DC Round-Up: It’s superheroes vs AI in ABSOLUTE POWER #1

THIS WEEK: Absolute Power #1 kicks off DC Comics big summer event this week, pitting the collected strength of the DCU superheroes against…artificial intelligence. Plus, we have our usual round-up of blurbs about other DC books hitting shops!

Absolute Power #1

Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Dan Mora
Colorist: Alejandro Sanchez
Letterer: Ariana Maher

After quite a bit of lead-in and foreshadowing, DC Comics launches this year’s big summer event with Absolute Power #1, a story in which Amanda Waller deploys villains that are powered by artificial intelligence to eliminate the superheroes of the DCU. After a series of events that date back to the War For Earth-3 story, Waller has become convinced that the Earth would be better off with powerful but less human defenders. And so she’s making her move now to take the heroes out and put her robots in.

In last week’s roundtable in this very space, we talked about how good the lead-up to Absolute Power #1 has been. After reading this first issue, it’s still the thing at the front of my mind. This is a packed issue, but none of it comes out of nowhere. It’s all been seeded and seeded subtly, with this event bringing together plot threads from throughout the line. Almost all of these big superhero things is billed as “line-wide”, but that often just means that characters from throughout the line are all appearing together in one book. 

That’s not the case with Absolute Power. It uses the villain that was introduced in Batman #125, almost two full years ago to the day. It uses stuff that’s been happening in Green Arrow and Superman and Suicide Squad: Dream Team and Superman: Jonathan Kent and on and on the list goes. If nothing else, this book is an impressive bit of coordination from the good folks at DC Comics editorial.

But it’s also more than that. It’s a really good-looking book. Dan Mora has joined Jorge Jimenez as one of the artists I think about when I think about this era of high-production DC Comics art. He’s coming off some great work with the writer of this event, Mark Waid, with whom he also collaborated on a very fun run of Batman/Superman – World’s Finest, and he’s colored here Alejandro Sanchez, whose palette really leans into the epic side of superhero storytelling. And the team is rounded out by letterer Ariana Maher, who has been doing some great work on the main Superman title as well.

As you can see from the preview pages here, the artwork in Absolute Power #1 is sharp and kinetic. Dan Mora’s aesthetic is just so stylish, and in this — what I believe is his first true Big 2 event comic — he shows us just how well he can draw basically every character from this publisher, from Superman to …well, you name them. They look great in the pages of this book. And it’s not all just the obvious heroes. We get a sequence early on that features Animal Man, for example.

Story-wise, I enjoyed this first issue quite a bit. It’s organized with a great set piece to open things (see the above pages), wherein Superman confidently confronts some burglars escaping via a rooftop helicopter…only to find he’s been de-powered once they fire at him. Going out of chronology to let a flashy bit open is common in comics, and I’m not always a fan of it — but bullets bouncing off Superman is so iconic, that I enjoyed the way this subverts reader expectations. And, I mean, this is a visual medium and this event within it’s opening salvo already serves up a very memorable splash page.

Tonally, things only get worse from there for the heroes, as first public sentiment is turned against them by AI-generated misinformation, some of which is propagated by hacking legacy news organizations (including, of course, the Daily Planet). Amazo robots show up to kick ass and drain powers, backed up by the villains from the two most recent Batman and Superman arcs — Fail Safe and the Braniac Queen — and then after a heel turn from Green Arrow (which I’m sure is more complicated then it seems), when the dust settles in this first issue, most of Earth’s heroes are wiped out.

It’s a good first issue for an over-the-top bonkers superhero event, one with high stakes, a plotline that feels organic with all its build-up, and absolutely top-tier superhero artwork. And it’s enhanced even further with a nice back-up in Batman #150 that adds some context to what’s happening here.

Personally, I enjoyed Absolute Power #1 a great deal. I’m not bothered by Amanda Waller in 2024 being a slightly different character than Amanda Waller from ~40 years ago (in the world of shared corporate superhero IP, malleable portrayals are part of the deal), and I tend to enjoy these things for what they are — big and loud over-the-top summer fun. 

Verdict: BUY

The Round-Up

• I keep heaping praise on The Boy Wonder, a new exploration of the different Robins by buzzy industry star Juni Ba (with colors by Chris O’Halloran and letters by Aditya Bidikar. But it really is that good. When I get done reading each issue of this series, I ask myself, what did we do to deserve something this well-done? This week’s The Boy Wonder #3 is all about Tim Drake, by the way.
• Are people talking about this Poison Ivy run? People, you really ought to be talking about this Poison Ivy run. It’s just so fantastic. Now on (a very improbable) Poison Ivy #24, this month’s issue felt like it could have been a series finale, doing a great job of wrapping up a lot of plot threads in a satisfying way. It’s not, there are more issues coming, but reading it made me realize just how many interesting things this run has done with the character and adjacent bits of the DCU, from Swamp Thing to Solomon Grundy. I’ve really enjoyed this run quite a bit. This issue was written by G. Willow Wilson, with art by Haining, colors by Arif Prianto, and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. 
• Finally, Kneel Before Zod #7 is a big swing of a comic. This gritty series is not one I expected to do a full issue of majority nine-panel grids, but that’s what we get here — and it works. Simply put, this is a top-tier Kryptonian-in-space DC cosmic series, with a gritter edge to it because, you know, bad guy book. This issue was written by Joe Casey, with art by Dan McDaid, colors by David Baron, and letters by Troy Peteri.

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