Who can break Absolute Batman? At 6’6″ tall and 275 pounds, Bruce Wayne is a brawny brute who has built a bigger and badder Batman in the first arc of Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman. Black Mask, a.k.a. Roman Sionis, nearly broke the Bat with his Party Animals: masked criminals terrorizing the streets and turning Gotham City into a zoo. But the Batman is unbeatable and unbreakable.
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This week’s Absolute Batman #6, “The Zoo: Part Six,” sees Black Mask supply Gotham’s citizens with masks and weapons to continue the Party Animals’ Grand Theft Auto-style crime spree. Paying out hundreds of thousands to any Party Animals committing crimes like robbery, arson, assault, and murder, Black Mask puts a $1 million bounty on the heads of Mayor Jim Gordon and Deputy Mayor Martha Wayne (who wasn’t gunned down with Thomas Wayne in this universe).
After being shot, stabbed, set on fire, and thrown off a roof, Bruce turns to his childhood friends for help: Waylon Jones, Oswald “Ozzie” Cobblepot, Edward “Eddie” Nygma, and Harvey Dent. Eddie’s “Riddler” robot revealed that Black Mask’s global network is too big to bring down but could be crippled by crashing local servers, so Batman targets a server on Sionis’ yacht and leaps down onto the boat in a dramatic homage to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
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Batman brutally beats Black Mask with a bowling ball before plunging his knife-like Bat ears into Sionis’ bulbous mask. Black Mask — the leader of a secret paramilitary group that destabilizes local governments and causes violent disruption on behalf of some of the most powerful people on the planet — warns Batman, “You will lose everything. Everyone you love. You have no idea what you’ve started.”
Batman blows up the boat in a sacrificial move, shutting down Sionis’ servers and the Party Animals network. As Batman sinks to the bottom of the bay, he’s pulled out and patched up by his newfound ally: Agent Alfred Pennyworth.
An epilogue bookends the first Absolute Batman arc with the return of the man who never laughs: the sarcastically-named Joker. The Joker, who last appeared in the epilogue that ended Absolute Batman #1, reappears as he’s, apparently, siphoning blood from babies to treat his bleached white skin condition.
“It’s time,” the Joker says. “Get Bane.”
Previous issues of Absolute Batman revealed that Sionis was involved with funding “Arks”: black sites. Harvey Dent uncovered that a “J.K. Holdings” subsidiary is behind the “Ark M fund” — Joker and Arkham — Gotham’s version of secret, unregulated prisons being run with other governments around the world. There’s an “Ark A” in Santa Prisca, an “Ark B” in Russia, and an “Ark C” in China (in the mainstream continuity, the back-breaking man known only as Bane was born in the Peña Duro prison in Santa Prisca).
Before Bane comes to Gotham, Absolute Batman #7 kicks off the book’s second arc on April 9 with the introduction of Mister Freeze and art by Marcos Martín (Amazing Spider-Man).
Absolute Batman #7
THE JOKER AND MR. FREEZE MAKE THEIR ABSOLUTE UNIVERSE DEBUT — STARTING HERE! It’s about to get icy cold in Gotham City… as we reveal the connections between a young, up-and-coming scientist named Victor Fries, his history with the Ark M experiment, and what it all has to do with the mysterious Joker. A bombastic two-parter with a guest artist, the one and only super-star Marcos Martín, starts here!
On sale: April 9
Absolute Batman #8
GOTHAM IN THE GRASP OF MR. FREEZE! Batman is in the fight for his life against this icy new threat. But in the end, what terrifying truth will be unearthed about Ark M and…Joker?
On sale: May 14
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Image Credit: State Farm
