The DC Universe is about to come under fire when Amanda Waller takes control in this summer’s big event Absolute Power. The shining days of the Dawn of DC initiative come to a close as Mark Waid takes readers on a journey that sees DC’s biggest icons fighting for their future-without their powers.

Absolute Power is an upcoming event that sees the Suicide Squad’s Amanda Waller bring the DCU under her heel with the help of her partners in the Trinity of Evil and her powerful new underlings, Task Force VII. Waller’s been busy manipulating events from the shadows ever since the end of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and this July, she’s taking her war out into the public. Screen Rant sat down with comic book legend and Absolute Power writer Mark Waid to find what fans can expect from the nail-biting event ahead.

The last event you wrote for DC Comics was Lazarus Planet right before the Dawn of DC really kicked off. Absolute Power coming off the opposite end of that initiative. How difficult was it creating a major story that builds on everything the Dawn of DC set out to do?

Mark Waid: It was more challenging than it looks. I mean, you know, coming up with a threat to the DC Universe, that is not one we have seen before, is increasingly challenging with every event. So that was the one thing. But as you say, with the help of Paul Kaminski, my editor, and all the various assistants and other editors who have been helping me with this, we definitely made a point of, like you said, “Let’s start with Dawn of DC, with the things that the initiatives that kicked off there.” Not necessarily story stuff, always. Sometimes just the spirit of DC and how do we pull all that together for the big finale here?

Absolutely. I think the Dawn of DC emphasized a real back-to-basics approach to streamline things for both newer readers and longtime readers. Did that factor in here? Is this is going to be an event for everybody?

Mark Waid: Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely tailor-made for newbies. You’re not being asked to fill in blanks. We are pretty good about putting things in context and introducing the stuff to new readers. But at the top of Dawn of DC, I would also say that what came forth most to me beyond back-to-basics, was that there was a real sense of hope in the DC Universe. So what better thing to do now that you’ve really got a year of that are under your belt than to take that hope away?

That sounds like a good transition to this next question. You’re coming into this getting to play with a few new villains that have been in the spotlight lately like Failsafe and the Brainiac Queen. What do you feel that these two characters specifically brought to the table that might be different from previous event-level villains?

Mark Waid: Right. I mean, Failsafe’s unique point of view is that he’s Batman without Bruce Wayne. He’s not corrupt per se. He’s not evil per se. He just wants the same things as the Batman does, but is willing to go to greater lengths and is willing to trample on a few more sacred cows on his way to get there. So at heart his motives are heroic but the ways in which he’s going about this are insane.

Mark Waid: Same with Amanda Waller. She genuinely believes she’s right. She genuinely believes that she is in a world where superheroes are more of a curse than a blessing and she needs to stop that. She is drawing the line there for now. But as I think I said in the first issue, there’s a difference between a want and a need. Like a need is “I need to stop the superheroes”. Once you’ve done that, game done, go do something else. But a want is more pernicious. A want is something that is much harder to satisfy. Because as every collector in the world knows, you can check that thing off on your want list, but that just means that your eye is now onto what’s next.

Definitely. I feel like the Amanda Waller trajectory has been really interesting because a lot of fans have picked up on how Waller’s just gone off the deep end. She’s always been a mastermind character before, but now she’s stepping into the into the spotlight saying “I’m here. I’m taking care of this.“. Do you feel this is a natural evolution for her?

Mark Waid: I think so. And this is certainly the way they’ve been building her in the in the last couple of years in the DC Universe. She’s getting less and less interested in compromise. She getting less and less interested in doing things the way she’s always done them because from her point of view, the superheroes are just getting worse. The superheroes just getting more prolific, more predominant. And the general populace has embraced them now even harder than they they have in years past. So something’s got to be done.

I also really like the look and feel of Task Force VII. I’m always a sucker for evil counterparts and bad Justice Leagues. We’ve seen evil Justice Leagues in the past with Crime Syndicate and the Dark Knights from Dark Nights: Metal. What do you feel Task Force VII offers up compared to those other corrupted Justice Leagues?

Mark Waid: First off, the designs are amazing. That’s all Dan Mora. These things are just astounding. But what’s interesting is, and we get into this a little bit more with the Task Force VII series, is that they were they were programmed and imprinted by Failsafe. So they have the same sort of goals in mind, but Failsafe has also been through the multiverse. One of the things that Chip Zdarsky did with one of his Failsafe stories was establish that, in his travels through the multiverse, Failsafe picked up the consciousnesses of Failsafes from other universes. And so he has to some degree imprinted each of the Amazos with a slightly different aspect or voice to Bruce Wayne. The one that fights Wonder Woman is the “Gotham by Gaslight” Batman, if you will. One of them is more of a Bruce Timm, very taciturn man a few words. So that’s that’s what they bring to the table.

Mark Waid: As they draw power from superheroes, they are, to their own surprise, learning that this is more than about power. What makes a superhero is more than about their ability to jump high or lift cars.

Nice. Well, if we want to transition a little bit away from the villains to the heroes, the one wildcard I do have to bring up is Green Arrow. How did you feel writing DC’s most left-leaning hero as working for a fascist?

Mark Waid: (laughs) Well, I mean you could certainly make the case that for all of his left wing tendencies, Green Arrow has always been the first one to call the heroes out on not being in touch with the common man as much. As not being as responsible to humanity as he feels they ought to be. That goes back 20, 30, 40 years. So it works for me. It makes sense to me that Green Arrow would make a leap like this, it may not make sense to other people. But to those people, I would ask them to ride it out and come back to me in a few months.

Fair enough. As far as other heroes are concerned, it is really nice to see the Justice League’s founding members together as this new resistance. We’ve seen this in solicitations and in the advertisements for Absolute Power. How important was it having these particular seven members together in the event?

Mark Waid: In retrospect, less important than I thought. Going into this going into this, I honestly thought that the four issues would really revolve very heavily around the seven. But as I sent them off in their own individual missions, as they all have different roles in the in the series, as they work into their tie-in issues, I realized that a good story will take a reader and the writer both in a direction that they hadn’t seen coming. And what amazed me is that for the bulk of issue three, we’ve taken the core Justice Leaguers off the table. And what that did was give me a chance to surprisingly elevate some of the other second stringers and give them moments. Doctor Midnight, Airwave, Big Barda, characters like that actually get to step up in a way that I hadn’t foreseen. But it makes perfect sense to me in retrospect.

Especially when you’ve got a dynamic where it’s superheroes without powers. At any point was there a moment where you were like “I got to work with this character, because it feels right.“?

Mark Waid: This whole series is about loss. And there are some for whom the loss is more impactful. Doctor Midnight’s a good example. Doctor Midnight is a character whose power is that he was blind and now we can see. Well, that’s gone. He’s the blind man running around? Negative Man is on the other end of the spectrum. Negative Man is a character whose power is radioactive and makes him harmful to others unless he is swaddled in special bandages will take his powers away. That’s not a curse to him. That’s a blessing. So does that answer your question?

No, it does. I think it’s interesting how this particular scenario can affect heroes in different ways. I think that a similar dynamic was explored in JLA: Act of God. Did that inform the way you wrote this at all?

Mark Waid: I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned it. I know I read it back in the day, but I remember being good. But I didn’t go back to that well on purpose.

Let’s get back to the heroes because I did want to talk about some of the newer ones. DC Comics just finished its Suicide Squad: Dream Team book which heavily featured a Dreamer. How did you like writing this character?

Mark Waid: Really revelatory. Again. I didn’t go into the story thinking it was going to be focused very much on Dreamer but as I got into it, it made perfect sense. And Nicole Maines has been enormously helpful in getting a handle on that character. Same with Jon Kent. Jon Kent originally was not a big part of the master plan. But my editor and I came up with a moment in issue one for Jon, that sets him on a course that is surprising to me, but also makes him a lot more crucial to the outcome of the story.

That’s another interesting thing about the Dawn of DC and its work to make make room for both legacy and mainstay heroes. Jonathan Kent is an interesting example because he has been sort of, I don’t want to say stagnant, but what’s Jon Kent had to do?

Mark Waid: Right. And now you know.

Now we know. Fans had to have seen the solicitations for Nicole Maines and Sina Grace’s Absolute Power Super Son #1 by now. And I know you probably don’t want to say too much, but Jon Kent is going to be suffering quite a bit.

Mark Waid: Yeah, again, it’s about loss. It’s all about loss. And you can make a case that Jon has lost more than anything, than anyone.

There is a pathos that hasn’t been really explored with him. And it seems like this is a good way to deal with that. Like ‘if you’re not gonna confront your trauma, your trauma is gonna confront you’.

Mark Waid: I know what Sina and Nicole have planned for that one-shot and I think it’s going to be amazing. I think that they are zeroing in on exactly what they need to zero in on with that character and have done things in that story that have surprised me and have gone back to inform the main book.

What can you tell fans that will make this an instant pull, day one, ‘Get this immediately’ kind of book?

Mark Waid: I would say that I don’t know the last time you have seen all of DC superheroes at one time in such genuine peril. Such absolute high stakes. Not the end of the world, not into the cosmos. But you know, the end of their own existence personally, that you haven’t seen that before in a long time.

There’s always a danger to every event, but this one seems a lot more personal, a lot more life-or-death sort of stakes.

Mark Waid: Yeah, we work really hard because mission creep is a real thing with events once you suddenly start doing 30, 40, 50 tie-ins and so there are often, and this is crossing the industry, crossovers where the tie-in books aren’t really important. We worked very, very hard to make sure that every single tie-in book in the Absolute Power event specifically ticks off a specific box. Like, make sure that there is something that is accomplished in that one story that brings everything back around issue four so there’s there’s no there’s no fat on this. I mean, this is all solid.

Speaking of the tie-in issues since you brought it up, you’re coordinating with the writers of all these other book like Chip Zdarsky, Joshua Williamson, Tom King. Were they amenable to the direction of Absolute Power in regards to what was going on in their own books?

Mark Waid: I was very pleasantly surprised. I mean, when we started, I made a big ask of them. I said “Look, I’m not demanding this. If you don’t want to do this, I totally understand. But if I can have three issues of each of your books, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman that really helps sell it to readers as ‘Okay, this this is important. This is not an event book where all the tie-in books are the C-list books. This is heavy hitters.’.”. So they were all fine. Tom King in particular was eager, just “Whatever you need me to do, man.”.

Speaking of collaboration, we did talk about Dan Mora earlier. The two of you the work you guys have done previously with World’s Finest has been awesome. Did you guys approach Absolute Power and go “What can we do here that we haven’t done so much in World’s Finest“?

Mark Waid: A little. A little in that the stakes in World’s Finest, while they can be high for the moment, are not stakes that are lasting and consequential because that book is set in the past. Here we’re able to get a little raw and a little grittier and a little more dangerous. And that’s been fun and Dan has certainly certainly met that bar. Also and let me also give a shout out real quick to our colorist Alejandro Sánchez, who is bringing this thing to life. And Dan and I just every day when we get more pages from Alejandro, we are just delighted.

Absolute Power #1 is available from DC Comics on July 3rd from DC Comics.