The Hype Is Real If anyone still doubted that Absolute Batman was more than a flashy line-wide reinvention, issue #17 should continue to bring that view to a swift close. This series doesn’t just expand its rogue’s gallery, it rewires it. And the result is electrifying. #17 continues to provide complete re-imaginings of the Bat's famous rogues gallery, and it's Poison Ivy's turn to step up to the plate and get the Absolute treatment. She emerges not merely as an eco-terrorist or seductive botanist, but as something far more ideologically coherent and far more dangerous. Her motivations feel sharpened, less operatic and more systemic. Visually, the issue leans into the grotesque beauty of Ivy’s domain. The art team balances lush, invasive growth with urban decay, making every panel feel like a battleground between concrete and chlorophyll. Gotham doesn’t just host the conflict, it becomes the canvas for it. Most importantly, #17 confirms something long-time readers have...
Won't the Real Hulk Please Stand Up? The Infernal Hulk comic series grants Bruce Banner his wish of separation from his monster, but the progression of the story reminds us to be careful of what we wish for. One of the most unsettling ideas in The Infernal Hulk is not that Bruce Banner loses the Hulk, but that losing him doesn’t bring relief. Banner is free of the monster, yet he is weaker, disoriented, and haunted by something that refuses to stay gone. The Hulk persists, not as a body, but as an absence that still shapes Banner’s life. This dynamic closely mirrors what philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes through the phantom limb. Amputees often continue to feel sensations in limbs that no longer exist. For Merleau-Ponty, this happens because the body is not merely a physical object, but a lived structure, a body schema through which we orient ourselves in the world. When something is removed, the body’s orientation does not immediately adjust. Banner’s condition in The ...