[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:27] Ultimate John B&rber: Hi. This is John, and we are back for Part 2 of our talk about the Ultimate and Absolute lines from DC and Marvel. We will resume our regularly scheduled conversation, already in progress.

[00:41] Absolute David Hedgecock: I think I hate Multiverses. I think I've decided that I hate that. I think I've decided that the Multiverse concept is the laziest [bleeping] writing ever to exist, in the history of comics, and I need Multiverses to die a horrible death. It was really cool, yeah, when it was Earth-Two, one other Earth, but it is the laziest conceit, and when you have story, where literally anything could possibly have happened, then there is nothing unique or special about any of it. If Iron Man can be Doctor Doom, can be Reed Richards, can be Incredible Hulk, then, man, what the heck? There needs to be consequences and meaning behind some of this stuff, and the uniqueness of it all really does seem to be wearing off the more we dive into this Multiverse thing, and it's just so lazy.

[01:47] John: That's the thing. The original Ultimate Universe was very deliberately never in contact with the Marvel Universe. Everything was done to make this not seem like just an alternate reality that was one of the many alternate realities you could visit in the already-existent Marvel Multiverse, and there are points where you can see how things connect, well, because of Marvel Zombies. Marvel Zombies was so successful. That was spun out of Ultimate Fantastic Four, and that spun into the Marvel Universe, and spun into other Multiverses. So, there's a way to draw a map there, but it takes a long time for Ultimate Peter Parker to meet Marvel Universe Peter. I think that was a big part of the collapse of the Ultimate line, as well, was that then Ultimate is just another Multiverse, as opposed to being the totality of everything. We first had that thing where it's like, “wait, they're bringing in the Spider-Man from the Japanese TV show? [Your head explodes]. That's so cool. They were never going to do that.” They did that, and then now, you're at the point where it's, “oh, the CG Christopher Reeve is Superman? Alright.”

[03:00] David: Yes, exactly. It's becoming excessive, I think, which, nothing exceeds success, and that's where I start to get worried about these new lines. So, Absolute DC did, I think, a completely different version of launching a new world, or a new universe, with their Absolute Batman and their Absolute Superman, and Absolute Wonder Woman. You couldn't walk 2 steps without somebody talking about Absolute Batman for the entire summer. Not just anybody, either. It was Snyder himself. I'll give him credit. I think that guy really did a good job of promoting this line and getting people excited. His seeming enthusiasm for what he was doing, I think, carried the entire thing quite a ways, but anyway. They really made a big deal out of it, and as it turns out, it paid off, and probably 10x’d what the Ultimate Spider-Man launch did, I'm sure.

[03:59] John: Artistically, seems really coherent, in that, at least the two that are out as we're recording this, are both crisply written in a modern comic style, and very well done, and everything, and then visually weird, visually unusual, in the way that they present the characters, in a, I think, really good way. Just to go from where I'm coming from, I really like Absolute Batman. I just read Absolute Wonder Woman last night, and I loved it. I think I liked that one more. Kelly Thompson wrote it. I thought she knocked it out of the park, and the art’s just spectacular and weird, and unusual.

[04:39] David: I'm in complete agreement. It's almost like they took the original Ultimate line concept, where you had really strong art talent, recognizable art talent, and matched it with some up-and-coming edgy writers. This version, the Absolute version, seems to take your well-established writers, and then match them with the up-and-coming edgy art talent. I'm all-in. I'm a sucker for that. You're going to get me every time with that. Nick Dragotta has definitely been around for a while. He's worked with Johnathan Hickman on East of West, and I think his stuff’s spectacular, and having him on a big launch of a big book seems like a no-brainer, after the fact, and yeah, I thought Absolute Batman, visually, crushed it. I thought it looked really great, and the story was rock solid and interesting, and seemed to actually compress Batman down into a manageable size, in that the backstory and the history is all really clean and neat, and we don't have 4 different Robins, and we don't have Batman having a rogues’ gallery of 40 different villains, all carrying the same weight and importance on his origins.

[06:04] John: We didn't really talk about this when we talked about the new Ultimate line, but the new Ultimate line is based on a Hickman story that came out, and it's based on, I mean, I'm going to try to explain this really quick just to demonstrate what I'm talking about, but The Maker, who is Ultimate Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe, but he turned into a villain, who’s crossed dimensions multiple times, went back into the Ultimate Universe, and stopped all the Ultimate characters from becoming the Ultimate characters, and then Iron Man, who is a young Tony Stark, whose father, I forget, died.

[06:39] David: Howard Stark teams up with Maker to, I think, create the suppression of superheroes. He's one of the Maker’s cadre of people. Iron Lad, which is Tony Stark, in the Marvel 616 Universe, who is Iron Man. Iron Lad, Tony Stark, I believe is the guy that comes around and puts the Maker into that, shunts him off into the city, or whatever it's called, where he's trapped.

[07:14] John: So then, Tony Stark, I think, somehow goes back in time, but retrieves the pieces that they needed to make everybody a superhero. Am I saying that right? Am I wrong? I read all this stuff, by the way.

[07:30] David: You might be right. My understanding of it was that Tony Stark does attempt to go back in time. This is all in The Avengers one that I'm thinking of.

[07:40] John: It ends up with the spider that should have bit Peter Parker, that didn't bite Peter Parker, but he gives it to Peter Parker, who is in his late 30s.

[07:48] David: That's right.

[07:49] John: So, then, Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man, then, and he also gives Peter Parker the Spider-Man uniform that he has built.

[07:57] David: Yes.

[07:58] John: X-Men is something completely different, and some of the X-Men characters appear both in X-Men and in different versions, in other characters. So, there's a Storm in Ultimate X-Men who is different than Ultimate Storm in Ultimate Black Panther, and the whole thing is that the Maker is going to come out of this prison that they put him in, at a certain time. So, Tony Stark forms New Avengers by doing the same thing and giving the powers to people at different--

[08:22] David: Yeah, he tries to, but it fails, mostly, but as an example, the Spider-Man one is a success, and what gets set up is, Captain America walks in and says, “that's not how you make heroes. How you make heroes is you go to them, and you invite them, and you help them be better versions of themselves.” That's where you start getting a proliferation of the Avenger version of some of the heroes, at least, but yeah, it's all over the place. I think that's your point.

[08:51] John: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a super complicated origin that is integral to the storytelling of many, but not all, of the comics, because again, Ultimate X-Men is the outlier that has nothing to do with this story, as far as I can tell. The rest of them all do fit in there, and the Absolute titles have a similar setup, which I didn't read, which I think is that Darkseid creates this universe where everything is worse, and that's the world they go into, but that's really clean. That actually turns out to be a really clean entry point that you don't need to explain, where Bruce Wayne isn't rich. Okay. I don't need to worry. There you go. I thought about it more, reading Absolute Wonder Woman, where the story is baby Diana gets dropped off into hell, and the Amazons are shunted away, and there's no more Amazons, and they can't say the word “Amazon,” and all this stuff, and you don't need to know the backstory exactly, and why that is, or you'll see the specific backstory to Wonder Woman as the story unfolds, but you know, because all of these characters are so iconic, and what they are, these riffs on them, are of, “well, what if Bruce Wayne wasn't rich?” Everybody gets that. That's super easy to understand. You get that that's the riff that they're doing.

[10:07] David: It goes back, maybe, to the success of the original Ultimate Spider-Man line, as you were saying, which is just “what if Peter Parker was young?” What if Batman wasn't rich? That's a pretty simple trope.

[10:23] John: Yeah. I mean, it's an inversion, the same way, Ultimate’s “well, what if Spider-Man was in his 30s when he got the powers?” But it's a super clean, easily understandable inversion that is very specific, and okay, “what if Wonder Woman grew up in hell?” is weirder than that, but still, it's not the hardest thing to get, and she's the last of the Amazons, and they all have really giant swords in this line, apparently.

[10:50] David: Yeah, and that's all that really matters, John.

[10:52] John: Yeah. Well, definitely, it speaks to, all the writers in this are circling my age. They’re either a little older, a little younger, or exactly the same. So, we all grew up with the same stuff, but I feel it's maybe skewing a little younger, that it's growing up, it's aimed at the people that grew up playing Final Fantasy and watching anime, and reading manga, and that's just part of the cultural infusion of stuff that they understand. So, of course, Wonder Woman, if she's got a sword, it's a big Final Fantasy sword. It's not a slick Katana or something. It’s this ridiculous blade, and Batman's got ear knives, and stuff.

[11:32] David: I love the giant sword. The Wonder Woman design was brilliant. One of the things I want to touch on - we've got 2 successful launches. We've got the Ultimate line, with Spider-Man, Black Panther, X-Men, successfully launches, and then we've got the Absolute line, which launches to a much larger fanfare, but seemingly, is being wildly well received. I've seen nothing but good reviews about Absolute Batman. Well, Absolute Wonder Woman has just come out. I haven't really seen too much about that, but, in terms of just sales alone, you've got a huge, massive hit on your hands. So, I think, one of the big things that works, for me, with this stuff, or the reason why it's got me going to the comic bookshop is that there are these curated boutique lines. If I want to know everything about the Marvel Ultimate Universe, at the start at least, I need to get 3 books, and then they added the Ultimates, they had added the Avenger books. Now it's 4 books. If you’ve got one new book coming out every week, I'm totally in. You’ve got me, and the Absolute line is the same.

You’ve got Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. 3 books. Totally in. I'm going to buy all three of those. Even if I only just like [Absolute] Superman a little bit, I'm probably going to stick with it for a while, because I just want to have a full, big picture of what's happening here. So, I like that. I like this curated, boutique style of publishing these lines. I worry, and = you're already seeing it, with the Ultimate line, they just announced Ultimate Wolverine. So, now you go from 3 books, at the start, now you're up to 5 within the first 12 months, plus, they announced an annual, on top of that, that's going to come out in December. So, you're now at 5 books, which, okay, five books, but I'm going to start dropping other things, probably, at that point.

It's no longer additive. Now, it's subtractive. Now, I'm going to not get the regular Spider-Man line book anymore, because I want to be invested in this other thing, potentially, and then, the Absolute line, I fear, is going to be weighted down even faster. They've announced Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter. So, that line, before the end of 2025, is going to double what it is right now, and 6 books already feels too much. I'm already like, “Yeah, okay, well, maybe I'm not even going to jump in on the rest.” I'm just going to go Absolute Batman, which seems cool. Maybe I'll sample the others, but there's no way for me to build loyalty to a brand line like this, if that's what's going to happen. What's your take on that, John? Where do you think that goes, for you?

[14:33] John: Another one of the problems, I think, you're going to see with that is, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are DC's Trinity, and Superman and Batman, especially, are super iconic, in that way that I've been talking about, that you know the basic setup of it. Wonder Woman's always a little not that-- That might actually be a good future episode of this show of, what are the pitfalls in constructing Wonder Woman stories that aren't just “she's a girl”? Or they might spin from that, but there’re weird foundations that aren't there with Wonder Woman, that are there with Superman and Batman, that when you go back to the original stuff, there's stuff you can pull from, and the supporting cast that isn't just Etta Candy and her personality is the twofold “she's fat and she eats a lot.” You haven't been able to use that. Even when Etta Candy has appeared in stories, she hasn't been that since the 80s. That's all that character was. Especially post-movie and everything, you get what Wonder Woman is. She's The Princess of the Amazons. She's a tough warrior and everything. All that really all fits together, but what can you change with the Flash that makes the Flash just not be the Flash?

[15:52] David: Which Flash are you talking about?

[15:53] John: Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. Three guys have prominently been the Flash.

[15:59] David: At least.

[16:00] John: Yeah. Depending on when you grew up, you grew up with a completely different Flash than other people. Even if it's the same character, the personality is really different, the setup's really different, there's an iconic one that came out of the TV show and was basically replayed in the movie, I think, or it was set up in the Justice League movie, anyway. Full disclosure, I've not seen the Flash movie, but it's going to be tough, twisting things that aren't as iconic, but that said, it's also good talent they've got on there, and this will be interesting to see. I'm excited about the Martian Manhunter. I'm not even sure who's doing some of the other ones yet. I guess I haven’t been keeping up on all the news.

[16:42] David: They’ve announced them, but I didn't write it down.

[16:44] John: Yeah, but you're right, and also, it's easy for this thing to become an all-or-nothing question. Do I keep reading the Absolute line, or now that there's six of them, do I just not read the Absolute line?

[16:56] David: Right, and I think, once you hit six books, I think the answer starts becoming “I'm not going to read any of it.” Maybe people's buying habits have changed a little bit over the years, but I feel like, “okay,” and this has certainly never really been me. I 100% follow talent. So, when I'm talking about this, it's not really my own personal, unique experience. If Nick Dragotta is going to be on a Batman book, I'm probably going to pick it up because I like his art, I like what he's doing. So, I'm probably going to read that. I'm probably going to read that book, but I think a lot of people follow heroes. They follow characters, not creators. I think, probably, much to my confusion, a large body of comic book readers and buyers probably follow the characters before they follow creators.

So, if I've got a unique, cohesive 4-book thing, that I pick up one extra book every month, maybe I'm willing to dip my toe into that other universe, even though it's Batman, but it's not my Batman, but if suddenly it's weighted down by several extra books, and as a completist, or if I'm buying, I feel like I want to have the whole picture, now I'm making choices, and if I've been buying the original Batman for 20 years, then if one of these things has got to go, it's not going to be my mainline Batman title that I've been buying since 1987. It's going to be Absolute Batman. Goodbye. I'm going to stick with the version that I'm familiar with and that I know, and that I've been collecting for 25 years.

[18:33] John: Another part of the world that is different now than it was when the Ultimate line launched is that, when the original Ultimate Spider-Man launched, if you wanted to follow the continuing adventures of Spider-Man, you had to buy a Spider-Man comic book. Full stop. That's your only place you can do that, and then now, there's 4 distinct movie series, all of which have a chance at continuing. There's also, Venom, which is a different universe, would continue. There's cartoons. There's TV shows. If I am a casual Batman fan, which in 2001 meant that, I watched the Michael Keaton movies and I watched the Joel Schumacher movies, and then I remember the TV show, what's the world I have now? There are going to be 2 competing Batman franchise movies soon, none of which are the other ones that have just recently come out. My world of alternate Batmans is pretty full, without even touching a Batman comic.

Ultimate Spider-Man. One thing Ultimate Spider-Man absolutely succeeded in was getting a lot of new people to read Spider-Man. It got a lot of people that didn't read Spider-Man regularly to come in and buy that comic, and become comic book readers, and I think just the mechanics of the world are different now, and it's going to be harder to do that. In a weird way, even though the awareness of the characters has never been higher, you're inundated with these characters, and how much different is this than the Telltale video game series is different than the Rocksteady video game series, and the animated series on HBO Plus, and the other animated series on HBO Plus, and the Penguin show on HBO Plus? Is that what it's called? Whatever it's called now. I forget. I don't even remember what it's called. Max. I'm sorry, Max. Jesus, I was totally off. I'm living in the 70s. I'm living in the 70s, back when it was HBO Plus.

[20:38] David: I guess, what I'm saying, or what I'm hoping for, is that the success of these things, the solution or the OR the message from that is to say, “we'll add more to it,” rather than looking at it and saying, “this is a unique, boutique, curated line that we've got here. Adding to it will only dilute the property and not increase sales, but effectively kill the line, eventually.” I can see a world where DC says, “well, Absolute is working great. All six titles are jamming. The 7th title will be Justice League,” or they'll add a 7th book, which will be Hawkman or Cyborg, or somebody, and then an 8th book will be Justice League, and now you've got an entire 8-book line, and then DC’s just going, “well, it's working better than anything else. Let's just scrap all the other stuff and do this, and then deluge everyone with the Absolute version of this,” and it just waters it down to the point where it's just the main line.

Potentially, the thing that makes these lines work is the uniqueness of them and the curated manner in which they are being published. So, rather than adding more to that unique, curated line, maybe start another line, or look at your main line and figure out ways to craft and curate your main line. I feel like DC has tried to do that. Marvel has, too, where they've split the universes off. There's the X-Men books, and there's the Avenger books, and there's the Spider-Man books, but even that, it tends to lead to excess. Instead of having just 3 or 4 X-Men books, at most, you've got, Jesus, I don't even know. I literally don't even know how many regular X-Men titles are being published right now. I don't even know. How could I possibly know? And that is not the answer. The answer is something else.

[22:47] John: Yeah, and you're going to run into the problem of, what happens when Hayden Sherman, or whoever, isn't there to draw Issues #6 or 7, you run out of time, so you have somebody else come in, and so far, the two issues that have come out, A+. They've been nailing it. Great, all around, but at some point, you're going to run into that problem, where, who's going to draw this thing, and what's that going to do to the sales?

[23:13] David: Yeah, I think I read, Nick Dragotta already needs to skip a month for Issue #4 of Absolute Batman. So, he's not going to clear out the first trade paperback collection.

[23:24] John: I mean, what I think the realistic answer of what's going to happen, is that at some point, this line is going to collapse and then Absolute Batman is going to wind up in a Batman crossover comic, and you’ll have these characters come in. It would be interesting to take a line like this and really build it around the creative talent, where when you hit that point in, let's say, Issue #7 or something, where you're not going to have the same artist doing it, ideally, if you get it timed write, that book goes on hiatus, and a different book replaces it, and you have this leapfrogging thing. For 6 months, you've got a different comic but then next year, you come back, and it's more Batman with these guys, really taking the small TV season with a small creative team situation, and expanding it here, but treating the line like a network, and not like a series of books, where you have a new show coming out, and not the same new show, every day.

[24:18] David: I like that idea. My solution was a little different. I was thinking, giving super strong editorial control over the line, that would allow it to stay small, seemed like a path to success, but you can't do that, internally, because the mechanisms are going to force there to be more, because if something is succeeding, then the company is going to try to do more of that thing, but if you license that line out, let's say the Absolute line gets started at DC and then gets licensed out to another company, like Boom Studios, for example, now it completely changes, because now DC is acting as a licensor. They're purposely not going to allow Boom to do more than a certain number of books.

[25:06] John: Oh, that’s interesting. I see what you mean.

[25:08] David: So, now Boom can only do 4 books, because that's all they have the license to do. They can't do more than that. So, for the business, the mechanics completely flip, and you go from the inevitability of a line turning into this giant tree to the inevitability of that line staying super tight and curated, because that's what the business mandate and contracts say. So, I was thinking about that. The only way I could think of to keep this line small and tight, and interesting, and separate, would be something that. I think yours is more reasonable, and probably more likely.

[25:49] John: That is an interesting way to think about quality control. Chris Conroy is overseeing the Absolute line, and I think he's been one of the prestige title editors at DC for a while, but it's funny that you have, “what if you offloaded it from DC editorial to control quality?” Not out of a disrespect to the editorial staff there, but just out of changing the business mechanisms of it.

[26:13] David: Nothing to do with the editorial staff. It’s strictly a business. That's the only way I can think of the business of the comics not forcing this thing to grossly overgrow.

[26:26] John: Yeah. That's a funny business reality to deal with.

[26:31] David: Well, John, we talked a lot about the Absolute and Ultimates today.

[26:34] John: Yeah.

[26:35] David: I think I feel complete on this subject, for now.

[26:37] John: Me, too. Absolutely. Do you get it?

[26:40] David: I do.

[26:42] John: Whenever I hear the word “ultimatum,” and I think of the comic, Ultimatum, that was one of the reboots, the way I always hear it, what's the superhero? Radioactive Man, is that it's always Radioactive Man when the Arnold Schwarzenegger character was playing him in The Simpsons episode, in an early season, and his slogan is “up and atom!”, but he kept saying, “up and at them.” He couldn't contract it. So, I always hear, “Ultimate them.” That's always the way I hear “ultimatum.”

[27:13] David: Oh, my God. Comics have rotted your brain completely.

[27:17] John: Oh, yeah.

[27:18] David: That was fun. John. Thanks for chatting about the Ultimate and Absolute lines. I am enjoying the Ultimate line. Specifically, Ultimate X-Men. I think that's definitely been my jam. Ultimate Spider-Man, I've been reading on the digital apps and enjoying it, and those are really the only two that really caught my attention, but I'm really excited about the Absolute line. Absolute Batman, I thought, was a great launch. That was really interesting, and I'm excited to read Absolute Wonder Woman and Superman here soon. I read the little preview books that they put out, or the preview samples that came out, and I was super into both of them. The art looks great on all of it. So, I'm excited for that line. DC really has been eating Marvel's lunch, in terms of high-quality art styles, lately. I just think they have all the best artists, right now.

[28:03] John: For my own sake here, I'm going to say, there's some good artists at Marvel, but I do think DC's been taking more chances with the styles, I think.

[28:12] David: I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying some of the Marvel titles. I certainly am, and some of the art that's coming out of Marvel, like the Incredible Hulk stuff that Nic Klein is doing, oh, my God, dude. That that stuff is so good. Nic Klein’s amazing. So, there's definitely some guys over at Marvel that are interesting. Just overall, on the aggregate, on the whole, I think that DC's really invested a lot of energy in getting really great voices and talent on a lot of their books. So, just on the whole, I really think DC is doing a great job with that, and historically, that's not been the case. Historically, I think Marvel's always eaten DC's lunch. So, it's an interesting, unique data point, to me. Then, the Absolute line is just a perfect example of that - DC’s emphasis on unique, interesting artistic voices, and I think that's it. That's all I’ve got.

[29:02] John: Alright.

[29:03] David: Thanks, John. Thanks for chatting, and thanks, everybody, for listening. I hope you got something out of that. I don't know what it could possibly be, but something.

[29:10] John: See you next week, everybody.

[29:12] David: Bye, everybody.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at www.thecornerbox.club and we’ll be back next week with more from David and John, here at The Corner Box.