Absolute Power Origins

The definitive history of one of the DCU’s deadliest villains is at last revealed!

Academy Award-winning writer John Ridley tells the tragic backstory of Amanda Waller, in a vital part of DC’s Absolute Power blockbuster!

Since the earliest days of the Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller has operated behind the scenes of the DC Universe, manipulating superpowered heroes and villains in service of her own rise to power. Over the years, the character has permeated pop culture, and been adapted across film, television, animation, and video games. But what truly motivates this enigmatic figure?

Absolute Power: Origins is the untold story of what led Amanda Waller to form the Trinity of Evil in DC’s Absolute Power blockbuster, and take down Earth’s Super Heroes! It’s the Suicide Squad’s founder as you’ve never seen her before, in a grounded, emotional companion to Absolute Power.

Amanda Waller’s catastrophic attack on the metahumans of Earth has rendered both hero and villain powerless, and now readers will learn what truly drives ＂The Wall,＂ courtesy of Academy Award-winning writer John Ridley and fan-favorite artist Alitha Martinez.

It’s the tale about how one woman lost everything she held dear...powerless beneath the forces of senseless acts of chaos. The path of vengeance would bring her to two simple words that would change her life--and the lives of the entire DC Universe--forever: never again.

This volume collects Absolute Power: Origins #1-3.

John Ridley is an American screenwriter, film director, novelist, and showrunner, known for 12 Years a Slave, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. After both writing and directing his film debut, the 1997 crime thriller Cold Around the Heart, Ridley went on to write the novels Love Is a Racket and Everybody Smokes in Hell. His novel Spoils of War was adapted into the film Three Kings. In comics, he’s written The Other History of the DC Universe, GCPD: The Blue Wall, I Am Batman , and The American Way for DC. His latest film, Shirley, which he wrote and directed, was released in 2024.