Batman Beyond #7 Review and *SPOILERS*

Bat To Basics

Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Stephen Thompson, Marcelo Maiolo, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: December 2, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Big bad Brother Eye has finally been laid to rest and in my mind that means it's time to break out the pinatas and RC Cola, but for a man stuck out of time, surrounded by the rubble of a Earth that's seen better days......... Well, I guess we'll hold off on the party favors for right now.  In the previous issue, we saw Batman, Barbara Gordon, Micron and Inque take on Brother Eye, who for the sheer satisfaction of being able drag Tim Drake's dead body through the streets of Neo Gotham, went and got himself a physical form.  Form has it's drawbacks though as we saw when Batman beat the holy hell out of him before Inque sacrificed herself by invading his inner systems, preventing Brother Eye from downloading his consciousness somewhere else before he exploded.  The fight is over, but the question that remains is........ What happens next?  Let's jump into this issue and see how Tim Drake is adjusting to future life and if the Batman Beyond suit will ever be functional again.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with Tim and Barbara in the Batcave, trying to wrap their heads around what the hell Bruce did in order to make the Batman Beyond suit work.  Yeah, Barbara's got that eidetic memory going on, but it's not like Bruce was known to be a share-er so she's no help and all the plans that Tim is looking over don't seem to make sense.......which being the smart guy that he is....... which I'm thankful we're finally seeing in this series, it's driving him crazy.  What are you going to do though?  He's got thirty years of technology to catch up on.  After deducing that Bruce wouldn't want anyone knowing what he was actually up to after the Powers/Wayne merger, he figures out that all the plans are coded and after that, it's pretty smooth sailing in getting the suit back up and running........ All except the Alfred A.I. that is and even though I would love to have that feature back to the book, I'm also kind of scared because with Brother Eye corrupting it and everything, who knows if a piece of the Eye is still kicking around in all those ones and zeroes somewhere.

While Tim and Barbara are working on getting Batman back in action, Matt McGinnis is breaking my heart because he's not that sweet sometimes snarky little boy that I remember him being.  I guess with this Universe's future being torn apart by some bastard satellite that he was bound to change a little, but here we see him dodging his guardian Nora Boxer and going into the recent war zone that is Neo Gotham to get some info on a mechanical arm he found....... or acquired during Batman's final fight with Brother Eye...... I don't remember that, but I wouldn't put it past me to forget either.  So yeah, Matt goes to a a underground tech dealer, who poses as a tailor to get the skinny on his illegal tech, but all he gets...... besides me wondering how the hell Matt knew that this guy, who would normally ask me if I dress to the right or left instead of getting right past the confusion by just asking me about my cock, is that it came from Metropolis.  The reason that Matt got so little info is because Rewire showed up and was looking for a little payback in being sold a faulty battery and nobody wants to stick around when Rewire gets to doin' his doings....... Yeah, I don't know much about Rewire, but he's a bad dude and smart people stay away from bad dudes.

In the end, Tim takes the Batman Beyond suit for a test drive and takes on some Jokerz, who are getting back to their normal style chaos, instead of trying to destroy Neo Gotham by shutting down the Veil system........ Lousy Jokerz.

As our issue closes, we see Tim move in with Barbara, which may be awkward in more ways than one because I'm under the belief that Tim has a fetish for old ladies, but the awkwardness is put on hold when Nora contacts Tim because Matt is missing.  I guess he's going for a looky loo over in Metropolis.

That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and while it won't come out and shock you or make you reevaluate your opinions about Tim Drake taking on the Batman Beyond persona, it will begin to setup the status quo for this world in it's post Brother Eye state, as the people begin to rebuild and get back to some sort of a normal life.  I would have liked a little more info on Matt McGinnis though because up until this point, he's just come off as a mad/jealous little boy, who doesn't trust Tim to take over for his brother in the role as Batman.  Here, he's on a quest to find out about a borg-ed out arm and I'm not sure what he's up to.  Just a couple of scenes of Matt going place to place, without any real explanation about it.  While I like that we get to see Tim use some of his smarts in figuring out how to repair the Bat suit, nothing was really going on in his scenes that we haven't seen a bunch of times.  Just Batman flying around and shooting batarangs at Jokerz....... just not a lot going on.  The art in this book continues to impress, but my main problem with not seeing a ton of colors stand out because of the bleakness of this world remains.  I don't know what I expect, but I just really want to see Marcelo Maiolo cut loose and shine the hell out of this book and maybe we'll get that in the next issue with Matt McGinnis going to the former City of Tomorrow........ that's just me though.

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue of Batman Beyond might not "WOW" you with it's content, it still manages to be entertaining and I appreciate the time that's taken in making sure we all know how Tim's adjusting to being in the future and how to his new role as Batman in both display and maintenance....... not to mention that we actually get to see Tim being smart in this book, which I really thought was lacking previously.  So yeah, not a bad read, but kind of lacking in excitement.

6/10