By all accounts, DC’s Absolute Comics line has been a big win. Absolute Batman is currently number 5 on the New York Times Best Sellers list for comics and manga, and the title was the best-selling comic book of 2024. Other titles like Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman have sold exceedingly well, and have been favorites of critics.
More importantly, they’re bringing in new readers.
“The people I talk to are a pretty big sample size of retailers, and the refrain that I hear is that people seem excited,” Absolute Batman writer Scott Snyder says during an interview with Casually Comics. “They’ve got new readers for Ultimate Universe, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Absolute Universe. So, they do see a lot of new readers.”
According to Scott Snyder, social media and memes have had a lot to do with it.
“Weirdly, there’s a lot of talk and buzz about those books on TikTok, which I didn’t even realize. I guess they’re a lot more memeable, the Absolute and Ultimate books. They’re bringing in a bunch of young readers, which is awesome. I have heard that from retailers.”
It also helps that the titles are self-contained with no crossovers, making them new-reader friendly.
“Some fans really don’t like interconnectivity, and that’s one of the reasons the Absolute line has been a lot of fun for them. It’s just that it’s so standalone. We are starting to interconnect those characters there. Wonder Woman and Batman meet for the first time in January. So, you have a place to go that’s really sort of individuated titles.”
Check out DC’s Absolute Comics line at your local comic shop….or TikTok.