Fan-favorite comic book artist Skottie Young has revealed three of his “Absolute-LY” variant covers for the launch issues of DC’s upcoming “Absolute” line of comic titles. I’ve always enjoyed Young’s playful a cartoony comic art style.
This upcoming line of comics features reinvented versions of DC characters, and the stories are set in an alternate Earth shaped by Darkseid in the same way Doomsday Clock revealed the DC Universe was shaped by Superman.
This is part of DC’s broader “All In” initiative, which launches with DC All In #1 next week. All-In was written by Scott Snyder and Williamson, will be a flipbook, with one side drawn by Daniel Sampere and the other drawn by Wes Craig. In it, half the story will be told from Superman’s perspective, and some from Darkseid’s.
Young said of his work: “I had a hard time thinking of how to approach these. At first I thought about making them connecting covers. I quickly dropped that idea. Then I started looking around at all the wonderful variants that were already out there for these titles.
“They’re all so damn cool! That made me think. Similar to my thoughts on my TMNT cover, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to OUT-COOL all the other covers. So I’ll do what I do and just make myself laugh. When in doubt, joke it out. That’s what I always say.”
Snyder said of the series: “What we came up with, along with a bunch of great creators — Mark Waid and everybody else working on the lead up to it — is that, during the events of AP, unbeknownst to the superheroes, Darkseid starts to realize that something has always been missing.
“He senses something in a special moment during Absolute Power that we don’t want to spoil. He senses something has changed, and once he realizes this, it sets him off on a quest that’s going to bring him into direct conflict with this new Justice League that Superman is setting up — this more robust Justice League. The collision between those two forces will reshape the DC cosmology.”
That’s what makes is “a dangerous, wild new planet” — the Absolute DC Universe — where Snyder said they have brought in some of the biggest names in comics as well as some rising stars to kick off an epic story that will drive DC for years to come.
“If the main universe is ‘founded on Superman energy,’ then the Absolute universe is ‘founded on Darkseid energy.’ In it, the heroes are underdogs, and the world is darker, so (per Snyder) ‘They have to be tougher, they’ve got to be more resourceful, they have to shine brighter.’”
