- Written by Dan Jurgens
- Pencils Ryan Sook & Ardian Syaf
- Inks Vicente Cifuentes & Ryan Sook
- Coloured by Jeremy Lawson
- Cover by Ryan Sook
Six months have passed since the events of BATMAN BEYOND #16. While areas of destruction remain in the outside world, Gotham City has made great strides toward reclaiming its bright future. But new threats arise and old adversaries may be coming back. And the question still remains: whatever happened to Bruce Wayne?
Pickup your copy of ‘Batman Beyond: Rebirth’ at Comixology now!
‘Batman Beyond’ comics have always been a little hit and miss for me. I started reading them around 2008 having finally completed a full watch of the TV series and having seen the ‘Return of the Joker’ film. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of a younger Batman being trained by an older Bruce.
Sadly it seems that the comics have often struggled to find an audience so the switch between print and digital-first/digital-only comics has made ‘Batman Beyond’ more of an awkward cousin to the main ‘Batman’ series.
With the ‘New 52’ era drawing to a close ‘Batman Beyond’ had a great creative resurgence in shifting Terry McGinnis out of continuity for a time and putting Tim Drake in the Batman costume. There’s always been a great deal of story to mine from Robin’s becoming Batman and this was the only way that Tim would get a shot.
Moving on to ‘Rebirth’ the series realigned itself to bring back McGinnis and take Drake back out of the picture. What I hope from the ongoing series is to see some more grown up tales featuring Terry that don’t heavily rely on characters from the Bat-family.
Bruce and Tim are now out of the picture so currently only Barbara Gordon remains in her role as Commissioner of Police. This issue is a interesting reset on the franchise which I hope readers will find trule engaging.
We pick up with a narration by Terry which quickly runs over his past and how he became Batman. Artistically its drawn as a darker and more violent turn of events than was depicted in the cartoon series so that’s already a good start in my book.
The action is interspersed between a simple attack by The Jokerz in the present day. ‘Batman Beyond’ is already playing to its strengths in this issue as The Jokerz have always been a strong adversary with great ties to the past.
In terms of context this ‘Batman Beyond’ features an older Terry and is set some years after the TV series ended. Jurgens writing style seems to fit better with the older Terry who, without Bruce, has a little more edge than we’ve seen in the past.
As this is the special rather than the first issue of the ongoing series the story itself is very self contained. There’s a well defined beginning, middle and end with a jumping off point for where the series goes from here. I’m a little unsure about the ending scene as it does recall a little of the story from ‘Return of the Joker’ but I trust that Jurgens has a plan.
The artwork, provided by Sook, Syaf, Cifuentes and Lawson is great. It once again steps away from recreating the style of the TV series. ‘Batman Beyond’ comics often flip-flop between defining a style of their own or recreating the magic of the Bruce Timm original. As much as I love the TV series its great to see ‘Batman Beyond’ forging a path of its own.
The only thing which kept pulling me out of the story were the red eyes on the Batsuit, they seemed a lot more expressive than in the past which is both a good thing but also a little distracting.
Overall the series is looking great so far.
Verdict
‘Batman Beyond: Rebirth’ is a great recontextualisation of the TV series and previous comics. It features a nice simple story with a twist which is sure to intrigue readers in to picking up the next issue.
4 stars
