Absolute Batman #15

Feb 2026 · DC · 4.99 USD

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“The Joker”

About this Issue

Absolute Batman #15 marks the first full appearance and origin reveal of the Absolute Joker — Jack Grimm V — a radical reimagining that inverts the classic Batman/Joker dynamic by casting the villain as a trillionaire aristocrat with a manor, a butler, and a hidden cave, while Batman is the working-class outsider. The issue is structurally bold: told entirely through Alfred Pennyworth's unreliable intelligence briefing to Bruce, it deliberately echoes Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 'The Killing Joke' by leaving the Joker's true nature — possibly an immortal entity cycling through centuries of identities under the Grimm family name — ambiguous and all the more terrifying for it. It also brought Scott Snyder back together with artist Jock, a pairing that had defined some of the most critically significant Batman work of the 2010s, lending the issue the weight of a genuine creative reunion rather than a fill-in issue. The issue went to at least four printings and is widely cited as the point at which the Absolute Batman series shifted from origin-arc storytelling into full-throated mythology-building.

writer Scott Snyder · artist, inker Jock · colorist Frank Martin · letterer Clayton Cowles · cover Nick Dragotta

ComicBooks.com Value

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Raw (NM) $10

CGC 9.8 · 6305 in census $65

CGC 9.6 · 154 in census $40

CGC 9.4 · 37 in census $30*

CGC 9.2 · 13 in census $26*

CGC 9.0 · 8 in census $25*

CGC 8.5 · 11 in census $20*

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CGC 8.0 · 2 in census $20*

CGC 7.5 · 1 in census $20*

CGC 7.0 · 1 in census $20*

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History

Snyder had telegraphed the Absolute Joker's conceptual DNA well before issue #15, describing in public interviews how the character would function as Bruce Wayne's ideological mirror image — order versus chaos, wealth versus poverty — with a manor, a butler, and his own equivalent of the Batcave. The Joker's monstrous alternate form had been teased in shadow across the series since issue #1, with Dragotta designing the creature gradually before Jock was brought in for the full reveal. Jock, who noted in a post-publication interview that he had to consciously 'recalibrate' his visual understanding of both Batman and Joker before tackling the issue, drew on his formative 2000 AD roots to craft the issue's repeating panel structures — an identical compositional layout returned across different historical eras, progressively darkening — as the backbone of the storytelling. The issue is lettered by Clayton Cowles and colored by Frank Martin, and is collected as the opening chapter of Absolute Batman Vol. 3, provisionally titled 'Devil's Workshop.'

Trivia · 9 facts

First full appearance and origin of the Absolute Joker (Jack Grimm V), whose cameo had been teased since Absolute Batman #1 (October 2024).
Written by Scott Snyder with interior art by guest artist Jock; cover art by Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin; lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Published December 10, 2025, with a cover date of February 2026; part of DC's Absolute Universe 'All In' continuity.
The Absolute Joker is reimagined as a potentially immortal trillionaire heading the Grimm media dynasty, which traces back to a street-performing clown in 1880s Gotham — a deliberate role-reversal of the wealth dynamic between Batman and the Joker in main DC continuity.
The issue ends with the Joker entering a hidden cave beneath his manor via a grandfather clock mechanism — a direct structural mirror of Bruce Wayne's Batcave in classic DC continuity.
Marks the return of the Snyder/Jock creative partnership, their most significant Batman collaboration since Batman: The Black Mirror (2011); the duo had also worked together on the Image Comics horror series Wytches.
The issue went to at least four printings; the second printing arrived in February 2026 and the third was announced by Snyder on social media in mid-2026.
Issue #15 opens the storyline collected in Absolute Batman Vol. 3 ('Devil's Workshop'), alongside the 2025 Annual, Absolute Batman: Ark M #1, and issues #16–18.
An animated series adaptation of Absolute Batman was announced at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2026, with Snyder as showrunner/executive producer and Dragotta as producer — a development for which the series' broad narrative arc, including the Joker mythology established in #15, forms the source material.