Scott Snyder/Nick Dragotta: Absolute Batman vs. Bane
Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast
Why Freeze, Bane, and Villains Fit the Theme
Scott maps villains to Bruce's fears and explains Freeze's nihilism and Bane as a mirror of choices around power.
Everyone has a Batman opinion. Inside your imagination is a definitive Batman: a Batman who should behave this way, and a Batman who should not behave that way. Your tight grip on your Batman is why Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's carefully considered Absolute Batman works so damn well. They fully understand and appreciate how the character has congealed over the last eight decades into a rock-solid idea.
For the last eight months, alongside collaborators like Gabriel H. Walta, Marcos Martín, Frank Martin, Muntsa Vicente, and Clayton Cowles, Snyder and Dragotta have chipped away at the quintessential Dark Knight. They've altered elements of his origin, removed his social position, and rearranged his relationship with his rogues. Their Absolute Batman is a Bruce Wayne in motion, moving toward the impenetrable idea in your head, but struggling to match it. Here is a character growing into something, evolving into a recognizable hero for 2025.
After confronting Mr. Freeze in issues seven and eight and facing the final days of Matches Malone, Bruce Wayne must reassess his war on Gotham City crime. What lessons did he learn from that awful day at The Zoo? Do his nights as Batman honor his father's sacrifice? As he fights to find himself, a grotesque demonic doppelganger appears - Bane, the nineties sensation who once broke a bat from another universe.
FOC for Absolute Batman #9 is today (5/19/25)! Tell your retailers to order a copy for ya. With this comic, Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta have cooked an undeniable banquet. As the best alternate reality stories should, they've weaponized your knowledge of these characters against you, subverting in radically compelling ways, while delivering what should never be manipulated.
Today's podcast features two conversations. Up first, Scott Snyder joins us for a lengthy look back at the last eight months of Absolute Batman. We discuss Bruce Wayne's continuing development into the Dark Knight, his complex relationship with Joe Chill, his father's killer, and why Bane had to arrive sooner rather than later. Secondly, Nick Dragotta pops in for a conversation about his ultra chonky Bane design, and how what we've seen so far is only a hint of his true monstrosity.
Absolute Batman #9 will finally arrive in stores, courtesy of DC Comics, on June 11th. Follow Scott Snyder on Bluesky and Instagram, and subscribe to his Substack. Follow Nick Dragotta on Bluesky and Instagram.
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