D-list supervillain Clock King – so rubbish he was in Justice League Antarctica – are inducting an even more obscure player into a government programme, watched by bad Batman android Failsafe.
Haywire is informed that he’s now working for Amanda Waller – who has managed to buy up all the supervillain prisons – and helping her with a top secret project. All he has to do is direct his electricity powers at a machine, calling up all his reserves of energy.
An entirely predictable result for anyone who’s followed Amanda Waller around DC Comics over the last couple of years. Well, not ‘followed’, exactly, it’s been impossible to escape her obnoxious presence. But after all the interfering from the sidelines, she’s finally getting her own event, Absolute Power, and this is a splendid primer.
Writer Mark Waid introduces the players with efficiency, showing he’s a considerate writer by ensuring the character he kills off is one of his own creations – Haywire debuted in his recent World’s Finest: Teen Titans mini-series. Hopefully Waller won’t get to the next two names on her list of potential guinea pigs, as I like them both! Waid also lets readers know Waller is on a big anti-superhero purge, with details to follow, and shows us that at least two good guys – Green Arrow and Dreamer – are helping for reasons that aren’t gone into here. There’s also a vision of a possible future to show how grim things might get – weirdly, ‘grim’ still sells, 40 years after Frank Miller built a career on it.
The super-slick art of Mikel Janín jollies things along nicely, with a montage giving us the bullet points of Amanda Waller’s life especially nice. The colours of Trish Mulvihill and letters of Ariana Maher add to the goodness.
As Free Comic Book Day offerings go, this does everything. DC could wish for – uses top talent to advertise a money-spinning event series via an intriguing short story. And the good news is that Mark Waid is indeed writing the upcoming Absolute Power series, while Dan Mora – who draws this issue’s sharp cover – is handling interiors. If anyone can make a silk purse out of the Amanda Waller nonsense, it’s them.
I read this digitally so just got the 12pp of story, and cover – if anyone has the physical edition, I’d loved to know if anything else was in there? Ads? A checklist? A guide to building your own brain bombs
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
There’s a 3 page preview of Absolute Power #1, along with a double-splash of what I think is its wraparound cover. Plus, Who’s Who double page spreads for Waller, Failsafe and House of Brainiac, with excellent plot summaries that follow their recent history. So the Waller pages talk about Dark Crisis and Beast World, Failsafe talks a lot of about Zur-En-Arh complications, Brainiac even goes back to the Legion of Doom Justice League era. Then there are 2 pages that give well-written, concise plot summaries of Dark Crisis, Lazarus Planet, Knight Terrors and Beast World that even manage to make sense. There’s a checklist for the House of Brainiac event, 2 pages of ads for that, and 2 pages of ads for the Knight Terrors hardcovers, along with other ads. All this plus Waid and Janin makes this total package worth a lot more than the typical $4.99 book these days from DC!
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Thanks TN, that is indeed an awful lot of great back-up material, I’d find a lot of it useful. I think I’ll ask DC to stick it in the digital file.
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I noticed that between this feature and a great deal of the promos for the Absolute Power Event, there’s a huge emphasis placed on AI characters such as Failsafe and the Brainiac Queen. That in tandem with other info leads me to the following prediction for what’s going to happen in the event. Waller manages to depower all or nearly all of the super powered people on Earth with the help of Failsafe – who seems set to get an Amazo related upgrade that’s probably also some kind of a nod to the Newmazo arc in World’s Finest – and the Brainiac Queen. Once the super powered people are off the board, that clears the way for the robots to double cross Waller and set up an AI apocalypse scenario she didn’t anticipate but might be the vision of utter doom that Dreamer is foreseeing. Ultimately the event then becomes a battle between the various super powered people (who may or may not have regained their powers) and the AI’s, with regular humanity having to choose between a future under AI dominance or a future where regular humans live in the shadow of an ever-increasing, ever more dominant population of metahumans, aliens, and other super powered beings who one way or another see regular humans as lesser “others” rather than equally worthy existential compatriots.
If you think about it, this is essentially a continuing exploration of the themes from the last two arcs in World’s Finest. The Newmazo arc was an exploration of how humanity and super powered people could face an existential threat from AI. The Return to Kingdom Come Arc by contrast was an examination of how regular humanity could face a threat of lasting domination from twisted super powered beings such as the heroes of Earth 22 who fell under Gog’s sway. This is an ongoing theme in much of Waid’s work: how do regular humans fare in a world influenced by super powered beings, and what choices would people make in response to the prospect of that dominance. Whether it’s Kingdom Come, the Irredeemable series, or his recent work on World’s Finest, those ideas seem to be at the core of much of his writing. It therefore makes sense that Absolute Power will play out in a similar way to what I’ve outlined, and by extension that the theme of the whole event will ultimately be an examination of how regular humanity can retain control of its agency in the context of the DCU’s superpower saturated reality.
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Thanks for the thoughtful comments. You make a lot of sense in terms of how Absolute Power might be the next stage in a big Mark Waid/Dan Mora story. The only negative here is that it brings the terrible name ‘Newmazo’ into mainstream continuity… then again, ‘Amazo’, I’m just used to that, I suppose. ANYway, if your proves correct I’d be happy with that, it could all be rather fascination, certainly more interesting than the very obvious story beats we can envisage. Cheers!
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I really like Mark Waid and have been enjoying “World’s Finest” and so wish he had been able to stay on “Shazam.” And I’m sure he will do his usual great job writing “Absolute Power.” Fingers crossed maybe he gets another shot at writing “Justice League” when this all wraps up?…
But one of the issues I have with this event is that it APPEARS to be yet another example of writers turning something Batman has done into a massive threat. I just feel like DC has gone to that well too many times over the last two-plus decades.
Interestingly starting with Waid’s run on “JLA” back in the late 1990s when Batman’s protocols to take down the League were stolen, then skip shortly ahead to ”The OMAC Project” and “Infinite Crisis,” then skip further ahead to “Metal”/”Death Metal” and as of last summer wasn’t “Lazarus Planet” essentially the fault of Batman’s mystical fight with Robin? So here we go with ANOTHER Batman foul-up – Failsafe – at the center of another DC event.
I also think Chip Zdarsky is a super talented writer and he seems to be weaving a really interesting tale with his current work on Batman with Failsafe. And credit to him to doing something new with/expanding upon a Grant Morrison idea. So nothing against him or the fans of that story. I think I’m just an old, jaded, “been there, done that” reader…
And if I’m making comparisons, Amanda Waller’s effort to wipe out superhumans, for me at least, echoes the heel turn of Max Lord in the “Infinite Crisis” era.
So while I’m sure Waid will find plenty of fresh things to say in “Absolute Power” some of the aspects of it, at least based on what we currently know, just seem a bit too similar to “Infinite Crisis” for me.
And as I know you’ll agree, Martin, the set-up for this whole thing – that there is no Justice League – just feels editorially-forced. Like/dislike the Dan Didio-helmed “Infinite Crisis” era at DC, the break-up at that time of the League and the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman trinity felt more organic and more of a slow build, starting with “Identity Crisis” through “Countdown to Infinite Crisis” and the aforementioned “OMAC Project.” I’ve just never bought why there is currently no Justice League in the DCU. – Brian
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Especially since in 52, people just formed a Justice League to fill the vacuum. Sure, it ended badly but that’s what should happen. It’s also why that story set ina future where the League disbanded after Martian Manhunter died felt off to me.
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You’re definitely on the ball as regards Amanda’s heel turn being a do-over of Max, and the recycling of bad Batman plans. Hopefully the story will be done well now Waid is at the helm, because I am sooooo unenthusiastic. At the very least he’ll give us good character beats, and Dan Mora just gets better.
Thanks for the recommendation of the current Batman run, I’ve not even tried it as the Zurr-en-ah(?) bit in Grant Morrison’s Batman never grabbed me. Maybe it’s time to pop over to DC Infinite!
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I’m agnostic on the “there is no Justice League” thing. While I don’t think all of the heroes in the JLA would be up for disbanding it (and one isn’t, but Ollie was considered dead at the time so he didn’t get a say), I can perhaps see them deciding to step aside for a while, and see if there’s a different way of providing solutions to the world’s problems — and passing the torch to the Titans to come up with those solutions. (In general, I don’t think they have.)
But wouldn’t another team step up to claim the mantle of the JLA as their own? Possibly. But the Titans were offered it, and turned it down, and perhaps most other heroes are following their lead. I could see Booster Gold trying to put a new JLA together despite this, but I could also see a lot of heroes turning him down because a) the original Leaguers have signaled that their official successor is the Titans, whatever they’re called, and b) it’s Booster Gold, and no one really trusts him.
Maybe another Leaguer in better standing might try to organize a new JLA, but who would it be? Ollie’s back, but he’s preoccupied. Dinah is similarly busy. Flash and Green Lantern are knee-deep in their own dramas right now (Wally & Barry are dealing with a corrupted speed force, Hal and most of the other GLs are in a revolution on OA.) Martian Manhunter could conceivably do it — it would be his opinion that would carry the most weight among outlier heroes, I think.
Now, whether it makes sense for Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to disband the League in the first place, that’s another story. I don’t think it’s a great idea on their part. But sometimes people need a change, and sometimes institutions need a change — and I can see the big 3 saying “let’s change this institution,” while still knowing they’ll be around in case things go haywire.
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Great thoughts. I’d love another team to step up. Heck, Dan DiDio would likely have made an event out of it, Justice League: Succession or whatever. Over four issues the Power Company, Primal Force, Thriller and the Zoo Crew could fight for the satellite. I’d buy that.
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Oh, man, that would be a blast! Anything to see those Thriller characters again.
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Good review. Not sure about this storyline at all.
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Me neither, I’ll be turning the pages with fingers crossed.
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