Written by: Kelly Thompson
Art by: Hayden Sherman
Colors by: Jordie Bellaire
Letters by: Becca Carey
Cover art by: Hayden Sherman, Jordie Bellaire (cover A)
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: December 24, 2025
Absolute Wonder Woman #15, by DC Comics on 12/24/25, marks DC's first-ever Absolute team-up, and it's essentially a 24-page conversation about whether a magic cop and a bat detective can become pals.
First Impressions
The opening is brisk and confident, dropping us into Gotham's swamp with Diana already mid-mission and Batman immediately suspicious. The early banter between these two characters feels natural and grounded, with genuine chemistry forming through rapid-fire exchanges about magic, blood magic, and Greek hospitality. Yet something immediately rings hollow about the pacing; we're told everything that's happening rather than shown much of anything, and the dialogue, while charming at first, starts sounding like a Wikipedia article on Hecate's worship practices pretty quickly.
Plot Analysis
The issue opens in Gateway City with Veronica Cale and someone named Grimm discussing how Diana and Batman have become symbols, and they're going to use that against them. Cut to Gotham, where Diana crashes into a battle scene with a magical bat symbol before introducing herself to Batman in what amounts to a speed-dating session with exposition. She explains that four murders have all been marked with the Mark of Hecate, her personal symbol, and she needs Batman's detective skills because that's not really her jam.
Diana takes Batman to Slaughter Swamp to examine a crime scene, where she explains the details of Hecate worship, the significance of multiples of three, and deduces that this isn't a real cult ritual but a setup. Batman finds a lead pointing to an abandoned church with a clock tower, and they decide to break in violently. Inside, they discover someone is building an Anthroparion, a magically constructed form that can be remotely controlled, but the spell is incomplete and they've broken the circle by entering.
Everything unravels when Diana realizes this was a trap for both of them, and whoever set it up used her own hair and blood to create the construct. They realize someone has been manipulating them, and Diana gets mind-controlled into attacking Batman. Batman uses a talisman Diana gave him earlier to summon her back to consciousness, they destroy the construct and presumably blow up the church, and the issue ends with Batman and Diana bonding over snow while he hints at the existence of Superman and other heroes.
Writing
The pacing is slack and front-loaded with exposition. Diana spends the first half of the issue explaining magic to Batman like he's a confused kindergartener, and Batman responds with clipped answers that sound less like a person talking and more like a filing system. "Define magic" is not dialogue, it's a prompt for Diana to info-dump. The real problem is that nothing actually happens until page 14; the crime scene walk-through is all explanation with zero mystery. The reader isn't puzzled alongside the characters because there's nothing to puzzle over. By the time we reach the abandoned church, the story finally accelerates, but it's too little too late. The final pages do land better, especially the character moments between Diana and Batman at the end, which show the writer knows how to make these two connect on something other than exposition. However, the entire middle section of the comic is essentially two characters standing around a swamp describing what they already know about a ritual neither of them really understands yet.
Art
Hayden Sherman's linework is clean and readable, which is the bare minimum and the comic does deliver on that front. The action sequences are clear, the compositions are functional, and there are some genuinely striking moments, like the initial encounter between Diana and Batman in Gotham. However, the artwork doesn't elevate the material. Sherman's style is workmanlike and competent but lacks the visual storytelling that would make a standing-around-talking scene actually interesting to look at. The swamp scenes are rendered in murky earth tones that feel appropriately ominous, but they're also visually flat and repetitive. Across multiple titles, Jordie Bellaire appears to have adopted a style that says, "How many shades of brown can I use?" When Diana gets mind-controlled, the visual shift is jarring and effective, but it's one of maybe three moments where the art actually does heavy lifting for the narrative. The issue needed more of this.
Character Development
Diana's motivation is crystal clear: her symbol was used in murders, so she's hunting whoever did it and needs Batman's help. That works. But her characterization is frustratingly one-note; she's the exposition machine and the woman who needs rescuing. There's no internal conflict, no moment where we see her struggle with being used as a pawn. Batman has slightly more personality because his terseness reads as character, but he's mostly reactive here, following Diana's lead and occasionally quipping. The real issue is that neither character has an arc. They start as strangers with complementary skills and end as people about to be friends, but that transition happens entirely in dialogue and a final scene with snow. There's no earned moment of trust or mutual respect born from surviving something together; they just keep talking until they decide they like each other.
Originality and Concept Execution
The concept of a Wonder Woman and Batman team-up is solid, and the Hecate mythology angle is a fresh take for this universe. The problem is in the execution. The issue doesn't trust itself to actually tell a mystery; it just tells us about one. Someone reading this could close the book and summarize it as "Diana and Batman stand around talking about ritual magic for 20 pages, then Diana gets possessed, then they blow something up." That's not much of a story. The Anthroparion reveal is supposed to be a twist, but it lands as a shoulder shrug because we were never shown anything that would make us doubt the initial Hecate hypothesis. A good mystery story shows the reader the clues the detective sees; this one just has the detective explain the clues after they've already figured them out. The originality is there, but the promise isn't being delivered.
Positives
The closing pages elevate this entire issue from a total wash to something worth acknowledging. The moment where Batman uses Diana's own gift against the spell that's controlling her is genuinely clever and emotionally satisfying. It's a payoff to the talisman subplot that actually lands. Beyond that, the issue's willingness to frame Diana as genuinely vulnerable, capable of being used and manipulated despite her power, adds a layer of stakes that feels earned. The final beats between Batman and Diana have real warmth, and the hint at a larger world of heroes (Superman, others) creates genuine intrigue. The creative team also deserves credit for crafting a book that maintains crystal-clear visual and narrative clarity even when nothing much is happening. Some comics would've been incomprehensible at this pace.
Negatives
This comic is terminally exposition-heavy, and that's not a minor flaw. The first half of the issue is basically a lecture on Hecate worship delivered at gunpoint. There's no reason the reader should care about multiples of three or the number of candles in a ritual because the story never bothers to make us curious about the mystery in the first place. Diana just explains it all, Batman nods along, and we move on. The dialogue throughout is wooden and functional. "You hurl yourself from these skyscrapers with no fear, but you cannot fly. How did you learn to do that?" is the kind of line a character says when the writer needs Batman to exist in the scene but doesn't know how to make him do anything interesting. The pacing is glacial until the final act, which means the comic burns through its space and budget on scenes that don't move the needle. By the time we reach the actual conflict, we've spent most of the issue in a swamp talking about ritual theory. The twist that someone was manipulating both characters should be a gut punch; instead, it lands as a plot point because we never had reason to be emotionally invested in Diana's hunt.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TwitterThe Scorecard
Writing Quality (Clarity & Pacing): [2/4]
Art Quality (Execution & Synergy): [2/4]
Value (Originality & Entertainment): [1/2]
Final Verdict
Absolute Wonder Woman #15 is a comic that works technically but fails to justify its existence emotionally or narratively. You're paying four dollars to watch two of DC's most compelling characters stand in a swamp and explain magic theory to each other for half the issue. The closing act and final pages do the heavy lifting to keep this from being a total loss, and the concept of a Diana and Batman team-up still has real potential, but this particular execution doesn't earn the space it occupies on the shelf.
5/10
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