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There are a lot of people to credit with the smashing success of DC's Absolute Batman. There's original writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta, to start, then there's editor Katie Kubert, and of course, the hundreds of thousands of folks who are buying copies of the comic each month. But was we look back on the Absolute Universe's biggest hit so far, let's not forget to thank one rather influential comic book writer, without whom the story might've been very, very different.

That writer is Tiny Onion's own James Tynion IV, who recently sat down with Popverse's editor-in-chief, Chris Arrant, at C2E2 2026. During the course of their discussion, Chris brought up Tynion's lesser-known contributions to Absolute Batman's existence, asking the Something is Killing the Children writer and comics business pioneer to explain his side of the story.

"The way I always put that whole era was," Tynion began, "It was kind of a year and a half of me being like, 'Scott, why are you doing this?' He was going back into superheroes, and that meant that he kept calling me. I could tell that he didn't realize that he was asking permission to this."

Tynion said that Snyder, who had already made Batman history with his legendary Court of the Owls storyline, "was really excited to do this," but "worried about how it would go." As a result, says Tynion, the American Vampire writer looked for another possible creator to take on Absolute Batman's script duties, at one point even floating the idea by Tynion himself.

"He tried to get me to write Batman a bunch of times," the author said, "And I was like, 'I just quit Batman a year and a half ago.'"

Eventually, Tynion laid it all out on the table for his mentor and frequent DC collaborator.

"'You will never forgive yourself if you don't write this,'" Tynion told Snyder, "'You also, as a creator, can't let anybody else write this. This is something that's so personal to you and the spirit of this is so 'you' that if someone else is writing it, it's not going to be the same thing.' Especially once they started talking to Nick Dragotta and all of that, it's like no, you and Nick have to do this book and it's going to be the coolest thing in the world."

"And it is!" Tynion concluded, and we know a lot of comic book buyers who would agree. 

Snyder & Dragotta's Absolute Batman #21 heads to comic shops everywhere June 17. In the meantime, you can watch Popverse's full interview with James Tynion IV below:

Here's an update to date guide on the Absolute Batman release schedule.