Absolute Batman has steadily pulled back the curtain on what led to this world’s Bruce Wayne to suit up and become Batman, but Absolute Batman #4 truly blows the door wide open on the Absolute Dark Knight’s origins. In the process, fans get to see Bruce’s original vision for his war on crime and turns out that Absolute Batman 1.0 had some vampire in its DNA. It’s fascinating to see the original Absolute Batman and how the first mission out affected Bruce’s next iteration, which has taken the world by storm, so let’s get into what went down during his initial test run.
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During a flashback we see a gang threatening some citizens who refuse to pay them for protection. The Ten Thieves decide to make an example and throw one of the hostages off the roof, but Batman then makes his grand entrance and saves her before going after the thugs. That’s when we get our first look at Batman version 1.0, and he’s sprawling a mostly black suit with red contacts and claws on both of his gloves, capping off the entrance with a bat-styled “screeee!”
The shriek definitely scares some members of the crew, as does Batman sinking his teeth into one of them, sporting vampire-like fangs and biting down on the thug’s neck to really sell the vampire and bat theme. We then see the thug foaming at the mouth after the bite, so Batman had also laced the fangs with some sort of venom to maximize its effect.
Batman then utilizes his claws to slash another thug’s chest, all while hissing. After deflecting some bullets with his cape, Batman disarms a thug with a gun but then turns the gun around on him and points it his way, ending this sequence with one very surprising visual.
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After this mission, Bruce is frustrated with how things went, pointing the theatrics of it all. He ditches the voice distorter, the face paint, the fangs that were loaded with paralytic, and the gun, and then decides he needs to go bigger and build the Batman he wants to be. He also bulks up even more as he creates the armor we now see him wear, and the rest is pretty much history.
While theatrics is a part of the new version of Batman as well, it’s Batman’s sheer presence and lethality that strikes the fear into villains’ hearts, as opposed to simply being all smoke and mirrors. Bruce still found ways to implement aspects of a Bat into his new version, but there’s a practicality to those implementations, and they all serve a tangible purpose as opposed to just being there to scare people. We’ll have to wait and see what future evolutions Batman takes, but it’s great to have some context on how he got to where he is now.
What did you think of Absolute Batman 1.0? You can talk all things comics with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!
