In which deep fake images of superheroes attacking members of the public have the world’s citizens turning on them and putting them in hospital.
Heroes who aren’t being attacked chat gloomily on Batman’s secret channel.
And finally, Amazos attack!
The public are uniformly stupid.
The superheroes are naive.
Amanda Waller is the cleverest master manipulator the Multiverse has ever known, able to steal physical powers, drain super-gadgets, even keep the Spectre at bay as she stymies legends who have defeated Luthor, Ra’s al-Ghul, Darkseid, the Anti-Monitor and more.
Such are the three rules you need to accept if you’re to truly enjoy Absolute Power #1, part of this year’s big summer event which kicked off last week in Absolute Power: Ground Zero #1. Or perhaps it began in Titans: Beast World in January. Or was it Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 in January 2023…
… let’s face it, DC has been seeding this story for a while, which would be all very well were the heroes completely ignorant of her power grab.
But they’re not. Nightwing knew Waller has been trying to discredit the Titans since they took over as the DCU’s #1 super team from the Justice League (apparently there are rankings), who have disbanded for no reason that makes any sense. The second she used government powers to take over the former League’s Hall of Justice, locking away the wondrous weapons and souvenirs kept there, which must at least be weeks in-story, Superman, Batman and co should have huddled around a table, reformed the JL and fought back.
Why didn’t they? Because if they had this remix of Legends and the OMAC Project wouldn’t exist. Sadly, even a writer of Mark Waid’s considerable quality can’t convince. From the uncharacteristically meek Maxine Baker – Animal Girl – at the beginning to the ambush to the Extreeeeeeeme Amazos at the end, this seems to be set on Earth Stupid. Even before the androids show up with their unbelievable ability to counter any crimefighter…
… regular members of the public are capable of defeating the good guys. Put into hospital a guy who can channel the strength of any creature in the world? No problem. Burn the hidden headquarters of the Doom Patrol to the ground. Doddle.
The only regular person on the planet who hasn’t had a lobotomy, it seems, is at the Daily Planet – Lois Lane has the best scene in the book as she refuses to report the deep fake attacks as news items.
We do have Sarge Steel, Waller’s Number Two, showing distinct signs of a future rebellion, but he’s not there yet. And as for Green Arrow – traitor, yeah, right.
So, given that the premise is unutterably dumb, how’s the comic? Pretty decent. If you can ignore the stupid of it all we have a well-plotted chapter by Waid that elegantly lays out the stakes and introduces his characters. There are dramatic action moments from start to finish, appearances by and mentions of characters famed and obscure – who knew Angie Thriller’s Seven Seconds had been sucked into the DCU at some point?
Thanks also to our writer for introducing Jon Kent as ‘Jon Kent’ rather than ‘Superman’, and showcasing one of proper Superman’s more obscure powers.
And letting at least one hero escape the Amazos.
Waid surprised me by having Absolute Power not simply refer to Waller’s new position.
Any readers finding themselves vaguely sympathetic to Waller’s position may think again on noticing that Waller and lieutenants Failsafe (Batman knockoff droid) and Brainiac Queen (the clue’s in the name) are termed by DC, in solicitations, The Trinity of Evil.
The artwork is beyond great, with Waid’s World Finest and Shazam partner Dan Mora continuing to get better with every comic, and he was pretty great to start with. All the characters look on-model, with an extra dollop of Mora sheen. Whether flying or falling, characters have weight, and the facial expressions are superb. The compositions are eye catching, the storytelling silky smooth. His double cover is excellent, full of teasers for the next three issues. Mora has swiftly become one of comics’ top artists, and Absolute Power is lucky to have him.
Likewise, Alejandro Sánchez and letterer Ariana Maher are on top form, helping this opening chapter feel especially immersive.
And as for the team’s final two pages, it’s quite the cliffhanger. Waller truly is playing with fire.
So, how was it for you?
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
despite Waid and your lukewarm recommendation, I’m afraid to read it. DC has a gift for Events that don’t appeal to me at all.
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That’s fair enough. What was the last one that worked for you?
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I loved the Leviathan one (and hate that DC just abandons stories right after they’re published) but I guess the one before it was Identity Crisis. Wow. Those and Legends are it. I used to read last issues to be up to date on the status quo they left behind for the line until I realized they really didn’t have any lasting linewide effects anymore. The JL No Mo’ thing is the closest that’s come to happening in years.
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You may remember I wasn’t too keen on Leviathan, for me it didn’t hang together also, Lois doesn’t smoke in comics, tut.
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“Thanks also to our writer for introducing Jon Kent as ‘Jon Kent’ rather than ‘Superman’, and showcasing one of proper Superman’s more obscure powers.”
What was the obscure power? Ollie is out of his mind; no coming back from this one.
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The freeze breath, I know you know it but it’s hardly ever used.
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The Thriller team showed up in this book? What? Where? I totally missed them!
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I wish, it was that reference to Freddie Martin – Data.
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Ahhhh got it. I don’t think I would have twigged to Freddie Martin being Data. Was that ever mentioned in the series? Now I’m itching to do a reread of the first seven issues.
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Well, I’ve just been skimming the series to find out where Data’s birth name was given, and it’s #7. Good luck with any reread – I’ve just spend a couple of hours skimming the whole thing. Almost as fascinating as the stories are Alan Gold’s lettercols, hinting at all sorts of behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
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Great review. I can see where you’re coming from . Personally I enjoyed it. That Cliffhanger was crazy . There is a certain suspension of disbelief when it comes to the heroes not stopping Waller before she took it this far but I could take it. I liked all the build up towards this you can even argue this began during Infinite Frontier as well. Thanks for clearing up who Freddie Martin is because it’s been bugging me.
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Thanks for the kind words. I did enjoy the book, honestly, it’s just that half of my head was kicking against the amount of suspension of belief being asked of us.
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Thanks for the review, Martin. Convinced me I’m not missing anything. Waid may ultimately tell a compelling story here, but I have just had a difficult time getting into the entire “Dawn” of the DCU these last few years and the trajectory of the DCU building up to this. “Dark Crisis” was unnecessary and ignored the fact that the multiverse has been back since “Infinite Crisis. And if you think “The New52” got rid of it, well then “Death Metal” just a few years ago brought the multiverse back again. The whole “the JLA is no more” following “Dark Crisis” was clearly manufactured to get to this point but never made any sense. And the “Knight Terrors” mini also manufactured a sudden distrust of superheroes in the DCU to get us here. And I’ve never loved the effort to turn Waller into a villain. Plus, as you point out above, “Absolute Power” feels like a rehash of some themes/plots from “Legends” and “Infinite Crisis” (more specifically “OMAC Project”). I just can’t help but compare what is happening now with the “Infinite Crisis”-era which similarly had a few years of build-up/tie-ins and cascading events, starting with “Identity Crisis” and ending with “52.” There were bad, mediocre, good and great parts, but it all just seemed more organic/more well-organized/more well-written. – Brian
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Top post! And didn’t the Multiverse come back in between Infinite Crisis and Death Metal, in Convergence.
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Since it wasn’t explicitly undone, I picture an Earth in the multiverse where Clark Kent is still a newscaster and Supergirl has a new civilian job annually.
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That sounds marvelous, it’d be nice to see the end of the sick Dick Malverne from Paul Kupperberg’s Supergirl.
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Here’s a bit of a counterpoint to what you’re saying. I don’t think everybody in the DCU has been convinced by Waller’s propaganda; just a significant minority. The thing is, that minority is angry and/or hysterical, so they act violently and thus appear to be way more prominent than the majority that is either apathetic, skeptical, or disbelieving. This follows a lot of trends in the real world where a very loud and violent minority can cow others into silence and appear to represent a much broader consensus on a topic than is actually the case.
If you want a recent example, look at the George Floyd protests. The media often took at face value that the most extreme and violent protestors who wanted to abolish the police or who thought violence against property was justified represented the majority opinion of Black Americans. The thing is if you actually looked at polling data, while it’s true that most Black Americans want reform of the criminal justice system, deplored Floyd’s killing, and mistrust the police, actually abolishing the police or legitimizing riots was never a majority position. Unfortunately, between the media’s fascination with spectacle and extremity and more moderate people’s fear of being targeted by violent radicals, the extreme, hysterical minority in a society can often override the moderate, rational silent majority (at least on a temporary basis) to wreak havoc. That’s what’s happening here: a highly motivated minority of people who are hysterical about super powered people threatening them has bought into Waller’s manipulations through a combination of stupidity and a willingness to believe, and they in turn are the mob that’s going after the heroes.
That raises the following questions: who are these people and why are they doing this? These people broadly fall into two categories. First are useful idiots. These are people who have low intelligence and often also low education, and thus are easily manipulated. They’re the people who unquestioningly swallowed Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, believe Russian propaganda about its war in Ukraine being defensive rather than offensive, or who thought that Covid 19 was as lethal to the general population as ebola or the bubonic plague. They’re the people who always follow emotion over logic and swallow whatever hysterically over the top garbage they’re fed by the media they consume. If they saw the media of the DCU telling them heroes are suddenly attacking people, they’ll take it at face value and react hysterically.
The other group are people who in the context of the DCU have come to loathe everything superpower related because of how destructive it often is. Think of all the adverse events that happen in the DCU because of super powered people. Mass killings, obliteration of cities, literal world ending threats, and other insane events that only occur because super powered beings are doing crazy things. I suspect that for a lot of the DCU’s denizens, all the super powered mayhem just blurs together into an indistinguishable whirlwind of mayhem. It doesn’t matter to them that some super powered people seem like they’re trying to help. At the end of the day, they feel like they’re just one group of super people pounding on another group of super people. That was the point of Kingdom Come, and even though the mainstream DCU is nowhere near as bleak as the Kingdm Come universe it doesn’t change the point that it has a lot of super powered violence and by extension a lot of people who are just sick of living in a world with all of that super chaos. When Waller gives them evidence that super powered heroes have turned on them, even if objectively the evidence might be sketchy they buy into it because it validates their wider worldview that super powered people’s violence is wrecking the world for normal people.
This fits with one of the great themes of Waid’s career: how do regular humans fare in a world of super powered beings? In this case, the answer is that one of those regular humans – Waller – decided to just sweep the board of super powered people. She figured out that between being able to mobilize the aforementioned two groups in society against heroes and the heroes themselves underestimating how much of the public has lost trust in them or is willing to turn on a dime against them, she could catch them flat footed. The thing is, this initial turn is the hysteria that results from a sudden shock. It’s the knee jerk impulse that led to interning Japanese people after Pearl Harbor, legitimizing torture after September 11th, or justifying Authoritarian lockdowns after the first few Covid 19 deaths.
Long run, the silent, reasonable majority of society generally asserts itself over the hysterics as it becomes clear that the most dire predictions aren’t true; the hysterics’ recommended course of action has disastrous consequences; and people begin to seriously consider the evidence at hand as well as costs and benefits of policies. In the context of this arc, that will take the form of the heroes exposing Waller’s lies while she massively oversteps her authority and alienates the public with her behavior. What will probably happen in particular is that eventually her AI allies – who she is way too reliant on – will turn on humanity, and then the choice will be between the heroes and an AI apocalypse.
Does all this mean the story is great or flawless? Certainly not. The heroes are fairly dumb for not seeing how much events like Beast World had turned the public on them, and it is also striking how nobody seems to have really understood how thoroughly sinister Waller is given her track record. For me, the largest logical gap here is how Waller is doing this on a global scale. Her being able to co-opt the American government and supplant the President and Congress as a de-facto dictator is already a huge stretch of the imagination.
What’s really crazy though is why every other government on Earth is apparently bending to her will. Why would China, Russia, or anybody else hostile to America let some random bureaucrat from the American security state assume this level of global influence that includes the ability to send killer robots which violate their borders and enforce American law at will? If there was some explanation for this such as that the UN had voted to make her the head of a global anti super-powered initiative or that she had met other world leaders and gotten them to go along, that would make sense. Moreover, something like that could have been pulled off in a page or two either here or in one of the lead ins to this. Instead, it looks like every government on Earth decided they’re just cool with her commanding an army of super powered robots that answer to her alone and do whatever she wants.
One last point to be made is that there are some striking parallels between this event and what’s happening in My Adventures with Superman. In that show, Waller just used the threat of super powered people to put Metropolis under martial law enforced by robots designed to counter super powered beings. Similarly, Kara’s role as a cybernetically brainwashed drone who commits acts of mass violence on behalf of an Authoritarian ruler seems to echo what I think Waller will do with Jon, given the last few pages of this issue and solicits for upcoming books. I wouldn’t be surprised if behind the scenes DC management encouraged this symmetry, or if Campbell maybe took inspiration from Waid and Mora’s plan for this. Regardless, that parallel is interesting and makes me suspect that DC might also be testing out both the idea of Waller as supreme bad guy and the idea of a brainwashed killer member of the House of El as fodder for James Gunn’s upcoming slate of films and tv shows.
In closing, in spite of its flaws I think this is a fundamentally good story with a solid premise and very good art. If other people don’t want to follow it, I get that. With that said, I liked this set up and do plan to follow the event if for no other reason than that I think Waid and Mora have proven on World’s Finest that they can consistently deliver on top quality narration, characterization, action, and art (plus following this will make getting what’s going on in some of the ongoing series that I follow which tie into this a bit easier).
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Thank you so much for the well-thought out and expressed comments. You’re surely right that not every person in the street is against the heroes, it would be useful if Waid and Mora showed us. Some folk must be speaking against the prevailing opinion, as, say JK Rowling and others have gone against the general media thinking on sex v gender.
That’s a great point about how DCU regular folk must feel about the neverending battles… did you ever see the DC feature pages around the time of one event – maybe Infinite Crisis – featuring ‘news stories’ about people having lost loved ones or changed themselves in the latest reality blip… how do they sleep at night? (Wasn’t that the basis of an Astro City arc?) I think the only way to stay sane would be to have a ‘denial compartment’.
The idea of one regular person ’stepping up’ to take on heroes and villains alike is certainly something that might happen, I’m just unconvinced Ostrander and Yale’s Waller – for me the classic – would be the one. Yes, she’s traditionally not a big heroes fan, but she’s worked with enough of them and seen the good they could do… I don’t see that she would ever believe the genie of metahuman craziness could be put back in the bottle by someone eliminating the current crop of heroes and villains… ten minutes after she won, Earth would be destroyed by Despero or someone, or a previously unknown power would emerge and take over the world… her hubris in believing she can control supposed allies like Trigon and that nasty UP President is ridiculous.
I wonder if Waid will look at the other Earth powers, because you make some brilliant points there. I think this book needs you as an editor!
I’ve not managed an episode of My Adventures With Superman, but I will…
Thanks again for the food for thought!
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Thanks, Anon, for your great analysis of the DCU public and how it tracks with recent US history. You said it better than I ever could.
Anyway, I had a blast with this. I won’t be reading all the tie-ins without the DCUI delay, but I couldn’t wait on the main course! And while there’s plenty of disbelief to suspend — the ability to nullify EVERY TYPE of superpower is the one that sticks most in my craw — if I accept the ground rules, we’re in for a breathtaking ride.
One more thing, because I don’t know where else to ask this: in Suicide Squad: Dream Team #4, Deadshot was shown to be alive. When did he come back to life? Or haven’t we been told how yet? The caption identifying him said “Deadshot, emphasis on dead.” So maybe it’s meant to be a mystery?
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Thanks for the reminder to find the fourth Dream Team, it’s been so much better than expected. I’ll have to check out the final issue on DC Infinite. I hadn’t heard about Deadshot being back but it was only a matter of time, eh?
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