10 Best Characters In DC Comics' Absolute Universe, Ranked

A year into the experiment that is DC's Absolute Universe, it's time for all comic book fans to finally admit one thing they never thought they would: Darkseid is a pretty good writer. The Dark Lord of Apokalips (having entered into a transdimensional state of being that grants him universe-creating abilities) is responsible for guiding the development of this reality in DC Comics lore, wanting to create a universe where his myopic philosophy is cosmic law, and heroes thereby must fight for justice with the odds eternally stacked against them.

In actual reality, of course, the Absolute Universe is run by a team of DC's most-talented writers and artists: Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman (who craft the Eisner Award-winning dark fantasy myth of "Absolute Wonder Woman"), Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval (the might behind the revolutionary "Absolute Superman"), Jeff Lemire and Nick Robles (bringing up a lone Wally West in "Absolute Flash"), Al Ewing and Jahnoy Lindsay (whose cosmic nightmares fuel "Absolute Green Lantern"), and Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez (bending thoughts and pages through "Absolute Martian Manhunter"). "Absolute Batman" — arguably the flagship title of this initiative — is drawn by Nick Dragotta and written by Scott Snyder, the latter of whom also shepherds the universe overall.

These comic creators have gone to great lengths to surprise readers with totally reimagined characters that are not only interesting and unexpected but just as engaging as their mainstream counterparts — if not moreso, in some ways. As they prepare to face the impending existential threat that is the Absolute Justice League, we can't help but shout out our favorite heroes and villains in DC's Absolute Universe comic book epic so far.

Of all the characters on this list, Sojourner "Jo" Mullein was the hardest to place. Despite being well-written enough to earn her an undeniable spot in the top 10, she's unfortunately the weakest of the Absolute Universe's current marquee characters for two reasons. First, the mainstream DC Universe version of Jo is one of the best new superheroes in comics, still largely defined by her debut miniseries "Far Sector." As such, she not only has essentially zero lore to remix, but was already a character written to interrogate the themes and tropes of the "Green Lantern" mythos. This doesn't give "Absolute Green Lantern" writer Al Ewing much room to surprise readers.

Further, Ewing's method of sidestepping this problem gives way to Jo's second drawback — "Absolute Green Lantern" is more of an ensemble series than it lets on. She immediately has to share the spotlight with other characters from "Green Lantern" comics, including Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner. Even so, as Ewing and Jahnoy Lindsay continue to explore her history (with more breathing room in the wake of the series' initial arc), Jo remains a uniquely compelling character through which to challenge the core "Green Lantern" themes of law, order, justice, and emotional control. 

In this universe, she and the above heroes are all citizens of a town called Evergreen, Nevada, where an alien (the Absolute variant of Abin Sur) held them captive and effectively forced them to become agents of a new, more spiritually based emotional spectrum based on chaos, restraint, correct action, and absolute understanding. In the aftermath of his visit, Jo accidentally absorbed the green light of correct action and must now protect her planet from the existential threat of the chaos-driven Blackstar Corps.

From Jay Garrick to Bart Allen, the extended "Flash family" had long been one of the most positive teams in comics. Speedsters in the mainstream DC Universe draw their power from the Speed Force that profoundly connects them all to something greater than themselves — so what happens when you isolate one of them entirely?

This is precisely what "Darkseid" (the running pseudonym for the team of brilliant sadists running DC's Absolute Universe) wanted to explore in Jeff Lemire and Nick Robles' "Absolute Flash," an ongoing series that reimagines Wally West as the first and only speedster in his universe. Rather than drawing his power from the Speed Force, Wally gains his lightning-fast speed through a horrific accident at the military base where his father Rudy works. Growing up in the military, the 15-year-old Army brat had resigned himself to a forced nomadic life, avoiding the pain of making friends that would ultimately disappear in a flash. The Barry Allen of this universe — now a government scientist working on an advanced program called "Project Olympus" — saw Wally's loneliness and tried to make him feel welcome in the lab.

Catastrophically, this led Wally to seek refuge there one evening while Barry was running a dangerous test, and when Wally got too close, he was imbued with destructive, uncontrollable gifts that caused him to accidentally reduce Barry to a heap of charred flesh and bone (a callback to one of the most iconic and brutal deaths in the DC Universe). While Wally is robbed of the support system that normally defines him, he remains every bit as relatable thanks to Lemire's characterization. He's a scared, anxious teen realistically struggling with the curse of speed, and his scrappy fight to survive has been electrifying to read so far.

Unlike most other major characters in the Absolute Universe, it's hard to call Veronica Cale a classic stalwart of the mainstream DCU. She wasn't even created until the early 2000s (by Greg Rucka and Drew Johnson, for their run on "Wonder Woman"), at which point she was essentially just a copy of Lex Luthor — a wealthy, self-made businesswoman who saw Wonder Woman's natural power as a threat to her worldview and thus chose to use her resources to prove to the world that she (as a representative of humanity, of course) was superior. Suffice it to say, when comic book fans talk about their favorite "Wonder Woman" villains, her name hardly comes up alongside Cheetah, Doctor Psycho, or Circe.

This makes the fact that Veronica Cale is shaping up to be one of the most important — and most interesting — characters in the entire Absolute Universe so exciting. Introduced in the fourth issue of Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman's "Absolute Wonder Woman," Cale is a dangerously powerful government scientist who runs a shady black site lab called "Area 41" (indeed, Darkseid wasted zero time populating the Absolute Universe with obviously evil secret laboratories). 

After witnessing Diana's power against the Tetracide (a horrifyingly rad mythological creature), Cale resolved to steel her interests against a clear surge of uncontrollable power in the world. She is one of the founding members of this Absolute Justice League, a group comprised of sociopathic power mongers like herself who seek to maintain their dark dominion over Darkseid's creation.

The version of Bane, created by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta for "Absolute Batman," feels like he was pulled from a Cormac McCarthy novel. This terrifying, unstoppable hulk of brute force, unmatched skill, and boundless intellect was born on Santa Prisca, a small Caribbean island rich with natural resources. As a result, the island had been drowned by over a century of constant war — foreign armies from across the world would arrive attempting to overwhelm the island's people with numbers and advanced weaponry, forcing every citizen of Santa Prisca to live for conflict. From its earliest descriptions by Alfred Pennyworth (in this universe, a covert British intelligence asset fighting on the front lines of Batman's crusade), Santa Prisca sounds a lot like Gotham — by extension, Absolute Bane is an even deeper reflection of the Dark Knight than his mainstream counterpart.

Being born and raised in war, Bane saw the impressive limits of his own body. He still recognized them as limits. Capital, on the other hand, had no threshold for what it could control. When it arrived on his island's shores manifested in the form of a white man in a white suit whose smile never gave way to laughter, Bane embraced the same kind of offer Bruce Wayne would reject years later from Roman Sionis — capitulation to the moneyed forces that control the world in exchange for the resources needed to save his home. Thereafter, Bane became a roving assassin and terrorist, using the venom in his veins to maximize his body and mind. Snyder and Dragotta go to great lengths to mythologize him as a Judge Holden-esque force of nature, whose powers are so vast and total that they strangle the imagination of anyone who might hope to resist.

The only reason why the Absolute Universe version of the Joker isn't ranked even higher on this list is that he's still a relative mystery to us. As of writing, DC have yet to release "Absolute Batman" #15," a long-awaited installment in Snyder and Dragotta's ongoing series that is set to unpack the shrouded origin of this reimagined character and, presumably, catalyze his reign as this Batman's direct archnemesis. Images of the issue's cover — which depict the Joker as a massive, dragon-like creature from eldritch horror — have been circulating online among comic book fans for months.

Despite all that we don't know about him, what has been revealed thus far is more than enough to earn the Joker a spot at least this high on our list. Darkseid has effectively swapped the histories of the Dark Knight and the Clown Prince of Crime, turning the latter into an unimaginably wealthy businessman who traveled the world training himself to be the preeminent warrior of our time (or, if certain fan theories turn out to be true, all time). As he likely discovered, fists and swords are no match for the power of money when it comes to global domination — that being the case, he spends most of his time operating dueling conglomerates that keep the world in a state of anxious, profitable paralysis.

Through JK Holdings, he keeps the masses obsessed and distracted by pop culture, entertainment, and material escapism; through Killjoy, he operates as a private defense contractor and prison magnate, building black site detention centers to imprison and experiment upon the world's most vulnerable people. The Joker's motivations are in part fueled by an absolute understanding of his reality. Having observed the "Omega Particle" and determined that the building blocks of reality have a moral quality to them, he believes his wickedness is objectively righteous.

At its core, "Absolute Superman" is a story about absolute power — and whether or not it's ever possible for such might to be wielded for good. Brainiac, an iconic "Superman" foe who is normally brilliantly calculating, classically imposing, and inhumanly cold, has been rewritten from the ground up to make him a tragic and terrifying antagonist that subtly mirrors the origin of the Absolute Superman himself.

Centuries before the series' present, Brainiac was born into the Brainiac Collective, a race of humanoid aliens who ostensibly operated as a single unit with the joint purpose of amassing knowledge. However, equality was a false promise in this so-called collective — one of them was arbitrarily assigned a lifetime of isolation in the bowels of a large spaceship, duty-bound to shovel the bodies of dead Brainiacs aboard into a furnace in perpetuity. Corpses appeared at his door with such consistency and volume that he performed this duty essentially without rest for over 130 years. When he finally was able to finish his task, he discovered that everyone on the ship had died, making him the one and only Brainiac, at long last.

By the time he got to Earth, Ra's al Ghul had already established his own might and saw Brainiac as a potentially useful ally despite the obvious psychological damage the alien had suffered as a result of his post. He helped the Lazarus Corporation expand their empire, eventually able to hide his guiding hand in plain sight by adopting the facade of a disembodied corporate AI which enables him to enjoy near-total control over their operations.

In the Absolute Universe, the Brainiac Collective isn't all that different from Krypton during its final years as a planet. Though we haven't seen any Kryptonians relegated to eternal corpse-burning duties, their caste system is designed to keep people every bit as trapped in positions of inescapable servitude. The "S" that would soon stand for "Superman" was not a house sigil on Krypton, but it's  the emblem of the planet's Labor Guild, the lowest rung in their brutal and unscalable sociopolitical ladder.

Rather than being sent to Earth as a baby, where the sun's rays would immediately turn him into a god-like being before memories were even formed, Kal-El spent much of his childhood on Krypton as a decidedly unextraordinary laborer. It's a small but powerful change to the character, giving him the life experience to relate to humanity's most vulnerable as one of them. In the mainstream DC Universe, Superman was raised as a human, but has had the power to assume the role of benevolent protector his entire life — in the Absolute Universe, Superman is ideologically and emotionally driven to eviscerate oppression wherever it may exist.

It's certainly an edgier take on the character, though one that's more justifiable, creative, and interesting than "what if super strength actually makes you mean." The tone is also supported by the changes writer Jason Aaron made to his power set, elevating the element of danger far above other "Superman" adventures.

The Absolute Universe has made some radical changes to core DC Comics characters in a very short amount of time, most of which we haven't even talked about. But above even an un-smiling, dragon-like Joker, an adorable sidekick Gorilla Grodd, and a Lex Luthor with hair, no character has been as dramatically altered as the hero of "Absolute Martian Manhunter."

The series' title is a bit of a misnomer. Not only does the character not really go by the name "Martian Manhunter," he isn't even of Martian origin. Rather, the "Martian" is actually a symbiotic extraterrestrial being that bonds with the mind of an average FBI agent named John Jones. While possessed by this alien, John gains not super strength, flight, or the shapeshifting gifts of his mainstream counterpart but a whole host of abstract telepathic abilities that — at the risk of oversimplifying a frankly brilliant comic that demands to be read in physical form — allows him to fight directly within the arena of human emotional connection.

Heady as this sounds for a superhero comic book series, Deniz Camp and Javier Rodríguez's imaginative use of the medium helps the reader better understand the psychological experience of John and his personal Martian invader. His journey is overwhelming, as much as it is exciting, thrillingly dangerous, and beautiful to behold. While every other Absolute hero continues to center violence as the main vehicle of justice, the Absolute Martian Manhunter asks readers to think beyond physical dominance, to imagine a world where empathy is the ultimate super power.

A cross between Diana of Themyscira and the hero from the manga "Berserk," the Absolute Wonder Woman is the unleashed mythical warrior comic book fans have been dying for. Kidnapped from her birthplace on Themyscira as an infant by a vengeful Zeus, the Diana of this universe was abandoned in Hell — a dangerous magical island where an exiled Circe raised Diana as a daughter. Because of this, Wonder Woman's fighting style and equipment have been completely overhauled to reflect the dark magic she was surrounded by during her formative years. She uses three lassos instead of one, each holding a unique ability such as transforming her enemies or tormenting them with the fire of their sins. She also possesses some spell-casting abilities and flies around on a skeletal winged battle-horse called pegasus.

Similar to how "Absolute Superman" creates more depth for its title character by granting his past life greater influence over his present heroism, "Absolute Wonder Woman" makes Diana a one-woman harbinger of the mythological chaos now thrust upon the mortal world. With the realm of gods and monsters at the doorstep of humanity (and with bad actors like Veronica Cale eager to exploit their gifts for power) she gets to be sword and shield all in one, the ultimate weapon to quell the wrath of gods.

Absolute Batman isn't just the best character in the entire Absolute Universe — he might be the best superhero headlining a DC Comic right now. The first issue by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta was the best-selling single comic book issue of 2024, and the collected edition of the series' first arc "The Zoo" cracked the top 5 of the New York Times bestsellers list. The series has been an absolute sensation so far, thanks in large part to the daring changes Snyder made to the character of Bruce Wayne.

If you haven't heard already, this version of the Dark Knight is a working-class civil engineer who operates a scrappy guerrilla crime-fighting movement that's less "war on crime" and more "hack the rich to bits with the Bat-battle-axe I have strapped to my 50-inch chest." He is a monster — and he needs to be, given that his enemies are so cartoonishly monstrous themselves that the terminus of "Absolute Batman" as a comic feels like a genre blend of "The Dark Knight" and "Elden Ring."

More than his might, this Bruce Wayne is a genuinely relatable and emotionally engaging underdog so fed up with the cruelty and corruption of the world's most powerful people that he's willing to suffer any punishment to take one step further toward justice. He is a righteous, relentless, enraged force of nature we defy you not to rally behind — a true hero who reminds readers why superhero comics inspire us in the first place.