BATMAN BEYOND #1 (OF 6)
What did the
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Art by RYAN BENJAMIN
Cover by DUSTIN NGUYEN
Variant cover by J.H. WILLIAMS III
Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99
This review contains spoilers, click here to read
First off, this is a biased review.
I did not enjoy this book as much as I hoped because I was looking forward to either a post JLU/Epilogue story (where Terry is older and Bruce is pushing rotting away) or a post 700 story where Damian was Terry's mentor. This issue gave me neither.
On top of that the dialogue just felt forced. It feels like Adam Beechen watched a few episodes of BB and came away thinking that the best episodes were the Mr Freeze episode, and the Return of the Joker movie. Yes, anyone who has watched the show must agree those were both strong stories, but, really, they had to be. As a fan of the show and the original animated series, I wanted to see what would happen if Terry ever met one of Bruces rogues, and both episodes delivered in spades. However, the show as a whole worked because Terry's rogues were just as interesting as Bruce's, and it is one of the few instances in comic-dom where the future version of a character was as engaging as the original. BB gave us a glimpse into the future, and at the end of it all I wanted more. After the JLU episode called Epilogue I desperately wanted more stories about an adult Terry, who by that point seemed to have grown into the cowl wonderfully. Bruce was on the verge of death, and it seemed like Terry had taken on the role of Batman so perfectly that Bruce was almost obsolete. The strength of the episode was the fact that here we see a man who has given his life for this city only to end up as a miserable old man, whose only son was on the verge of disowning him. In the end, we see Bruce at deaths door, forever lonely, only to have Terry finally step in and give him some semblance of peace, that after all his unnoticed work and broken relationships he managed to sire a son who loved him.
THAT is damned good story-telling, and youre telling me that no one thought to branch off of that?! Instead, we get a story from a b-list writer with a villain who once again is part of Bruce's rogue gallery. Seriously. We've seen it done already, and done well. Minor addition, I am one of those who was let down by Loebs Hush, but loved Dini's Heart of Hush which I just read. I dont hate the character anymore, but Im not so over the moon about him that I want to see him in a BB story. I think Dini did a better job with Hush, and, so far, I think the original BB writers did a better job than Beechen does.
Beechen writes Terry more like Spider-man than Batman in this book, and though Terry does have a mouth on him, he isnt Peter Parker. He is Batman with a street attitude. There is a similar darkness and sadness to him like Bruce, but unlike Bruce he didnt have an entire childhood to get lost in that darkness. And on the other hand, unlike Peter he isnt a science nerd. Terry was kind of an aimless jock/moody teen when he took the mantle. I read this somewhere else and I agree - it feels like Beechen watched a few episodes of BB to get caught up, but failed to get the spirit of the character. It was my same issue with Darkwing Duck. The first couple of pages I was amused by the dialogue, but there is more to Darkwing than his one-liners. After reading that issue I went and watched a few episodes and found that whether its Darkwing or one of his villains, every episode would always inject a moment where we break through Darkwing's overblown ego, and get a glimpse of his good heart underneath, or we see that his villains arent as one-sided and evil as we think they are. In both instances the writers fail to capture the soul of the characters. They are writing the characters based on shallow descriptions, rather than getting under their skin and understanding the psychology. It may seem funny to say this about a cartoon character, but thats what made those characters so memorable. It may just be animation, but good writing means understanding the layers, and its the reason why Dini's Hush interested me more than Loebs.
A quick mention on the art, I didn't dislike it as much as some people did. It didnt blow my socks off, but it did the job, and I enjoyed seeing a more detailed version of the original Timm-verse take. My complaint is more directed at the cover art which I thought looked great, had mood and style, but showed what I believed was an adult Terry, only to be disappointed when I opened the pages.
I may give this one another shot, but in short, I think they did the least interesting version of this story, which had great potential, and failed to capture the spirit of the show.
Art: 3 - Good
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