DC’s Absolute Superman has the hero refusing to use generative AI

When DC Comics’ Absolute line was leaked, then introduced in 2024, one arresting picture sucked all of the air out of the room: the widest, square-est model of Batman anybody had ever seen. The concept that when veteran Batman author Scott Snyder had the chance to remake Batman from the bottom up in a darker setting, his first directive to artist Nick Dragotta was to make him frick-kin’ yuge was intriguing, to say the least.

The visuals of Absolute Batman’s sibling books, Absolute Marvel Girl and Absolute Superman, weren’t fairly so stunning. Marvel Girl has carried a sword and worn pants earlier than; Superman has had shaggy hair. Batman was so extensive, he made his fellow heroes’ reimagined designs look regular by comparability. It’s no marvel Absolute Batman turned the ebook to fixate on.

However three months into the run of every ebook, Absolute Marvel Girl and Absolute Superman are sprinting towards all-time-great comedian ebook standing, partly as a result of the writers and artists had been in a position to maintain their greatest, most of-the-moment twists on two very previous superhero tales a whole secret till simply the appropriate second. Perhaps they had been hidden behind the youthful Batman’s outstanding girth?

A brand new 12 months is a time for reflection. I’ve been doing a little reflecting, and I’m keen to say it: DC Comics’ Absolute Universe guidelines a lot tougher than I ever anticipated it to, in a method I believed was unattainable. It’s giving me a darkish timeline that really feels good to go to.

[Ed. note: This piece contains some spoilers for the first three issues each of Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman.]

I get now why author Kelly Thompson and artist Hayden Sherman needed to maintain the main points of Absolute Marvel Girl on the down-low in the course of the preliminary venture announcement. Regardless that their first concern actually takes place in hell, it’s splendidly quiet, gradual, and smooth in a method that month-to-month superhero books not often ever get to be, and in a method that may undergo in abstract. They ship a Diana who has been separated from her Amazonian heritage by divine edict, however who is set to be a bulwark between humanity and horrible monsters, even when that requires spitting within the face of gods. Additionally, I gained’t spoil it right here, however #3 reveals one thing about Diana’s… physicality… in such an informal method that it hits like a Mack truck.

In the meantime, within the first three problems with Absolute Superman, author Jason Aaron and artist Rafa Sandoval have drummed out a gradual sequence of subversions to the Superman story we expect we all know. Higher but, they’ve taken the time to point out these variations have which means, outdoors of the shock of the sudden. Their Superman nonetheless grew up on a farm — a farm on Krypton, a particularly stratified society through which his household is from the laborer caste.

Superman’s relationship to his doomed homeworld is historically distant, however Kal-El the curious preteen offers Aaron and Sandoval a car to show the issues of Kryptonian society from a close-up view, opening Absolute Superman #2 with little Kal getting written up in school (distant class solely) for writing an essay himself, as a substitute of utilizing the pc to AI-generate one, based mostly on the Kryptonian database of all authorized information. They set up all this element in a mere two panels that may hit any school-age child, mum or dad of such, or instructor with the chilling punch of an efficient ghost story.

The third concern, launched on the primary day of 2025, offers the acquainted Superman origin story one other trenchantly fashionable twist. On this model of the story, the leaders of Krypton don’t refuse to imagine the warnings that their planet is dying, thus perishing together with it. Right here, they assist the phantasm that every thing is regular and underneath management, whereas secretly constructing large escape ships for the elite castes alone.

Kal-El’s dad and mom, in the meantime, have been establishing their very own ship for the paltry few laborers they’ll match on it. What occurs subsequent? Do the elite Kryptonians survive? Do Kal’s dad and mom? To date, they’ve solely been seen in flashback, so I suppose I’m ready for Absolute Superman #4 to search out out.

For comics readers, the Darkish Timeline is among the oldest methods within the ebook. Perhaps there’s a darkish future the heroes have to avert, or a factor might have gone terribly unsuitable if solely What If…? Or it’s the long run and nothing’s pretty much as good or straightforward because it was once. Or perhaps there’s a complete multiverse the place issues turned out so dangerous that the universes inside it are good for nothing greater than kindling in a cosmic forge. “A well-known setting, however shockingly worse” is a simple properly to return to.

When the Absolute setting was introduced as a darker model of the DC universe, created by the evil god Darkseid for someday-to-be-revealed darkish functions, it felt like mere repetition. “On this universe, the heroes come up in ways in which make them underdogs,” Scott Snyder stated in an announcement video, making the case that direr origins would make it resonate much more when Batman, Superman, Marvel Girl — and upcoming Absolute heroes like Inexperienced Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash — inevitably made the choice to struggle towards the darkness anyway.

I didn’t suppose Snyder and the remainder of the oldsters on DC’s Absolute books would be capable to execute on that concept so rapidly and constantly throughout three artistic groups and three very completely different revisionary ideas. These first three Absolute books aren’t simply stable, they’re incisive, significant, and gorgeously advised. Thompson and Sherman’s Marvel Girl is about love within the face of self-denial, and claiming your id even within the face of divine censorship. Aaron and Sandoval’s Superman is about motion and striving and tragedy, but additionally the enjoyment of writing and the facility of telling the reality.

In an period the place companies are censoring references to queer or trans characters out of concern of backlash, there’s a resonance in having Marvel Girl defy divine regulation to talk the phrase “Amazon” aloud. Particularly, there’s resonance in giving that second to a queer-coded character. (And sometimes, recently, thank goodness, a straight-up queer one.) I do need to see Marvel Girl defying guidelines imposed on her from above. I do need to see Superman rejecting generative AI as a homogenizing, lie-spreading power. I do need to see him navigating a metaphor for the billionaire-backed push to flee Earth’s local weather issues by constructing a Mars base on the backs of indentured labor.

Absolute Marvel Girl and Absolute Superman are going there: Not simply making up harsh alternate futures for the sake of grim-and-gritty storytelling, however presenting them as our harsh futures, with the promise that they’re shaping heroes to struggle again. I get sufficient “darkish timeline” vibes from life within the 2020s. The least my comedian ebook darkish timelines can do is punch the true ones within the face from time to time.