Writer: Al Ewing
Artists: Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Nesi
DC Comics, January 2026
As ever, our critique contains spoilers.
The cover to this title is deceptive in a number of ways. It invites a purchaser to engage in a guessing game. We assume that the owners of the hands gathered together in a handstack will appear in the comic. The Cheetah? The gloved white hand of the Joker? But, first, this title sits in the Ultimate universe, a well-crafted shadow-version of DC Comics’ regular continuity, and so the characters do not appear in their typical mainstream manifestation – there are no white gloves and claws in any of the Absolute-branded titles thus far. Second, there is no handstack or figurative semblance of a handstack within the title. Indeed, the villains who have been assembled barely have common cause and although they describe themselves as “allies”, even by the end of the story, that is not especially apparent. While they might flippantly call themselves “The Justice League” because their longstanding cause of oppression and domination is the natural, “just” order of things, these antagonists barely tolerate each other, let alone trust each other.
The major protagonists from the Absolute-branded continuity – Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, the Martian Manhunter, and Superman, do not get much in the way of airtime other than by passing reference in a briefing to the cabal of villains. Instead, we see a secret history of the world: a version of Hawkman who is a psychotic killer and anti-communist, the death of the Golden Age Sandman and an old Roy Thomas character, Iron Munroe, at the hands of dark, bleak government agencies, and the corruption of another Golden Age character, Wildcat. Perhaps most disturbing of all is the introduction to an idealistic Oliver Queen, about to embark upon a career as Green Arrow. His adventures are cut short before they begin when he is brutally assassinated by “the Hawkman”. Queen’s body is dumped onto a board room table as evidence to Green Lantern’s antagonist Hector Hammond as to how problems should sorted out: the “spoiled little anarchist” is dealt with early, decisively, without mercy.
We see Hector Hammond strut about like a 1950s caricature (his use of language such as “toots” to describe the woman who brought them together, Veronica Cale is strikingly archaic). Cale is a creation of acclaimed writer Greg Rucka from 2003 who is an adversary of Wonder Woman in regular continuity. We see a brooding, hulking Ra’s al Ghul; the Joker (not called that as yet); Dr Thawne, and somewhere else unobserved but watching, Brainiac and Mirror Master.
Brainiac decides that the group is incomplete but knows from his observations of the “mirror world” (DC’s mainstream continuity) who to recruit next. We then meet Lex Luthor, living in rural USA, married with children, dressed like an Iowa farmer ready for Sunday church, an aficionado of green tea, with a full head of hair and beard, answer the phone most uncharacteristically, “How may I help you?” Luthor does not seem like much of a supervillain in this introduction. But in the background, sitting on the horizon is a bank of clouds, curved so as to form the Greek symbol “omega”. The premise of this group of titles under the Absolute-brand is that DC’s overused cosmic villain, Darkseid, has corrupted this universe. The appearance of the omega symbol in the skyscape evidences this infection of all aspects of reality.
Writer Al Ewing is a veteran of the American comic book industry, and that experience and sense of pace is on full display in this issue. We see none of the usual superhero fisticuffs. Instead, the story is imbued with a building sense of dread. Artists Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Nesi do a wonderful job throughout the issue, particularly in rendering the idealistic Queen. He is dynamic and filled with righteousness, his “Arrow-cave” gleaming and ready to be a base of operations from which to fight injustice. It is early days – he still misses shots in target practice. Messrs Camuncoli and Nesi juxtaposition to that sparkling origin, full of promise, is Queen’s skull crushed by Hawkman’s mace, blood tinging his gaping eyes and rattled teeth. Queen’s dead face is frozen in death, evidencing shock and horror. It is nasty stuff, as intended.
Reading the Joker’s monologue is sobering, and we have extracted some of this below:
“Existence is ordered and ordained… the rich get richer. The poor get poorer…. this is not chance. This is not accident. This is design. The sore losers in the game of life see their fate – woven into the fabric of creation – and rail against it. Call it doom. There’s a philosophical term for that perspective. “The just world fallacy”…. Chaos must be fought. We must fight it. – and how can we fail? God is on our side.”
For those of us who grew up with the dividends of peace from the Cold War and the ideals of a just world as a consequence of the outcomes of World War Two, these words are uneasy reading. There are no meaningful institutions of objective law and justice in this comic book continuity. And sitting in our reality, the insidious global influence of techbro billionaires, an opportunistic land grab by a kleptocratic state, a genocide brought about by a vengeful democracy, bloody mayhem in east Africa, and entirely transactional international relations by the world’s ostensibly benevolent superpower make the reader pause and think that perhaps the Joker – and Mr Ewing – is not just talking about Darkseid’s fictional realm.