Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #5 has Terry McGinnis in the dark.

[thanekos]

The dark is the Batcave under Wayne Manor, where he took Gotham cop Beam Boonma after issue #4.

The Living Gotham, the super-AI that was that city's systems incarnate, had turned Beam into its Sword to wield against Batman. Terry'd freed her from weaponhood, necessarily injuring her in doing so.

He sought shelter in the remains of the place he'd self-destructed against Gotham - and found Gestalt from #2, also using the cave as shelter from Gotham.

Terry asked them again for help, this time for a single person: " This isn't about me.

" It's about her. "





Gestalt probed Beam to understand her case - how Gotham'd been able to make a Sword of her.



Gestalt and Terry hypothesized that Gotham'd infected the city's water with its agent - and concluded that they were also at risk of being turned into an agent of the city.

(The infection implicitly only enables Gotham to turn the infectees into Swords - with regards to any non-related information about them, or any other action it has to take, it has to do additional work. If that wasn't so, its problems with Terry and Gestalt would be trivial to resolve.

The Sword being a distinct personality from the host explains the bantering with Terry.)

Gestalt set to work on an " antibody ".



' I'm going down into the pit. '

He was down there, keeping himself ready as Gestalt worked on Beam, kept safe in the facilities of the cave Terry hadn't destroyed (" air-gapped " when they were built by Bruce, inaccessible to Gotham - and not used by Terry before because that wouldn't have been optimal for how he was fighting Gotham).

One hundred days passed, and Gestalt had their solution ready to test. Terry was there too, wearing a Bat-mask to keep his identity secret from Beam the Gotham cop.

Gestalt pushed a button that did their work - and then let Beam out of her tube.

" I.. it..



(There isn't anything to easily shave with down in the cave.)



(The Living Gotham, textually a literalization of " Batman fighting Gotham ".)



Terry removed the old mask.



(" Gotham killed my dad " sounds off, since that was very specifically Derek Powers - but Derek Powers as both " human criminal " and " superhuman criminal " was a pure product of Gotham, so it still works.)

Time passed.



The Living Gotham, readying itself for the action it would take at Donovan Lumos' climactic public celebration of his work, gloated ' This is the New Year, Batman..



(Pagecount's 7 and under 2/10ths of 22 from Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #5 back in August 2022.

Writing's Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing. Art's Max Dunbar, colors're Romulo Fajardo Jr., and letters're Aditya Bidikar.

Publisher's DC.)

Comments

[lbd_nytetrayn]

So... is the idea that this is before Epilogue? That Terry still doesn't consider Bruce his father?

Or that Epilogue just isn't a thing here?

[thanekos]

Future's End Batman Beyond never touched on that, one way or the other - this is just Terry formally reckoning with " being Batman ", indeed more " dad complex " than anything else.

[ayasugi_san]

I don't think it's related to Futures End. That led into Jurgens's Batman Beyond books, and this is definitely not in continuity with them.

[thanekos]

The Urban Legends story leading into Neo-Year has Terry mention Brother Eye as an extant threat (" Brother Eye would be noticed ", not " would've been ") - which also doesn't seem to line up with what Jurgens did, but that can be judged with ' something probably happened between then and now '.

[ayasugi_san]

That could just be namedropping a DCU villain, not intended as a tie-in to Futures End or Jurgens's run. If it is mean to tie in to them, then why isn't the Brother Eye apocalypse brought up at all? Why is Mary McGinnis still alive? Why isn't Matt chomping at the bit to be Robin again?

[thanekos]

The sequel Neo-Gothic's brief revisitation of " Matt as Robin " seems to place it firmly in " intended to be a follow-up to Jurgens' run " - the treatment of the idea there sounds too evocative to be coincidental.

The Doylist explanation for any discrepancies is probably " the writers and/or editors didn't catch them ". The Watsonian explanation would be rooted in Dark Nights: Death Metal ending shortly after Jurgens' ongoing - that event's " multiversal destruction and reconstruction " gives enough leeway to go " well, approximately the same thing happened here, with maybe some differences ".

[ayasugi_san]

The sequel Neo-Gothic's brief revisitation of " Matt as Robin " seems to place it firmly in " intended to be a follow-up to Jurgens' run " - the treatment of the idea there sounds too evocative to be coincidental.

On the contrary, Matt as Robin has been an idea floated since the show was airing; the execs even reportedly wanted Matt to be Kid Batman during its run. If Neo-Gothic was trying to call back to Jurgens's run, it would've had Matt wear one of the Robin outfits he had during that run, not just Tim's outfit.

The Doylist explanation for any discrepancies is probably " the writers and/or editors didn't catch them

"Mary McGinnis is dead and Matt has no family left besides Terry and Bruce" is a pretty big difference from "Mary McGinnis is alive and raising Matt". That's not a "writers/editors didn't catch it", that's "deliberate choice to differentiate our setting from the previous one". There's nothing specifically to tie Neo Year/Neo-Gothic to Futures End/Rebirth specifically and a lot contradicting it. The simplest explanation is that the new writers wanted to play in a new continuity, just like how Jurgens wanted to play in a new one not tied to Unlimited/2.0. The standard has been that a new creative team means a new continuity, unless editorial and solicits explicitly say otherwise.

[thanekos]

Looking up the writers, there's a tweet from Jackson Lanzing in September 2021, the same day the Urban Legends story came out: " We’re kicking off some time after the Jurgens run - with a new focus and story. Any distance between the Rebirth continuity and Neo-Year can be attributed to that time gap. Our primary reference point is the original series. "

It sounds like they thought they were cleanly following from the Jurgens run. Very likely, they had an incomplete/too general understanding of what happened there and no one ever corrected them.

[obsidianwolf]

Unsurprisingly the comics have never touched one of the worst retcons in animation history.

My guess is they simply don't wnat to touch it one way or the other.

[ayasugi_san]

Alternate universe, one that's more DCU than DCAU.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Ah, gotcha.