DC Comics overhauls the Justice League for Absolute Power.
[Warning: Spoilers for Absolute Power #1.] The DC Universe’s superheroes are super no more. The Trinity of Evil — Amanda Waller, Failsafe, and the Brainiac Queen — stole the superpowers of Earth’s metahumans in Mark Waid and Dan Mora‘s Absolute Power #1, which ended with Superman and Wonder Woman among the depowered heroes who have had their abilities absorbed by Task Force VII. Waller’s anti-Justice League consisting of Amazo robots is now the supreme power on the planet. But even with the Justice League disbanded and the Hall of Justice remade as Waller’s Hall of Order, a resistance is forming.
DC has teased that its blockbuster crossover event — which spans four core issues and tie-ins across issues of the publisher’s ongoing Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow titles, plus companion miniseries starring Waller and Task Force VII — will culminate in a seismic shift to the DCU status quo when the final issue hits stands in October. Solicitations for upcoming issues have revealed DC’s superheroes will get a makeover when Batman leads a band of resistance fighters: the last line of defense in Waller’s war against the heroes.
Mora’s art, below, shows armor-clad versions of Amazon warrior Wonder Woman; the Dark Knight in a tactical Bat-suit; The Flash (Barry Allen, the Flash Family’s only speedster who hasn’t lost his powers); a powerless Superman in the silver-and-black recovery suit he wears to regenerate his Kryptonian abilities; J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, encased in alien armor; pilot Hal Jordan, on a mission to get to the Power Battery and recharge his Green Lantern ring; and Aquaman, the Atlantean king whose powers and throne have been seized by his counterpart on Task Force VII.
DC will also showcase the new costumes across a series of “Resistance” variant covers by Justice League Dark artist Mikel Janin, including the covers of Batman #151 and Green Lantern #14:
“The biggest thing was I wanted to create a real sense of peril and drama without endangering the universe. Because those crossovers have been great, but it’s not my wheelhouse exactly to do the big cosmic stories. So that was goal number one,” Waid told ComicBook in an exclusive interview. “So then I started thinking about, ‘What is the worst thing that you can do to these characters? What great sense of loss can you imprint upon universally all of them?'”
“It’s not just a matter of taking away their loved ones or their friends, because some of them have loved ones, some of them don’t, or whatever,” Waid continued. “What’s the one thing universally across the board you can do? And that’s to make them stop being superheroes.”
The DC event continues in the pages of Absolute Power #2, on stands August 7th from DC Comics.
