Batman: Absolution [Paperback]

J.M. DeMatteis (Author), Brian Ashmore (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401200370
• ISBN-13: 978-1401200374
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #733,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, J. M. DeMatteis was a professional musician and rock music journalist before entering the comic book field.

Although he's written almost all of the major DC and Marvel icons--including memorable runs on Spider-Man and Justice League--DeMatteis's greatest greatest acclaim has come for sophisticated original graphic novels like Seekers Into The Mystery, Blood: A Tale, The Last One, and Mercy. The autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams was picked by the ALA as one of the Ten Best Graphic Novels and Booklist, in a starred review, called it "as graphically distinguished and creatively novelistic a graphic novel as has ever been...a classic of the form." The groundbreaking Moonshadow was chosen (along with Brooklyn Dreams, Blood and other DeMatteis works) for inclusion in Gene Kanenberg, Jr's 2008 book 500 Essential Graphic Novels. "While Sandman may be the best known fantasy comic," he wrote, "Moonshadow is arguably the finest."

More recently DeMatteis has had great success with the acclaimed children's fantasy Abadazad --which Entertainment Weekly, giving the series an A grade, hailed as "...one of those very rare fantasy works that can enchant preteen kids and 40-year old fanboys..." and Publisher's Weekly, in a starred review, called "an appealing blend of Spirited Away and The Wizard of Oz." Abadazad began life as a CrossGen comic book before morphing into a three-book series, a unique blend of prose, illustration and sequential art, published by Disney's Hyperion Books For Children.

His success in the comic book medium has led DeMatteis to work in both television (writing live action and animation) and movies (creating screenplays for Fox, Disney Feature Animation, directors Carlo Carlei and Chris Columbus and producer Dean Devlin, among others).

DeMatteis's latest work includes the fantasy novel Imaginalis, published in July, 2010 by HarperCollins, and a variety of television and comic book projects.

DeMatteis and his family live in upstate New York. His blogs can be found here at Amazon.com and at www.jmdematteis.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not the batman I enjoy, June 8, 2004

By 

M. Cookson (Colorado Springs) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Batman: Absolution (Paperback)

Maybe it's just the more recent Batman comics, but it seems like any Batman volume I pick up is depressing. This book is especially dark and depressing. I can handle a dark, brooding, crime-fighting Batman, but the Batman in this volume is just obsessed to the point of danger. He refuses to see anything but his own point of view. He won't even consider another point of view, because he believes that his view of the world is less biased than anyone else's. He is not an enjoyable character.

In this book, he is hunting a woman who, as part of a protest against Wayne Enterprises, set off a bomb several years before that killed a lot of people. Batman turns hunting her into his own crusade, partially because of the deaths and partially because, it seems, his ego is continually hurt by the fact that she eludes him for so long. The artwork looks lovely, but I just can't like the story. I haven't read a lot of Batman comics, but this doesn't seem like a prime example of them.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice Artwork Can't Redeem This Story, March 22, 2003

By 

K.H. - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Batman: Absolution (Hardcover)

Sometimes the problem with graphic novels is that writers tend to put a mythos that is contradicted to some extent in other stories, thus breaking a continuity in the Batman mythos. This is an example of such an outcome for if one was to compare this story to the graphic novel "The Chalice", two very different Batmen emerge.

I am going to avoid recapping the story, because it is so thin and easily discernable, that any hint would leave a possible reader disinterested from the beginning. After all, some other readers may like this slow moving, illogical story.

The major problems in this book are that Batman is a little slow on the up-take in trying to catch a killer who killed some of his employees ten years before. Obvious clues (what little the authors developed) are seemly dismissed. Further, the idea of logic is mentioned several times, just so many illogical conclusions are drawn. Though I think the writers were trying to develop an existential search in Batman, they largely failed. The tension just isn't there.

The last great Batman graphic novels (not counting re-prints such as Dark Victory, etc) are from the period (1986-1992) which produced such great work as , "Year One", The Dark Knight Returns", "The Killing Joke", "Night Cries", "The Birth of the Demon", "Arkum Asylum", and "Digital Justice.", etc. Since that time, the monthly magazines have produced the biggest "hits" and some of their reprints have been re-introduced into prestige hardbound formats.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unexpected, December 22, 2003

By 

Hassan Galadari (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Batman: Absolution (Paperback)

One would think that a great author like Jean Marc Dematteis would write a reasonable Batman story. It was a surprise that the end result was not something to be proud of. Dematteis has been a long standing author of Spider-Man and in his prime wrote the thought provoking storylines that slowly careened more to the psychological. You would think that this work right for a character like Batman. Surprisingly, it doesn't.

The story picks up with a hellbent, vengeful Batman searching for the bomber of a Wayne Enterprises building that killed many people. It takes Batman 10 years to get to the killer, but of course, you know he ends up there. One surprise is that Batman throughout his years never showcased a vengeful feel to his personality that would fuel his rage for such long a time. The story here falls to being more incredulous in that sense.

The other part is that when he does finally reach up to his prey, he is so relentless that he does not believe in redemption and he is intent on making the bomber pay for what she did, though throughout her life that person has completely changed and has become a nun healping thousands in an impoverished land.

Simply, said, this is not Batman. You wonder what Dematteis had in mind while scribing this down, but it's a pity that his theme and the Batman character didn't work. I believe that if given the chance, another story by him would give us a better tale. I don't know if that's going to happen in the near future though.