Batman Beyond #8 Review and *SPOILERS*

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Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Okay, we've taken care of Brother Eye and now it's time to get the world back on track in order for the future to be the bright place we all think it's supposed to be.  Yeah, it's going to be a long hard road, but what did you expect when Neo Gotham was the only city left really standing in the world?.......... I think I'm really just trying to convince myself here because what I want more than anything is the simplicity of seeing Batman punch a supervillain in the mouth for just being a jive "schway" talking turkey.  It is what it is though and for the most part I've dug what we've gotten so far and at least with Brother Eye put down, we know that for the most part that we can put Futures End behind us....... and that's a good thing........ and yeah, I just said the most part.  Let's jump into this issue and see what's up with Matt McGinnis' journey to Metropolis and what Batman will do when he finds out that he has to let people suffer.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Batman Beyond going all over Neo Gotham looking for Matt since he just up and disappeared and the only lead he gets is when he tracks Matt's movements from the previous day and finds out about that tailor shop he visited........ which was actually a black market tech dealer, who Rewire totally killed and the weird part is..... Rewire's still hanging out there.  I could understand if maybe it was a hour later or something like that, but the issue points out that Matt was there a day ago so the only reason that Rewire is still hanging out as far as I know is that he wants to destroy the building...... I guess he's just a really lazy villain though because goddamn........ a day?  Well, since the building is about to go up in flames, Tim Drake decides that he better figure out how to use the scanner that Matt used in order to determine his location and lets Rewire escape.  Yeah, he finds out that Matt has John Stewart's ring, but come on Batman, couldn't ya have just punched Rewire in the mouth a little more?  

Even though Batman found out a little about what Matt is up too, I guess there's too much work to do in Neo Gotham to go gallivanting around looking for him.  Micron and our hero are up to some sort of cleanup when Micron lays down the initial attack of Brother Eye and how he watched Warhawk and Barda go down and get converted.  This section is really cool, but I found myself scratching my head due to the continuity.  Yeah, even though we're dealing with Batman Beyond and the Justice League Beyond, this is still from our current continuity, only thirty-five years in the future and from our Earth-0 world, I don't think that Warhawk should still be around due to his parents from the animated series world being Hawkgirl and John Stewart.  It just doesn't really seem to fit here and I kind of wish that we would have seen a different roster of heroes for this Justice League...... even though I am a big fan of Warhawk.  So yeah, Micron survived the attack by going microscopic and by the time he came to, the battle was over and the Justice League were dead.  Story time is interrupted though when Batman hears trouble outside the gates of Neo Gotham and we find out that people from all over are trekking to the city looking for sanctuary, but for the safety of everyone inside, Mayor Luke Fox isn't letting anyone in and even though Batman doesn't agree........ there really isn't much he can do about this development.  

In the end, we see Matt McGinnis make his way to Metropolis, probably looking for John Stewart's power battery at a sorta Hall of Justice that's become all destroyed over the years of war, but I don't know if he's actually going to make it because as this issue closes we see that he's being watched by a few intelligent animal men from Kamandi and they're interested in why a boy would come to the destroyed Metropolis and apparently they have a mysterious boss, who'd be even more interested.......... but come on!  It's only been thirty-five years from our current continuity and you can say that Brother Eye's attack on the world is the Great Disaster, but what the hell are the animals doing all walking and talking like people?  Cortexin takes a while to get animals all man-ed up and having this addition to the story just seems too forced to me and really, just doesn't make a lot of sense.  Hopefully as the series continues we'll get an explanation, but I don't know if it will make sense overall due to the short amount of time that we're working with here.

That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and while I enjoyed the backstory from Micron about what happened to the Justice League and Matt McGinnis' travels to Metropolis, there wasn't really much else to this issue and even with those parts that I liked I found myself questioning the continuity it presented the whole time.  Warhawk being in this future doesn't make sense to me and the intelligent animals from Kamandi all walking and talking just seems entirely forced.  Yeah, it was set up in Futures End with King Faraday and Command D a bit, but it just feels too soon to have bipedal animals being effected by Cortexin....... maybe this will be more of an Island of Dr. Moreau thing and I can calm down a bit, but right now everything that's going on just feels like it's a little too much too soon.  Bernard Chang and Marcelo Maiolo continue to be a great pair in the art department though and really for all my griping about the continuity........ which could be explained away later on, this is a decent issue if you're not insane like me and even with my mental problems, I still found myself enjoying the issue.

Bits and Pieces:

We're out of Brother Eye territory and it's time to put the world back together and as we see in this issue, there's a lot that has to go into it........... of course there is right?  It's really at this point that I realize that this book has become a more apocalypse style story that's more like the Walking Dead than Batman just because of the human element, who are desperately doing what they can to survive.  I had a few issues with continuity in this book, but for the most part it stayed interesting and I'm a huge fan of the art in this series.  

6.8/10