All In The Family
Written By: Dan JurgensArt By: Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: July 6, 2016
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Oh Batman Beyond, what are you still doing hanging around when we're all in Rebirth mode now? Yeah, it's a good bet that what transpires in this series will simply bridge over to the new Batman Beyond Rebirth series in September so all of this is still important, but since we're all having so much fun with all the renumbered Rebirth titles coming out now, I feel that this series will be passed over to get to those gems. It is what it is I guess and hopefully DC knows what they're doing in keeping this series going as long as it is.......... and since we're talking about this series, let's get into a recap. In the previous issue we saw Tim Drake as our Batman Beyond hero taking on Rewire once again, but like the first time they fought, Tim went and got his ass kicked because somehow Rewire was able to manipulate the bat suit and shut it down........ which was crazy as hell until we got to the big cliffhanger of that issue, where we found out that Rewire is actually Terry McGinnis. Let's jump into this issue and see what that revelation means for the rest of the series and hopefully find out what happened to Terry to get him to this amnesiac state and if he'll be like Arnold and get his ass some Total Recall....... or maybe get his ass to Mars....... Either way, I'm down. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins in a really nice way, where we see Tim Drake and Matt McGinnis going out for a run, where it seems like they're getting some time alone so that they can get to know one another.......... and really, this is a chance for us to get to know Matt a little bit too because even though the world of Batman Beyond is a familiar one, this version of it with the Brother Eye domination pretty much throws all bets off with what we think we know of this future........ kinda. We begin this story with Matt telling Tim about the time that he found out that Terry was Batman and in this flashback, everything seems like the classic Batman Beyond we all know and love, with Terry fighting Shriek, Bruce advising Terry and all that good stuff. The turning point for this world really seemed to be Brother Eye coming on line all Skynet about it.
So during this fight, Matt and his friends stop to look at Batman kicking a little ass, when Shriek uses the kids to his advantage, by destroying the bridge they're on and forcing our hero to do a little rescuing. Too bad he wasn't quick enough to save Matt from the fall and even though it's really no shock that he survived the plunge, what with him telling the story and all, it's still an awesome moment where we get to see how Terry deals with a mistake as big as letting his brother get hurt. Feeling all that guilt of letting him fall, when Matt awakens in a hospital Terry tells him what's up with his nightlife and even though Terry's reveal that he is in fact the Dark Knight did feel a little forced like he'd been sitting there rehearsing his monologue over and over again while Matt was unconscious, it was pretty cool. As Matt says though, he didn't really have a lot of time with his brother after this big reveal because immediately after, Brother Eye made his debut and took the world by storm. I like this section of the book a lot, but I would have kind of liked if we got everything from Matt's perspective in this flashback, since he is the one telling the story, but I guess the way we got it was the best way to convey all the information.
In the end, after Matt's story time, we see that Tim is taking him to Wayne Manor so that he can introduce him to the Batcave and the wide world of Batman, which is really fun because we even have a scene where Matt looks real quick at the Robin costume......... foreshadowing? Besides for Matt and Tim's story, we also have a bit with Terry McGinnis, where we find out from an old woman how he became the struggling to survive Rewire, but even though we get this story about how Rewire was fighting a borged out Brother Eye monster and was injured in the process... hence Terry needing to steal batteries to survive and then being taken in by the kindly old woman, who knows what's actually going on because the old woman is actually Spellbinder continuing to pull Terry's strings and convince him that he is Rewire and that he needs to kill Batman. The biggest problem I have in this section, besides the fact that I have no idea if it matters or not because who knows if it's real, is the fact that Spellbinder is telling Terry that he is the original Rewire Davis Dusk, even though in a previous issue it was said that he's Davis' successor.
That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and even though there wasn't a ton of action....... or really anything at all except for flashbacks, this is still an enjoyable issue in how we're spending some time in putting the pieces together that will get our characters where they need to be for Rebirth to go down or even just getting some background to this future that seemed to be the same as we'd expect it to be until Brother Eye showed up, which is cool because I really wondered if this world was similar to the one we new from the cartoon and comic book series. Yeah, I still don't know how Terry McGinnis is in this timeline right now since it was made clear in this issue that he did in fact travel through time like the version of him in Futures End, but I look forward to hopefully finding out those answers as this series moves forward. The inclusion of having Terry believe that he is Davis Dusk, the original Rewire is fine with me, but since Spellbinder pointed out that Terry is actually the successor to Davis in a previous issue just irks me a bit because we could have simply gone down that road instead of retconning exposition from not that long ago. All in all the art was really great and I liked that we took the time to get some background on what's going on with some of our main players instead of just seeing Tim Drake get his ass kicked again, even if some of the exposition about it came off odd or forced at times.
Bits and Pieces:
Batman Beyond continues to trudge through all the Rebirths going on in its attempt to be noticed and while this issue doesn't really present much action that isn't all about flashbacks, it's a nice issue overall that serves to give us some background in what's going on with our characters and what got them to this point. The art continues to be strong and I find myself really interested in where the story's going.
7/10
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