Absolute Batman #19 [Review]
The Scarecrow has arrived, and Gotham isn't ready.
There's a moment in Absolute Batman #19 where a cornfield turns red…the blood spreads across Frank Martin's palette like something that was always going to happen, and Nick Dragotta holds steady while a man begs his best friend for mercy and doesn't get it. That's when you understand exactly what kind of villain Snyder has built in this new Scarecrow, and it is rightfully terrifying.
Dragotta's Scarecrow design deserves to be talked about immediately. Those X'd-out button eyes sitting above a mouth full of stitched, gaping teeth shouldn't work as well as they do, but the character manages to feel both cartoonishly nightmarish and genuinely unsettling at the same time. There's something almost gentlemanly about the wide-brimmed silhouette that makes the reveal of his face feel like a violation. And then he lights a match, grins, and tells a man bleeding out in the corn that maybe the mask isn't really a mask. With this new Scarecrow, Dragotta has designed a villain who looks like a bad dream you had as a kid that you couldn’t quite explain to anyone.
Snyder's Scarecrow isn't just a fear gas delivery system. He's surgical. He finds the thing you're most ashamed of and doesn't just expose it. He uses it. The rural cold open establishes his methodology before we ever see his face clearly, and by the time Batman enters the picture, readers already know what Bruce is walking into.
Alfred's narration describes a Bruce who has shifted into a completely different gear. No friends, no distractions, nothing but the mission. The action sequence built around this observation, Batman accelerating into a police blockade twenty cars deep rather than slowing down, is rendered by Dragotta with kinetic, almost reckless energy, but we know that the recklessness is a manifestation of Bruce’s desperation to protect those around him…a task he hasn’t been particularly good at as the series has progressed.
Almost as if to serve as a reminder of this point, Waylon Jones is back, slowly being pulled toward something resembling his old self by the necklace retrieved during the Wonder Woman team-up in issue 16. This is where we see Bruce keeping him at arm's length anyway, and it makes sense. Jack Grimm continues his charm offensive across Gotham, press conferences and philanthropic grants and warm smiles, and Bruce knows that anyone he keeps close just becomes another target. Martin's colors carry a lot of the emotional texture here: the green pallor on Waylon's skin in daylight, the cold blue-gray of every Gotham rooftop, the amber glow of the Batcave. None of that atmosphere exists without him.
The rooftop meeting with Gordon is where the issue really pivots. Dragotta frames Batman materializing behind a panicked Gordon, gun drawn, with that half-lit cowl that makes the character look simultaneously massive and inevitable. It's their first real rooftop meeting in the Absolute continuity, and Snyder earns it quietly. Gordon is scared, and what he reveals sends shockwaves through the rest of the issue. What happens in the aftermath I'll leave alone for spoiler reasons, but Bruce comes out the other side shaken in a way we haven't seen before.
Which brings us to Slade Wilson, and the page that might be the best single page Dragotta has drawn on this book. Intake forms. Signatures in careful cursive. Tim Drake. Stephanie Brown. Jason Todd. Duke Thomas. Dick Grayson. Names every Batman reader knows, now positioned as wards of Jack Grimm's Grimm House program, a corrupted mirror of everything Robin is supposed to mean. Slade as their handler is a dark joke, and the stage it sets for what's coming is genuinely exciting.
Absolute Batman #19 is the payoff of months of careful construction, and it earns every bit of it. The Scarecrow introduction alone would make it a standout issue. So would the Gordon scene. So would the Robin reveal. That all three land cleanly in the same book is a genuine achievement, and a reminder that this is one of the best issues printed, in (arguably) the best superhero comic being published right now.
Absolute Batman #19
Absolute Batman #19 fires on every cylinder, delivering a terrifying Scarecrow introduction, a landmark Gordon rooftop meeting, and a Robin program reveal that together make an overwhelming case for this being the best superhero comic on shelves right now.
