Long in the making, Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s Absolute Power promises to shake up everything you thought you knew about the DC Universe. In this series of features, Jules Chin Greene unpacks each new chapter of the core comic book event and helps us come to grips about just what it might mean.
 

These days, it takes a lot for me to get stressed by a comic book event. I don’t say that to sound like a crotchety, jaded reader, but more as a personal observation. When you’ve lived long enough to read a handful of comic book events where the world is ending—

Actually, I’m going to stop myself there before I continue sounding like a weirdo paraphrasing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

What I mean to say is, if you’ve been reading comics at a voracious level for as long as I have, sometimes it can be difficult to fully immerse yourself into the stakes of the story, especially when it is a massive crossover. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as often having a more removed position can open you up to analyzing a writer or artist’s craftsmanship as they tell their story.

Absolute Power #1 by Mark Waid and Dan Mora, however, brings me back to that heart-pounding sense of terror I felt the first time I read a comic where the heroes I loved were in serious trouble. It’s the kind of stress where I nearly have to use my pointer figure to guide my eyes through the text on the page, to stop my eyes from darting nervously over to the next page. You might say that a book like Absolute Power #1 makes me “a kid again,” but it’s more than that. Instead of just being young and inexperienced, Absolute Power #1 brings me back to a sense of utter, well, powerlessness.

Mark Waid has written plenty of comics where you feel like you’re right next to the hero as they go on fantastic adventures. Their struggles and triumphs become your own. His now classic runs on The Flash and Shazam! are perfect examples of this. Being, or at least feeling, parallel to these heroes can make us feel empowered as we read these books. It’s one of my favorite aspects about his writing.

In Absolute Power, however, Waid flips the script on us, and Dan Mora’s artwork sells this to devastating effect. The look of bewilderment and fear that crosses Superman’s face after he is shot twice in the chest matches our own emotional experience of reading those panels. Instead of feeling like we’re on top of the world with Superman, we feel like helplessly screaming into the abyss when he plummets to the ground on the next page.

Waid’s story cleverly focuses on the emotional devastation that Waller’s plan has on the heroes of the DC Universe. This isn’t about “The Broader Framework and State of Superhero Comics Today” or even the narrative details of why this is happening. Instead, Waid and Mora lead with a very primal sense of confusion and helplessness that all of us, even our most powerful heroes, have felt at some point. The sight of Animal Man getting beaten up by a crowd while his daughter, Animal Girl, watches, screaming and begging for the crowd to “leave him alone” was utterly gut-wrenching to read. Not to mention the fact that this happens only a couple pages after we see Superman get gunned down!

I think it’s also fair to say that seeing Batman get stressed out about something is like seeing one of your parents exhibit an emotion you’ve never seen from them before. You are forced to pause and observe your surroundings while you wonder what is causing them to show a side they typically keep hidden. Absolute Power #1 uses this idea for maximum impact when Batman realizes, much too late in the game, what Waller’s plan actually is. He is so shocked that he can’t even respond to his own son, who fretfully asks, “Father? Father, what’s wrong?” In that moment, we are all Damian Wayne.

So, while longtime readers may feel like they have “seen it all,” chances are they haven’t felt an emotional rollercoaster like Absolute Power #1 in a while.

Usually when I see some of my favorite heroes get hurt, I want to grab a hypothetical bo staff off of my wall and jump into the world of the story to fight whoever hurt them (Deathstroke, your days are numbered). However, this time, with Absolute Power, I am at a loss because I don’t know how anyone can help them. Waller cleverly sealed off any outside help that the heroes of Earth could get.

Even so, I’ll admit I’m holding out hope that Orion of New Genesis or Mister Miracle can come to the rescue by way of a Boom Tube. I personally don’t see someone as mighty and principled as Orion bending to the knee of a human, even one as fearsome as Amanda Waller. Mister Miracle is also the greatest escape artist in the DC Universe. Surely, he can find a way in to help his former Justice League teammates? Right?

Look, I’m looking for any source of hope right now.

Regardless of what happens, I’m fully on board with the devastation of Absolute Power. That includes Green Arrow’s heartbreaking betrayal of his own colleagues. Mark Waid and Dan Mora have my full attention, and I cannot wait to see what else this dynamite creative team has in store for us.
 

Absolute Power #1 by Mark Waid, Dan Mora and Alejandro Sanchez is now available in print and as a digital comic book.

Jules Chin Greene writes about comics, TV, games and film for DC.com, and his work can also be found at Nerdist, Popverse and Multiverse of Color. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @JulesChinGreene.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Jules Chin Greene and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.