Geek, Uninterrupted

This was a pretty good issue! But it sure wasn’t what I expected.

This feels more like a Absolute Batman #15 and a half, just an extra bit of lore about Jack Grimm and his place in this new universe. Don’t get me wrong it’s certainly a nice bit of story, all gothic and twisted like any story about that damned asylum should be, but I usually like my Ark M special with a little more Ark M.

One thing I do like is that Jack’s presentation here feels very similar to that of The Maker over in the early Ultimate Universe titles. We know that this universe made by Darkseid naturally trends downwards to evil, but seeing that there’s a tangible impact being made by a dark hard directly guiding things in the wrong direction is a much more interesting thing to read about for me, so I’m glad that seems to be the role given to Grimm. For now at least.

I’ll also say that despite not being a big presence for most of the story, Batman’s appearance here is great. I’m always a fan of when we see Batman from the perspective of people he’s hunting. While that isn’t exactly the context here I think it achieves a very similar end result. Only seeing someone being slammed into a wall, a boot catching someone in the stomach, gloved hands smashing skulls, or a wide swing of an axe really goes a long way toward making Bruce more and more terrifying.

The present day sequence at the end is what’s got my attention most of all, actually focusing on Ark M in it’s current form. It does give us a glimpse at who we can expect Bruce to go up against over the next year, but unfortunately it’s largely just names and faces we’ve already seen. Mostly during Bruce’s stint in Ark M during the Abomination story (which is referenced here), without much new information to get hyped about.

Overall, while this definitely doesn’t reach the heights of previous instalments in the series, it’s nice to know that even an Absolute Batman book that’s just good is still a great comic book.