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Absolute Batman is one of the hottest books on comic book stands today, and it's only continued to build steam these past few months. And while part of the book's success has been powered by how its covers center the series' bold and sometimes horrifying (a good thing) character designs, Absolute Batman's covers have put the series into a tricky spot. How do you develop new covers for Absolute Batman, which will be solicited months in advance before they hit comic book shops, without giving away crucial plot points?

This is a question that Absolute Batman writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta have been mulling over, and come to a decision on. "So here’s what Nick and I are thinking. Solicits tend to ruin things coming up bc the covers show things two or three months down the line For example, if solicits coming out when 11 is in stores show Catwoman on the cover of 14, you know she’s coming which spoils stuff," the first of Snyder's tweets began. "So our choices are either to not put anything on the cover that’s a spoiler, which is hard on Nick, and also not as fun, or, we just let solicitor spoil stuff. When it’s too big a spoiler DC has let us redact things on covers. We did that with 10, and now with 17..." Snyder continued.

What will that look like? "So what we’re thinking of is doing that as a regular thing for the issues coming up because there are some really big revelations - new characters, twists etc.," tweeted Snyder. "It’d go like this: We have a big twist at the end of AB 19 (April). That twist is on the cover of AB 20 (May, but solicits show the cover in Feb). So we redact the spoiler for 20 in solicits but a few days after 19 comes out, and people have read it, we un-redact 20 cover on SM," the writer elaborated. "This way, you’d have a few days to read an issue before there’s anything on social media revealing spoilers on following issues. And we get to make covers that are awesome and fun. What do you think?" Snyder asked.  

Fans were welcoming of the idea, with one user writing, "I like this [...] because I don’t want it to turn into the 'manga leaks' twitter where they find out the entire plot 2-3 days before it comes out so everyone knows what happens before it drops." 

Absolute Batman has helped usher in a new wave of comic book readers, and it's likely to continue influencing superhero comics for the foreseeable future.

Need more? Here's our picks for the best DC Comics stories of all time.