Absolute Batman #17 [Review]
Scott Snyder has been doing something genuinely special with Absolute Batman since the jump, and issue #17 makes a strong case that the run is hitting a new gear. If the Ark M special felt like the starting pistol for the rogues' gallery finally coming off the leash, this issue is the first full sprint, and Snyder chose wisely by leading with Poison Ivy.
The version of Ivy we get here is not the seductive eco-villain you might remember from the Animated Series or even the morally complicated antihero of Tom King's Harley Quinn-adjacent runs. This Ivy is genuinely monstrous. Snyder's Absolute ethos has always been to take the familiar and dial every dial past ten, and Pamela Isley benefits from that treatment in disturbing ways. The building she has claimed is less a location and more an organism, and the hybrids patrolling it push well past the plant-human category into something stranger and harder to classify. Batman notes as much during the mission, which lands as a quiet bit of world-building: whatever Ivy has become in this universe, she is operating on a level that exceeds prior assumptions.
The Ivy backstory Snyder weaves in is quietly devastating. A childhood in Kane County, woods-raised and isolated, a sick mother, and a birthday trip to the Heart Building in Gotham where a dandelion wish becomes the seed of something much larger. It is a gentler origin than the rest of the issue deserves, which is precisely why it works. Snyder has always understood that the most unsettling thing about a monster is the moment you see what they were before. The contrast between the young girl blowing dandelion seeds off a rooftop and the horrifying sovereign she has become is the emotional engine of the issue.
Eric Canete's art is a perfect match for material this wild. His linework is loose and kinetic in a way that makes the creature designs feel genuinely alive and threatening rather than posed. There’s multi-eyed horror that emerges mid-issue is the kind of image that sticks with you, and Canete renders it grotesquely, and with glee. The action sequences read fast and hard, with panel compositions that push the eye forward urgently. Meanwhile the flashback pages carry a softer touch, with rounder forms and a more open visual rhythm that makes the tonal shift land cleanly. Canete is not doing subtle work here, but subtle is not what this book is asking for, and he delivers exactly what the story needs.
Threaded through the danger is something more quietly affecting: Bruce's ongoing attempts to hold together his relationships with Edward Nigma, Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent, and others we know from a lifetime of Batman mythology. Anyone who has spent years with these characters understands the weight those names carry, and watching Bruce reaching across those specific friendships, knowing where every one of them eventually leads, gives the whole issue a melancholy undercurrent. Snyder is playing a long game with these relationships, and it is paying off.
The closing pages deliver an excellent cliffhanger, with a nod to another major organization that should have longtime fans sitting up straight. It is the kind of teaser that feels like it earns its place rather than just superficial bait.
The series continues to prove why it’s led the way in the Absolute line’s dominance over the last ~18 months. The continued quality of the series, and ways in which it continues to engage fans both new and old, makes it a must-have on any comic lover’s pull list.
