboot. The last time Superman had his own solo film, I was sorely disappointed. Broad swathes of the audience were put off by the 9/11-style destruction visited on Metropolis, and even more were repelled by Superman’s swift and brutal execution of the movie’s villain, General Zod. If even Superman would make such a move on the silver screen, we must be living in a new era. I found myself asking uncomfortable questions: Was the concept of superhumanity, of superheroes still relevant to world culture? Had it ever been? What did heroism mean in the absence of the World Trade Center? After years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, after Obama’s drone warfare, the falls of Hussein and of Qaddafi? It’s not unusual for superhero comics to adjust their approach to Science Fantasy to accommodate societal, scientific, and historic events. In the mid 2020s, superhero comics are still evolving, and DC Comics has bested Marvel to take the largest share of the US market. They’ve also released stripped-down, ultra-modern versions of the Big 7 with their Absolute line. That’s right: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern are once-more reborn. So how have they changed this time around, and how well do they suit the present era?
Reboots and re-imaginings are far from new to DC and Marvel’s approach to their universes. From Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was designed to restart and pare down DC’s tortured continuity, to Marvel’s (first) Ultimate Universe, which was meant to free their iconic characters from the shackles of decades upon decades of ongoing stories, to the New 52, which rebooted DC’s core universe with newer, younger, and ostensibly fresher takes on their core characters, to Zero Hour, to Infinite Crisis, to Secret Wars, Secret Wars II, and, maddeningly, Secret Wars, we’ve seen myriad attempts to strip characters down, ground them more realistically, make sense of their pasts and presents, re-start time on a scale that somehow fits fifty-plus years of stories into a supposed five- or thirteen-year span—so what makes this go-round any different? The most important distinction is that Absolute DC exists in the now. It’s a new take for the present moment, and honestly, it feels foolish to ask for more—so in examining these new offerings, I intend to meet them on their own terms and assess them for what they are rather than what they could or “should” be.
I’m a lifelong fan of superhero comics. Even before I could read, my older brother would tell me about battles and plot points, describe characters, and recap invented history. He was a Marvel Zombie, and once I began reading the Uncanny X-Men at the age of four, so was I. Even so, we paid attention to DC Comics as well. Supergirl’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths made an enormous impression on me. I wasn’t old enough to be familiar with her long publication history, but seeing Superman’s anguish as he cradled her broken body moved my little heart. That was the first time DC Comics became truly important to me, and I’ve followed their characters off and on for decades.
In the wake of its crossover event, Absolute Power, in which Amanda Waller teamed up with Brainiac and other villains to “end the superhuman threat once and for all,” Darkseid, the tyrannical ruler of Apokolips, discovered a terrible secret. As the members of the Justice League convened to pick up the pieces of their shattered allegiances and team dynamics, Darkseid learned that he was created specifically as the opposing force to Superman and withdrew from the multiverse to form his own reality in seclusion where evil would be the norm, and any heroes that emerged would function as underdogs against the natural order. Thus, the Absolute universe was born, and the versions of the core heroes who eventually arose there were drastically different from their main-line DC Universe counterparts.
Absolute Batman was a more brutal version of the well-known hero from the creative team of Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta. Instead of a billionaire, Bruce Wayne is a middle-class engineer who lost his father to gun violence during a zoo field trip at the age of twelve. His core friend group consists of several members of his main-line DC rogue’s gallery—Killer Croc, Penguin, Riddler, the Mad Hatter, etc., although in the story’s first several issues, none of them are yet operating as full-blown villains. Alfred Pennyworth is not his butler, but a covert operative working for a shadowy and ruthless organization whose true intentions are unknown. The title does an excellent job of laying out this new approach to DC’s heroes. They are stripped down to their core, shorn of decades and decades of continuity, and repositioned in new stories meant to illuminate what makes these figures compelling. This Batman is violent, compassionate, resolute, and committed to making war against the mutants, cultists, and predators trying to prey on his city and its people. Separating Batman’s resources from generational wealth was a particularly daring choice that helped solve an issue that has always strained my credulity as a reader. I enjoyed the title but found myself wishing the creative team had pushed it even further into new territory for DC and for Batman.
Absolute Superman by Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval was the next title I read. In this one, Kal-El of Krypton was born and raised on his home planet instead of crashing to Earth as an infant. In the first volume, he has no secret identity, no hypno-glasses or misleading posture—he operates from the shadows with his usual powers augmented by Kryptonian tech. Instead of a cape, he is surrounded by a shapeshifting red nanite swarm that he commands through the use of an ever-present AI system designed by his engineer parents to keep him safe. The Kryptonian elements of the story are more grounded now (though still impossible), and Superman himself is portrayed as more of an alien without eliminating his affection for the human race or his commitment to justice. The title does a good job of taking Superman back to his roots, having him defend honest workers against corporate and governmental interests, which I find genuinely intriguing. I’ve always been more of a Superman than a Batman fan, and seeing the character handled this way, especially after seeing a new film adaptation that I, personally, found true to the character’s spirit, was a breath of fresh air. The story is particularly dark for a Superman story, showing the spiritual influence of his universe’s origin. I found it slightly more enjoyable than Absolute Batman.
Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia de Iulis, and Dustin Nguyen made me feel like a kid again. In my mind, there’s always been a major separation between the speculative literature I love and the execution of comics stories. Many of my favorite superhero stories are the ones that bring them closer to prose fantasy through magic systems that make sense—or at least feel realistic; strong, consistent characterization; and a careful attention to the way stories fit together. Absolute Wonder Woman hits all those bases hard, and it works like gangbusters for me. The redesign is particularly successful. This Wonder Woman is tall and thick, and instead of looking like a model who is also willing to punch villains in the face, she has a warrior’s body. Raised in Hell by Circe—arguably one of main-line Wonder Woman’s greatest villains—she has been separated from Themyscira and from the Amazon race her entire life. She has grown up fighting hell-beasts with her bare hands and has even sacrificed an arm to free Steve Trevor from perdition, replacing it with a magical construct. Her supporting cast, her magical weapons, and her background are all updated for the present story. They’re compelling and contemporary. The pacing is ultra-modern, alternating between the past and present of the story to explain how Diana came to use the skeletal Pegasus as her magical mount and companion, how she herself escaped from Hell in defiance of (most of) the Gods, and why she seeks to defend humanity from their mythic predators. The characterization is what really makes the story work. Diana is strong, honest, compassionate, and willing to put cosmic justice before her own needs and desires. She comes across as solidly heroic even if she is imperfect. This was easily my favorite title of the Absolute line and one I’ll continue to follow.
Next in the release order was Absolute Green Lantern, but my next read was Absolute Flash by Jeff Lemire and Nick Robles. I’ve always loved The Flash and found his recent film outing rather disappointing. I was surprisingly disappointed by this rebooted version as well. I wasn’t a fan of the costume design, and while Lemire’s writing was more than competent, framing the story around an army-brat version of Wally West at odds with his military-scientist father, empowered by alien tech provided by a corporation controlled by Brainiac, and pursued by militarized versions of his usual Rogues.…Something about this title’s first volume felt like less than the sum of its parts. Maybe it’s partly that instead of a telepathic gorilla, this comic’s version of Grodd is a green-furred monkey with a domed brain who accompanies Wally on his adventures. I’m not saying I won’t read past the first six issues, but if things don’t head in a more exciting direction for me soon, I’ll have to bow out.
I’m slightly more on the fence with Absolute Green Lantern by Al Ewing and Jahnoy Lindsay. Ewing’s Immortal Hulk is my all-time favorite run for that character, so I was excited to see what he would do with DC’s emotional spectrum. I also loved Far Sector, N. K. Jemisin’s comic starring Sojourner “Jo” Mullein, a human Green Lantern stationed on an alien world. This comic places her and the other human Green Lanterns on Earth and introduces them to the lantern’s power—they don’t all become Green Lanterns, though. In this story, the concept of the Lantern corps is more alien, consisting of several levels of consciousness and ways of wielding the power of the emotional spectrum. After contact with Abin Sur (in this comic, “Abin” seems to be an office or an epithet rather than a name), Jo acquires his ring while John Stewart gains a yellow ring, Guy Gardner receives a red one, and Hal Jordan is infected with the Black Hand, a power that exists in opposition to the light spectrum of Oa. The way the spectrum functions is difficult to understand, but that’s not actually a complaint. My biggest issue with the GL Corps has always been that it’s insufficiently alien. The idea of a human (or several humans) empowered by an alien force to be cosmic police feels small and sad to me—though that aspect doesn’t render their stories impossible for me to enjoy. I read an issue beyond the first collection before writing this review, and, surprisingly, issue #7 seems like a much more standard DC cosmic superhero story where the villain, Mogo—an evil, sentient planet—and his Black Hand operatives lay waste to an alien world to get at three fugitive Green Lanterns. I’m hoping things get weird again in issue #8.
Last up was Absolute Martian Manhunter by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez. I’ve enjoyed many of that character’s stories over the years, but never to the degree that I’ve loved stories about the others. MM always came across to me as a Superman clone—last of his doomed race, with a power set nearly identical to Superman’s save for the addition of telepathy and density manipulation. He even has his version of Superman’s weakness, except, instead of rocks from his own planet, he’s unfortunately vulnerable to flame. Much of that is out the window for this new version. The Manhunter is neither green nor muscular—he is a spiritual/psychic presence attached to FBI agent Jon Jones, and instead of literally hailing from Mars, he is from an alien world so different, so distant that Mars is simply short-hand for his outlandish nature. This title also makes use of the art in a way the others don’t. (Though the art is solid in all of them.) This book recalls the work of Darwyn Cooke with its pop-art sensibilities and retro style. Still, the execution is solidly contemporary, veering into abstraction and metaphor to achieve notes of psychological horror more than Science Fiction or even Science Fantasy. This is also the first of the Absolute titles to not only mention Darkseid by name, but depict him on the page in an Apokolyptic vision. Another winner for me.
Superhero stories have never been about escapism for me. I’ve always preferred that the adventures I enjoy, whether from the Big Two or other outlets, be relevant to the real world—or at least the emotional stakes of my own life. At their best, they are a metaphorical exploration of the human condition and its boundaries. As masked federal agents execute American citizens on American soil, as our country quakes and strains and suffers the agonies of a forced confrontation with its own past, its own soul, and the uncertainty of its future, I ask myself whether these stories can be more than entertainment? Should they be? What can they mean to me, to us in 2026? These are questions to which I do not yet have an answer, but what I do know is that they can be more. They can have meaning beyond seeing figures in cool costumes punch each other in the face. The Absolute line might not be seeking relevance beyond itself, but one of the great joys of art is that it doesn’t necessarily need to attempt higher meaning in order to achieve it. Profundity can show through the cracks of pedestrian stories, the ideas and spirit we bring to our entertainment can make it bloom into something beyond its original intention. Is that happening now? In this case? I don’t know that either, but I do know that at least for the time being, I’ll be reading closely in that hope.
© 2026 Alex Jennings
