Absolute Batman: The Road to #25
- Jason Daniel
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Twenty-five issues in, and the question on the cover of the next one is whether there's anything left of him.
If you've been circling Absolute Batman and never jumped on, this is the window. Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's take strips Bruce Wayne of the fortune and the parents' protection and rebuilds him bigger, rawer and more dangerous — and the run has spent the last eight issues pulling everything it built back down on top of him. #24 arrives 09/23/26. #25 lands 10/28/26 as an oversized anniversary issue with eleven covers.
Every issue below is on the shelf right now at 20% off cover, except #24, which is inbound on 09/23. Reprints of #1–#16 are also back in stock if you want to start from the very beginning.
Absolute Batman #17 — Absolute Poison Ivy sinks her teeth into Ark-M. Pamela Isley walks out of the facility with an unending hate for Gotham, and Batman has to survive a labyrinth of leveled horrors to stop a monster the city built itself.
Absolute Batman #18 — Ivy's tendrils spread. Batman fights her mutated monsters and uncovers something more gruesome embedded in Gotham's foundations — while the Joker's machinations start to coalesce around a new ally.
Absolute Batman #19 — The arc that changes the board. Joker recruits one of Ark M's most terrifying doctors, Jonathan Crane. Bruce tries to align himself with Barbara Gordon. New debuts, new villains, new arc.
Absolute Batman #20 — A tragic loss rocks Gotham City. As the dust settles after the death of [redacted], the Robins enter the scene ready to hunt, and more than one secret comes out. Ten covers on this one.
Absolute Batman #21 — Scarecrow's reign of terror continues. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, final forms are revealed — and Crane threatens to upend everything.
Absolute Batman #22 — The origin of Harley Quinn. How Harley connects to Ark M, and how the Robins fledged from hatchlings into birds of prey — while Batman faces ultimate defeat.
Absolute Batman #23 — Batman vs. Batman. A climactic showdown against an unyielding enemy — in the Robins, and in himself. More than one dead character signals a call for help, and a symbol of hopelessness.
Absolute Batman #24 — Without the badge. Without her father. Absolute Bat enters the scene. In the battle of self, Batman versus Batman, there can be only one — and everyone Bruce has known, cared about or loved faces their ultimate inner demons.
The One Side Story That Matters
Absolute Batman: Ark M Special #1 (3rd Print) — The side door into this whole run. The origins of the enigmatic Ark M — what lies within its walls, and who was assigned to keep it from being discovered. If you only read one supplemental issue before #25, read this.
And Then: Issue #25
In stores 10/28/26 · $5.99 main cover · eleven covers. DC's solicitation is four sentences long and does not waste any of them:
"Absolute Batman celebrates 25 issues! All the villains. All the heroes. All the stakes. What's left…of Absolute Batman?"
The cover lineup tells you how big DC thinks this is:
Cvr A — Nick Dragotta gatefold triptych (the main cover opens out)
Cvr B — J. Scott Campbell card stock
Cvr C — Greg Capullo card stock
Cvr D — Bryan Hitch connecting card stock
Cvr E — Blank card stock sketch cover
Cvr F — JonBoy Meyers glow-in-the-dark card stock
Cvr G — Gabriele Dell'Otto DC Showcase wraparound foil
Cvrs H / I / J — Nick Dragotta left, middle and right connecting card stock
Cvr K — Lewis LaRosa 1:25 incentive card stock
Between the gatefold A and the three-part Dragotta connecting set, this is the most cover architecture the series has thrown at a single issue. Preorders open at CTX Comics shortly — this post will be updated with links the moment they go live.
Why This Run Landed
The premise actually changed something. No fortune, no butler-funded arsenal, no safety net. Every fight costs him something the classic version could absorb, and the book has been cashing that in since issue one.
It built its own rogues from scratch. Ark M, this version of Bane, Absolute Poison Ivy, an origin for Harley Quinn, a Scarecrow arc, Robins as hunters. These aren't cameos — they're the spine of the road to 25.
Dragotta's Gotham. The art is the sell. Dragotta draws weight and consequence, and the Absolute line's design language runs through every page.
It reprints because it sells out. Look at the print runs: #1 is on its twelfth printing, #2 on its ninth, #3 on its eighth. Very few modern monthlies do that.
Anniversary issues in this line go big. #25 gets a gatefold triptych main cover, a three-part connecting Dragotta set, glow-in-the-dark, foil, and a 1:25. DC does not spend that on a quiet issue.
Twenty-Four Nights
CTX ORIGINAL FICTION — a short piece written from nothing but the solicitations for #17 through #25. No spoilers; we're reading it the same week you are.
Count them if you want. He does.
The first ones are easy to number because they're about other people. A woman comes out of Ark M with something growing under her ribs and a list, and the list has the whole city on it, and he goes down into a building with more floors than the blueprints admit to and comes back up worse. That's one. The thing in the foundations that he found down there, the one nobody has said out loud yet — that's another.
Then the nights stop being about other people.
A doctor gets recruited by a clown. Somebody dies and the papers redact the name and the redaction is somehow louder than printing it would have been. Kids in masks start showing up in his city with a hunting rhythm he recognizes because he taught it to somebody, once, badly.
Friends become enemies. Enemies become friends. He has stopped keeping the two lists separate because the ink kept moving.
Somewhere in there a woman loses a badge and a father in the same season and does not stop walking.
And on the last of the nights he can still count, he stands across from a Batman. Not a man in a suit like his. A Batman. The full thing, the whole argument, standing in front of him with his own posture and his own reasons, and neither of them is going to blink, and the city that made both of them is holding its breath to see which one it gets to keep.
All the villains. All the heroes. All the stakes.
Twenty-five nights, and the only question left on the table is subtraction.
Original short fiction by CTX Comics, extrapolated solely from DC's published solicitations for Absolute Batman #17-#25. It is not an excerpt from any issue and does not reflect their actual contents.
Solicit information courtesy of the publisher. Covers, prices and availability current as of publication and subject to change. All characters and artwork are © their respective owners.
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