DC Comics, Scott Snyder, and Nick Dragotta race replaced Barbara Gordon in its newly released Absolute Batman series that it marketed as a Batman story “for the modern age.”
Absolute Batman #1 Cover by Jim Lee (2024), DC Comics
In the very first issue of Absolute Batman, it is revealed that Barbara Gordon is black when she grabs her father’s hand after he is attacked by a gang called Party Animals.
The Party Animals attack Gordon, who is now the Mayor of Gotham, while he is being berated by citizens accusing him of failing to protect them from the gang.
After Gordon gets shot, Barbara grabs his hand and exclaims, “Dad!” He responds, “Barbara! Just get everyone out of here! Now!”
Panels from Absolute Batman #1 (2024), DC Comics
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This race replacement is unsurprising given that they’ve race replaced Jim Gordon in live action in Matt Reeves’ The Batman film with Jeffrey Wright. DC Comics has also repeatedly race replaced a number of other characters including Deadshot, Cyclone, Hawkgirl, Iris West, Jimmy Olsen, Wally West, Starfire, Batwoman, Cecile Horton, Carrie Kelley and others.
Furthermore, the official description for the book even notes that it is made for the “modern age.” It states, “Batman legend Scott Snyder and iconic artist Nick Dragotta transform the Dark Knight’s tale for the modern age! Without the mansion …without the money…without the butler…what’s left is the Absolute Dark Knight!”
Absolute Batman #1 Cover by Wes Craig (2024), DC Comics
Writer Scott Snyder also admitted the whole point of the story was to “invert the entire mythology of Batman. And so he’s not a generational billionaire. Instead of being the system and order, he’s chaos. He’s anarchy. He’s that wild, primal beast that is just going to go straight into things you don’t want to go straight at at all. He’s larger than life and all of it.”
Snyder continued, “It isn’t just sort of Batman has no money, the villains have money. It’s an inversion of everything. He grows up in crime alley. His villains have a different role. The city is different. It’s a city of extremes. Like his allies are different. Everything is different.”
Hear directly from writer @Ssnyder1835 on how he and Nick Dragotta’s breathtaking new comic series inverts the entire mythology of the Dark Knight. ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1 is on sale October 9! pic.twitter.com/d3CcGjayQH
— DC (@DCOfficial) September 17, 2024
The race replacing and transforming Batman’s story for the modern age appears to be a desperate gimmick by DC Comics in order to sell its comics. Former Flash and Superman writer Joshua Williamson admitted that DC Comics attempts to piss off its own readers in order to sell comics.
He told Popverse, “Sometimes people get really angry and they spend money, which is the saddest thing. But it’s been the hard lesson that I’ve learned from DC. It’s that when people are happy, they spend less. It sucks, but it is a pattern that I’ve seen in my time at DC.”
Williamson added, “I don’t want to make anybody mad. The thing is is that I would want to say, ‘First and foremost, trust me.’ It’s not just about, ‘Oh, I want to piss people off.’ That’s not what you’re doing at all.”
Superman #7 Cover E by David Finch (2023), DC Comics
Instead, he offered, “What you want to do is you want to establish some kind of trust first and then say, ‘Listen, this is going to be a rollercoaster ride. It’s going to be crazy at times. There’s going to be some ups and downs and it’s going to be nuts, but trust me to come on this ride with me.’”
“In any kind of story, the character kind of has to go through it. They have to go through hard times so they can reveal who they are,” he added. It’s one of those rules of Pixar, they talk about this a lot. You root for them for trying. They have to try and they have to get kind of beaten up.”
Williamson elaborated, “Man, when you’re watching anything, any movie, or reading a book, and the characters just get the crap kicked out of them, and then they get up and they’re just like, ‘Let’s keep going. I’m going to keep going.’ It’s like Captain America saying, ‘I can do this all day.’ That’s the stuff that you’re like, ‘Hell yeah!’”
Superman #8 Cover B by Lee Bermejo (2023), DC
What do you make of DC Comics race replacing Barbara Gordon in this story pitched for the “modern age” that supposedly inverts “the entire mythology of Batman?”
