Free Comic Friday: Absolute Power

Absolute Power 2024 FCBD Special Edition #1
“Prelude to Absolute Power”
Script: Mark Waid
Art: Mikel Janin
Color: Trish Mulvihill
Letters: Ariana Maher
Cover: Dan Mora
Associate editor: Matthew Levine
Editor: Paul Kaminski
Published by: DC
Released: May 4, 2024

DC continuity has long been a mess, but I'm finding myself even further out of the loop than usual these days. The company's headlining Free Comic Book Day offering, a prelude to the current company-wide “Absolute Power” crossover, doesn't clear up a whole lot, but it does its job, providing a welcoming on-ramp to the event itself.

The issue opens with a new character with which I actually am familiar: Failsafe, Batman's backup plan in the event he should ever have to take himself down. The robot, who Clock King accurately describes in this issue as “Batman crossed with the Terminator,” debuted in Chip Zdarsky's opening arc of the main Batman title, hearkening back to Waid's first story as lead writer on JLA. I enjoyed those first six issues of Zdarsky's “Batman,” but then things got all multiversal. Don't get me wrong; I love alternate reality stories, but lately there's been a lot of them. I started to say Batman isn't really the ideal character for those stories, but then I remembered how much I unexpectedly appreciated “Flashpoint Beyond.”

Anyway, I've not caught up on Zdarsky's run after the second trade, but somewhere along the way, Failsafe made himself look more like Batman and allied himself with Amanda Waller, Failsafe may get the center spot on the cover, but Waller's pulling the strings here, ramping up her familiar Suicide Squad program to do... something.

We're introduced to her latest machinations at the Hall of Order, formerly known as the Hall of Justice. Serving as our point-of-view character is a villain named Haywire who I know from sharing a name with an obscure Marvel character and … apparently another DC character. I bought the first issue of a late 80s comic called “Haywire” out of a dollar bin a while back, because I'm often intrigued by the discovery of DC and Marvel characters I didn't know existed, but the Fandom disambiguation page tells me that's a different dude.

Whoever he is, Haywire gets the 50-cent tour from Clock King and sees Harley Quinn training with Black Alice and somebody named Deadeye* and Green Arrow consulting with Waller herself. No fan of heavy-handed government regimes, Mr. Queen's presence intrigued me, having fallen off his latest series back around issue 3.

Haywire is escorted to a chamber where he's told to blast a floating machine that reminds me a little bit of that probe droid Chewbacca destroys at the beginning of “The Empire Strikes Back.” Failsafe presents it like a test of his powers, but Waller makes it clear the machine is the key to... something. As Haywire fires on it, the machine starts drawing his power, until, well...

I briefly thought this meant my copy of “Haywire” #1 might be worth more than a dollar now, but that was before they were disambiguated.

From there, Waller checks in with Dreamer, who is a character introduced on the CW's “Supergirl” after I stopped watching it regularly and about whom I know only that she's precognitive and trans (I figure there's more to the character than that). But she's the focal point of a Suicide Squad limited series and Waller, who asks her if her plan is going to succeed. Dreamer tells Waller she can't see anything, but this double page spread indicates she's lying:

Before Waller can press Dreamer any more, Failsafe announces an alien spacecraft has entered the atmosphere and “may well contain exactly what we require.” With that, we're referred to the “House of Braniac” crossover coming up** in Superman and other comics, listed in a handy checklist.

I was surprised when I went back and re-read this that it was only 12 pages, two of which were that ominous splash. It is clearly just a teaser story that probably isn't even required reading for the main event, but it doesn't feel slight. Maybe people who have been following contemporary DC stuff more closely than I have found this unnecessary or repetitive, but it piqued my interest in “Absolute Power.”

Other than the presence of Failsafe, who came out of the box really intimidating, nothing about the circumstances seems that unusual or imposing, but Waid infuses it with an air of menace and mystery nonetheless. One complaint I have seen is that this take on Waller is less nuanced than her portrayal in early Suicide Squad stories by John Ostrander, but I've only read a few of those and was admittedly pretty distracted by William Hell.

The issue also includes character profiles for Waller, Failsafe and the House of Brainiac, of whom the female-looking robot appears to be a representative. There's also a guide to recent DC events leading up to “Absolute Power” and an excerpt from the first issue, which is pretty intriguing as well.

This is on the higher end of what I expect from the Big Two for Free Comic Book Day: an invitation to an upcoming storyline but one that feels like more than filler. I count that as a win.

* - Not, I presume, the Bullseye-Deadshot mash-up killed on the first page of Assassins.

** - Coming up then; probably over now.