If you thought last month’s Absolute Batman #11 from DC Comics was a horror show, wait until you read today’s Absolute Batman #12. Because, and spoilers past this point, the Absolute Universe version of Bane just created three iconic Batman villains in the most terrifying and gut-churning way possible. And the way that writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta reveal what Bane has done is so jaw-dropping, it’ll give you nightmares (seriously, I had nightmares after reading this issue, no joke).
Picking up from the cliffhanger from last month’s issue, we immediately get confirmation that Batman has escaped from Ark M with his friend Waylon, who has been turned into a giant crocodile monster by Bane and the scientists at the facility. So no, Batman did not get his arms chopped off and changed into a Venom-fueled Bat-Bane of Gotham, as seen in the previous issue, and caused a fair amount of confusion online.
Don’t worry, you sickos, Batman still isn’t himself… The surgeries he went through, we discover, have the Venom coursing through his veins. So some sort of transformation may still be coming, though at the current time, Bruce Wayne is mostly reeling from the sudden onset of Venom fueling that comes with the territory of the monstrous drug.
No, the worst is saved for his friends. We’ve already seen what happened to Waylon, who wants to die — though Batman can’t kill him, of course. But what about everyone else? The cliffhanger mentioned above was Bane coming for Oswald Cobblepot, Harvey Dent, and Edward Nygma, childhood friends of Bruce in the Absolute Universe. Part of the refreshing take here is that Bruce grew up with the guys who are usually villains in the regular DC Universe, and perhaps having him in the mix, or not, they all care about each other and haven’t descended into villainy.
Until Bane.
Waking up 20 days after his last fight with Bane, Bruce first visits his mother, who realizes quickly that he doesn’t know what happened to “Ozzy.” What happened was that Bane saw that Oswald wanted “so badly to be big” that he physically broke him in the other direction. As Leslie Thompkins explains to Bruce, “They broke nearly every bone in Oswald’s body. Some in multiple places. But somehow, they did it in a way that missed each vital organ. It was precise, surgical, cruel beyond measure. If Oswald lives, he’ll be almost two feet shorter, and his hands, his feet… It’ll be hard, Bruce. A life of constant pain.”
Basically, Bane physically turned the already petite Oswald into The Penguin. And while Dragotta shows the bruised, battered body of the man in full, harrowing detail (full disclosure, this panel was what gave me nightmares), we don’t get to hear how Ozzy will react since he’s barely conscious, with a tube down his misshapen throat.
No, the reaction is saved for Harvey Dent. While generally in the comics, Dent has half his face burned in a courtroom by acid, what Bane does here is somehow so much worse. “It’s bad, Bruce,” Thompkins explains. “Third to Fourth degree burns across the left side of his body. Straight fifty percent. But worse, they crushed his skull. Cracked it down the center. When the police found him, his head was basically lying in two separate parts.”
We get to see Bane do all this in flashback — thanks for the additional nightmares, Dragotta! — and even Bane searing one side of a poker chip, which calls back to the poker games Bruce used to play with his friends. And when Bruce tries to say this is all his fault — remember, they all know he’s Batman — Harvey agrees.
“Yes it is,” Harvey says. “You gambled for real, Bruce. Put it all out there. Your friends, the city, everything… All the chips. Now get out of here. If it’s any consolation, though… I only hate you half the time.”
The Penguin, Two-Face… Bane wasn’t done crafting two former allies of Bruce into two of his greatest enemies: he also made The Riddler. Or rather, when Bruce finds him, The Riddler is in the process of making himself. Bane challenged Edward to a game, beat him immediately, and then physically beat him, slamming his”frontal lobe” into his skull until “facts became questions.”
It’s unclear what happened next, but Eddie is now hooked into a massive computer, replacing the front of his face with metal and wires, the back of his brain exposed with probes in it. Strangely, he looks similar to the Absolute Universe version of Brainiac over in Absolute Superman, but if there is a connection, it’s TBA. And unlike Harvey, Edward seems maniacally thrilled at what Bane made him into.
What’s craziest about this issue, beyond the harrowing visuals by Dragotta, is the pace of these reveals. For 11 issues, Snyder has slowly and methodically been building a new vision of Batman and Gotham City. But in one fell swoop, we’ve added three villains to the roster, doubling down on the idea that Bane is breaking Batman not to kill him, but to forge him into something new. Unfortunately for Bruce, that’s at the cost of his friends’ bodies and sanity. And not for nothing, mine too. Thanks for the nightmares!
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