"He's the biggest Batman that we've ever seen." Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta on making the Dark Knight an underdog in Absolute Batman

2024-09-12

ComicsDc ComicsBatman"He’s the biggest Batman that we’ve ever seen." Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta on making the Dark Knight an underdog in Absolute BatmanWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: DC)

Nick Dragotta's imposing new take on Batman.

After helming one of the all-time great Batman runs with Greg Capullo, award-winning comic book creator Scott Snyder is returning toDC Comicsto introduce a very different kind of Dark Knight in the new series Absolute Batman.

Set in thenewly-minted Absolute Universe, featuring bold new visions of DC’s biggest icons, Snyder is teaming up with acclaimed artist Nick Dragotta to create a radically new take on the Caped Crusader that’s already garnering plenty of internet buzz for his appearance. In the Absolute Universe, Bruce Wayne isn’t a billionaire playboy, but rather a civil engineer in Gotham City whose moral crusade places him against the authority and privileged figures oppressing Gotham’s masses.

In an exclusive interview with Newsarama, Absolute Batman writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta detail the origins of their buffed-up Batman for the people, explain the core ethos behind Absolute Batman, and tease what fans can expect whenDC All InSpecial and Absolute Batman launch this October.

Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin’s cover for Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)

Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin’s cover for Absolute Batman #1.

Newsarama: Scott, Nick, There’s been plenty of buzz online about how jacked this version of Bruce Wayne is. Could you talk us through your thought process on making the Absolute Batman such an absolute beast?

It was exciting to me because he comes up in this universe without any resources – he comes up blue-collar, grows up in Crime Alley, he’s friends with a lot of the characters who are his villains in the main universe. If we were going to invert the whole mythology, it felt like one thing he could be was giant because he doesn’t have to pretend to be somebody in public.

Bruce Wayne is just a guy on the street. As such and as somebody who works different jobs as a civil engineer, working in the power plants and sewers, he can be a beast. We wanted him to feel like a primal force, just this unstoppable wall coming at you to level anyone in his way. He had to have that ferocity and brute strength. He’s super-smart also, but he had to have that energy where you’d have to go “My god, that guy is big!”

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Nick Dragotta:My job, as the artist, is to come up with something new and different, but make him instantly recognizable as Batman.The challenge is there is 80 years of Batman history and we want to create a new Batman for this day and age. That’s a real design challenge. I’m so beholden to the history that I did not want to mess with the silhouette. Scott laid it down and said “He’s going to be the biggest Batman that we’ve ever seen.” I drew him big on the first attempt and Scott was like “We’ve got to go bigger.”

Jim Lee’s cover for Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)

Jim Lee’s cover for Absolute Batman #1.

And how did you come up with the new logo?

Snyder:All credit to Nick in terms of the logo itself. We wanted something that was equally bold, that wasn’t a bat you’ve seen a hundred times, but something you’d see and be like “You better have some muscle behind that to pull that off.” I just adore what Nick came up with. I’d be very surprised if that shirt doesn’t sell out at NYCC.

Dragotta:I personally love the emblem If you look at the design, it bows on the edges and looks like it’s about to burst. We knew it was right because that’s our character, that’s this Bruce. It also is a utility, it is a tool. When you see him use it, you’ll understand what it is and why it does what it does. We did our job because people are talking, and I can’t wait to get to the shirt.

Batman battles some foes in Absolute Batman #1.

Scott, this is the second time you’ve built a Batman from scratch after Batman: Zero Year. How is Absolute Bruce different from that Batman?

With this, it wasn’t just a matter of Batman being poor and his villains being rich. It’s a complete inversion and reconstruction of the mythology. It’s not just Bruce without resources, it’s Bruce as chaos and anarchy, and the more villainous characters as order, the system, and the guardrails that hold things in place that you want to knock down. In that way, it gives you this whole fresh outlook. If Bruce is the fly in the ointment, what does that mean for who his allies are? What does that mean for how he fights, his costume, his Batmobile. What is a Batcave if you don’t have the resources?

There are similarities: he’s an idealist, he doesn’t kill, a trauma in his youth becomes the fuel for him to want to make the world a better place, which is the core conceit of Batman for me. Everything outside of that is window dressing. Outside of that, they’re wildly different characters. I don’t know if they’d get along at all. That’s the fun part of it. They’d eventually get along but they’d probably fight for a bit first.

And how has it been writing for him?

Snyder:This Batman is so effortless to write, this Bruce is so easy. I wrote Batman before about the things I was afraid of about myself and the world that I saw and we lived in as adults. This Batman is very much made to make my kids feel brave in the face of the things that they’re afraid of. He’s designed for them, in a world where generational billionaires aren’t so cool, where it feels like a cataclysm is around the corner, and everything is divisive and hollowed-out. He is the young, idealistic beast that’s like “We can do something about this.”

Wes Craig’s variant cover for Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)

Cover art from Absolute Batman #1.

Nick, how did you want to draw this streetwise, raw-around-the-edges Batman with how he carries himself and fights?

Dragotta:He’s a hulking Bat that has the agility of an acrobat. There is a juxtaposition there, but I think that’s what really makes him work. When you see him move, I want to get across that speed and some ambiguity in it too. There’s some really violent fight scenes in this and Scott and I are really pushing what we can get away with here. When you see the first issue, you’ll be like “Wow, they got away with something!” [laughs]

Image1of5A selection of Nick Dragotta’s interior pages from Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)

Image1of5

A selection of Nick Dragotta’s interior pages from Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)(Image credit: DC)

A selection of Nick Dragotta’s interior pages from Absolute Batman #1.(Image credit: DC)