WonderCon 2026: Imagine Daniel Warren Johnson On ‘Absolute Batman’ — Scott Snyder Talks The Future Of Absolute DC

Scott Snyder is one of the most popular comic book writers today. Whether it’s his creator owned projects or work at DC Comics, fans show up to read his books. As a special guest at WonderCon 2026, Snyder held a nearly hour-long Q&A session during his creator spotlight. He was a little more candid in this environment and went into spoiler territory when discussing his involvement in the current DC Absolute Universe (AU). 

He didn’t initially plan on writing Absolute Batman. When he shared the idea of the AU to other creators to recruit them for the ambitious project, he pitched Batman to both Jason Aaron and Kelly Thompson. Both were more interested in their current titles: Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman respectively. He even approached Daniel Warren Johnson to write and draw Absolute Batman. The timing didn’t work out because Johnson was already working on the award-winning Transformers series at Skybound, although it hadn’t been announced yet.

Snyder always pictured himself doing a lesser profile series in the AU. “When we populate all these books, I’ll do a small one like Absolute Detective Chimp,” he recalled thinking. But the business people at DC Comics didn’t think it would do well financially. Instead, since Absolute Batman was still available, he told Nick Dragotta that he would do it if the artist would as well. The rest is history.

Fans can expect many exciting things coming up in the AU. Snyder teased even more B-list villains for his series, including Firefly and Mad Hatter. In 2027, some new and original bag guys will arrive following the events of the current Scarecrow arc. 

“Then at #25, at the end, big things happen in the series that kind of spin it,” he continued, “It’s almost like our Empire Strikes Back, so it’s a really rough on Batman. And then the next arc, after that, is when he’s really trying to kind of make sense of what happened and win back his friends. That’s where some new villains kind of come in. So it’ll be in ’27 like the beginning of ’27, because the whole city is different because of what happens in this arc with Scarecrow. That engenders this kind of rebirth of terrible new villains that aren’t afraid of Batman any more. He’s like broken by it so he sort of like has to come back in a bigger and more violent way.”

The AU has already delivered a Batman and Wonder Woman crossover. This November, all the superheroes will finally meet in an even larger crossover where they get together for the first time. That event will be co-written by Snyder and Aaron.