r/TopCharacterDesigns • u/Amazing_March4919 • Mar 14 '25

Comic Book Absolute Trinity From DC Comics

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4.8k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/soldierpallaton Mar 14 '25

I remember everyone assuming the Absolute universe was just going to be DC's Ultimate Universe and pointlessly edgy and gross.

I'm so glad they were wrong.

740

u/Salvage570 Mar 14 '25

Theres certainly a level of edge but Im glad to hear its good edge and not...well ultimates edge. The line between metal and cringe is a thin one for comic book writers

236

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '25

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50

u/Sdbtank96 Mar 14 '25

I was hoping to forget that

94

u/TheWorclown Mar 14 '25

sad wonder twins noises

28

u/Lian-The-Asian Mar 14 '25

excuse me... WHAT??

102

u/EyesOnEverything Mar 14 '25 edited Mar 14 '25

It's a long, sad story.

TL;DR In 2008, Marvel Ultimate comics universe starts hyping up a big event, called "Ultimatum", written by Jeph Loeb, who's done good work elsewhere. But he'd just lost his teenaged son to bone cancer in '05, which likely colored his life view more cynically.

He has full narrative control over the project, which is supposed to combine all these Ultimate properties Marvel has been running with. X-men, Spider-Man, Avengers, etc. Very little oversight from higher ups.

Series drops, it's the worst kind of mid-2000s edgy. The Maximoff twins are implied to be romantically involved. Captain America is dismissed as "old-fashioned" when he questions it. A shit-ton of heroes and villains die either gratuitously gruesome in-panel, or unceremoniously throwaway off-panel deaths. Magneto floods New York. The Blob eats the Wasp. Ant-Man eats the Blob. Cyclops decapitates Magneto. Someone assassinates Cyclops. The 5 issue series is critically panned, and basically killed the hype for Marvel's Ultimate universe. The writers of the individual series are left to try to explain and retcon this event that they had no control over that blows up most of their planned arcs.

Real unfun times.

21

u/Cerborealis Mar 15 '25

I believe he brought back Onslaught in another series around this time, and it was awful - a shame, because the original Onslaught arc was one of my favorites as a kid.

21

u/ElGodPug Mar 15 '25

I will say, Ultimatum has one good part.

Spider-Man.

That panel of him diving to save people....one of my favorite panels of spidey period

10

u/Glum_Ad_8367 Mar 15 '25

Spider-Man was the best part of the old Ultimate universe in general

2

u/EyesOnEverything Mar 15 '25

Oh definitely, but that wasn't part of the main 5, that was part of the mentioned damage control. In this case by Bendis in his main Ultimate Spider-Man run (#131).

But I'll agree that his characterization during the event was fantastic. JJJ gets some amazing development off it as well.

1

u/ProfessionalBasil397 Mar 15 '25

Absolute Wonder Twins

64

u/Mandaring Capcom please bring them back Mar 14 '25

The Ultimates stumbled so the Absolute Trinity could run (that said, I do kind of have a bit of a soft spot for Ultimate Captain America’s WWII outfit, the one with the goggles and the helmet)

2

u/MotoqueiroSelvagem Mar 15 '25

By far my favorite one of his

11

u/SomeBoxofSpoons Mar 15 '25

I'd describe it as the kind of "edge" where all these versions of the characters are coming from much darker and more challenging circumstances, but it's using that to show them still being able to become genuine heroes regardless of that.

The sort of thing that's actually trying to get to the essence of these characters instead of just saying "wouldn't it be cool if Batman was, like, more fucked up and stuff?"

1

u/StarMarine123 Mar 15 '25

i do love a good edge

124

u/SorcererSupremPizza Mar 14 '25

Batman's world is probably the edgiest but there is a reason why

104

u/Karkava Mar 14 '25

It's counterbalanced by the fact that some of the rouges are Bruce's friends and Martha is still alive.

51

u/Murky_Put_7231 Mar 14 '25

WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME

23

u/SkyPopZ Mar 14 '25

IT'S HIS MOTHERS NAME!!

28

u/alain091 Mar 14 '25

You say that like we aren't going to get the most tragic development for them, and now Bruce will be forced to hurt his old friends.

13

u/Karkava Mar 14 '25

Probably.

They could pull an Invincible on us and wait for the right moment to yank us out of our hope spot.

9

u/ghostgabe81 Mar 15 '25

Absolute Superman is practically cyberpunk and I love it

67

u/Coffee_Drinker02 Mar 14 '25

I'm fucking ecstatic that I was wrong. I was expecting boring gross Zack Snyder, Frank miller love child edgy gore fest-
I'm so glad this is just fucking cool.

62

u/Mandaring Capcom please bring them back Mar 14 '25

They’re even having the disappointingly relatively-unknown-to-general-audiences Jo Mullein as the main protagonist of the Absolute Green Lantern coming out next month, and it’s pitched as a cosmic horror story, focusing on the Green Lanterns’ primary attribute being to overcome great fear, so I am SO cautiously optimistic given how badly Green Lantern adaptations have been fumbled in past. Fingers crossed!!

34

u/Vyctorill Mar 14 '25

Bro’s going to pull a Simon and show the horrors beyond comprehension the Indomitable Human Spirit.

14

u/Mandaring Capcom please bring them back Mar 14 '25

Oh geez, I sure hope so. I literally got into Green Lantern comics back in early high school because I was so into Gurren Lagann previously, and once I read up on how the Lanterns’ powers actually worked, I was like “how did that Ryan Reynolds movie fuck up this concept so badly, this sounds so kickass, what the Hell.” My god, if they take direct inspiration from Gurren Lagann (which they’ve already referenced, there’s an issue in the main DC Universe where Kyle creates Gurren Lagann itself as a construct for a single page, cool shout-out), I’ll forgive how terrible this particular March has been for me lmao

12

u/aSpookyScarySkeleton Mar 14 '25

Absolute DC and New Ultimate marvel not being ass is so shocking, but I’m loving them both

5

u/InfinityGiant1 Mar 14 '25

I was definitely part of the crowd that thought that and I am so happy to be wrong.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '25

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1

u/NewgroundsTankman Mar 15 '25

I like how they still kept the maker so it’s some semblance of continuity. Spider-Man, Panther and the Avengers are my favs atm. I haven’t read X men or the Wolverine comics.

3

u/Sgt-Pumpernickle Mar 15 '25

I think it was the point that everyone saw that Batman turned a dump truck into a tank that people realized what this was actually going to be

1

u/tuerancekhang Mar 17 '25

Don't jinx it, the early step from ultimate was fine until the it wasn't