Batman Beyond 1: Tonight the part of Terry McGinnis shall be played by Matt Smith and Jackie Chan!

[espanolbot]

...Wait, what?

Spoilers, and my opinion on the issue.


Focusing mainly on this piece due to the Easter Egg on the third page.





Did you catch it?


Head encompassing cowl? big pouchy belt? That don't look like no costume of Barbara's, does it?

Right, the issue itself.

Overall, I felt that the writing itself was okay, with Beechen slipping a lot of references to the original show in there, while also expanding into newer areas. For example, the remaining members of Bruce's rogues gallery have now been divided between Cadmus (presumably for the metas like Mr Freeze) and a "regular" psychiatric facility following the demolition of Arkham (this is mentioned in Return of the Joker).

The downside of this is that it kind of requires that the reader have seen Batman Beyond before reading this, despite it not being in the DCAU even though it references it, so newer readers might be turned off by having to hunt down the DVDs or something.

This may effect how much money it makes, and thus stop more minis with better artists.

The dialogue is mostly okay, but I'm going to wait until the next issue before I completely make up my mind about it.

My major complaint is the art.

It isn't... as bad as some of the stuff I've seen Ryan Benjamin do, this for example is much worse,


But it isn't exactly great either. A lot of off model characters, and weird backgrounds where NeoGotham seems to be coloured entirely in green pastel colours for some reason. Pollution maybe?

The point is that if they were going to reference the original so heavily, they should have gone with the 'Akira' influenced cityscape they had in the show as well. Instead of the air just being the colour of limeade.

Going to be picking up the next issue, I'm hoping that the art improves though, but I'm not holding my breath.

To round off, here's part of the tv show, which is a reference to the Phantom of the Opera-styled Batman musical that they were going to get Jim Steinman to do ages back,

title: batman beyond
char: batman/terry mcginnis
char: batman/bruce wayne
char: ace the bathound
creator: adam beechen
creator: ryan benjamin

Comments

[akodo_rokku]

I thought the issue was pretty decent, but the choice of villain annoys me.

[espanolbot]

That too.

Maybe they felt that the Joker had been done to death, no pun intended?

Apparently the mini is going to show what happened to Bruce's old rogues gallery, which isn't really featured much in the show barring Bane, Mr Freeze (his episode was great!), Ra's al Ghul and the Joker.

I find that idea interesting, but kind of unnecessary.

Admittedly having Terry hang around with an elderly Penguin or whatever would be kind of interesting, but I liked that Terry had mostly his own villains without having to retread old ground too often.

Like having the Joker show more than once would have spoilt the effect.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I don't think it would be the worst idea; familiar rogues might draw some people in, and they'd be getting some of that stuff (which I imagine some people have at least been curious about for some time, i.e. "what happened to Two-Face?") out of the way.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[bariman]

having Terry hang around with an elderly Penguin or whatever would be kind of interesting

And in thirty seconds I thought up a cool episode concept with that. An aviary of rare birds gets robbed and Bruce puts Terry on the case because the aviary is owned by the (former) Pengiun. Who put his fortune to wildlife conservation as he got older, is now very old and semi-senile. "A flying Batmobile? Back in my day, Batman rode around in a ground car or hopped around on rooftops, and he liked it!"

[darklorelei]

I'm hoping it's a bluff. LET ME HAVE MY DREAMS.

[xammax]

Jim Gordon would have emptied his gun onto that stage.

[espanolbot]

Aw, but that would have spoilt his pimpcoat!

[shadowpsykie]

actually i kinda see Jim Liking this :) if only to annoy batman

[icon_uk]

No Nightwing costume in a case?

And agreed, the choice of villain just made me roll my eyes.

[falseaesop]

I got the feeling Bruce and Dick had a bad falling out. He was never mentioned in Batman Beyond besides one time when Bruce gave Terry a tux to wear that was about his size, he looked at a monogram (though with two letters is it still a mono gram?) "Who's DG?" he never got an anwser.

[jcbaggee]

Barbara implied in Return of the Joker that there was a huge falling out between the two, and Dick was still incredibly bitter about it, but there's never been any details given.

[lieut_kettch]

I always wondered if it was because Babs started a relationship with Bruce.

[jcbaggee]

Yeah, he probably wanted to keep Bruce all to himself. No wait Yeah, that's probably right.

[icon_uk]

Actually ROTJ leaves it just as vague as to what happened with Dick, just that he'd left Gotham, and that Bruce viewed it as an abandoment (but Bruce has well documented abandonment issues)

And that's really not the point I was making, in the toon BB, there was always a Nightwing costume in a display case along with babs Batgirl costume and Tim's Robin costume, regardless of what had happened between them in the past, why isn't there one for Dick in the comics BB?

[tacobob]

Wasn't Nightwing still running around in "Batman Beyond' time? I know he was mentioned (But never shown) as being active.

[icon_uk]

We don't know his status, quite possibly retired, but probably not dead as Babs tells Terry at one point that if he thinks HE has problems dealing with Bruce he should talk to Nightwing sometime.

BBRotJ also has Babs mention that Dick had left Gotham to set himself up some time prior to the events in the flashback scenes.

That departure is mentioned in the brilliant "Duo Dynamic" BTAS comic as being because Dick felt Gotham was getting too crowded with heroes and rather than be superfluous and in Batdad's shadow, he moves on the Bludhaven to become his own sort of hero.

[ametti]

Nothing ever gets old with old man wayne. I still think they could just spend ages on that side of the character.

[thanekos]

rejected by the band Nightwish!

[arbre_rieur]

"The downside of this is that it kind of requires that the reader have seen Batman Beyond before reading this, despite it not being in the DCAU even though it references it, so newer readers might be turned off by having to hunt down the DVDs or something."

Given how much larger an audience TV gets, I imagine the number of people picking up this comic who haven't watched the show would be pretty slim.

[cmdr_zoom]

This.

[espanolbot]

By that token though, would the people who watched the show back thne necessarily know who the villain was if they hadn't been reading the mainstream comics?

[arbre_rieur]

Who was it?

[icon_uk]

Probably not, but why would they care? It's not like Spellbinder was massively well known prior to his BB appearances.

[dimwit90]

I'm picking this up and yes I watched bits of the show but I was 10 and not only do I not remember anything about it but I didn't even speak English at the time XD


I'm actually looking forward to watching this series in its entirety now that I'll actually understand whats going on! That is if that torrent ever finishes downloading...

[seriousfic]

Who dressed the ape up as Nightwing? And how did it learn to talk?

[irrelevant]

Yeah, the art was... okay, after being spoiled by the sleek beauty of the animation, the art was a major disappointment, but I kind of expected that.

Old Bruce's characterization, otoh, was awesome. So there's that.

I'm withholding judgment until the next issue, partly because this one does show some promise, but mostly, Batman Beyond. Comic.

I am not going to turn my nose up after years of famine.

[cmdr_zoom]

Motto to all of the above.

[cmic]

Cheers to all that. This is my favorite Batman. Both of them.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Indeed. Good or bad, I'm buying all of this. It can always get better, but only if it's around to do so.

Also, as you said, famine.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[benicio127]

Oh look! Terry's eyes are blue. Aww. All the batboys have black hair and blue eyes.

Even you, Jason.

[wizardru]

Given Terry's genetic history, it's not surprising.

[big_daddy_d]

I guess I'm the only one who likes the villain here.

[dimwit90]

I'm not like super excited about it but I don't hate it

[jcbaggee]

I don't hate the villain, per se. In his own time and place, I think he has potential, though it's dreadfully squandered. Here? Here I was enjoying the book, then hit the last page and facepalmed, followed by a "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU---! Are you joking!?"

Hope to God it's a twist.

[silverzeo]

On that night, the other show that was playing was the Superman Musical...

[thokstar]

I liked the potential for the choice of villain. Hopefully Beechen will keep in mind Dini's recent work and continue with the idea that this villain is a Bruce Wayne villain instead of a Batman villain. Combining that idea with the Terry-Bruce dynamic will make things interesting.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

This reminds me, I hear that Terry recently showed up in issue 700 of Batman... do we have any scans of that around?

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[icon_uk]

It's only a cameo, but it's here

[arbre_rieur]

There was a more prominent appearance towards the end of the issue.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Oh, anything we have here?

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[arbre_rieur]

Not that I saw, but I don't check every post.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Thanks!

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

[blackruzsa]

The series was definitely gorgeous and one of the first things I was exposed to in the DCU. I was totally in love with Terry :3

Okay, so art is not so good after getting used to the Dini style, but everything seems to be going well.

[dimwit90]

I liked it even though I know next to nothing about Batman Beyond. I guess its time to start that BB marathon :)