Batman Beyond #8 Review and *SPOILERS*

Face of the Demon

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: May 24, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Let's jump in our time machine and head to thirty-five years from now so that we can see what our Batman Beyond is up to.  In our previous issue, we frustratingly saw Terry McGinnis slack on his Batman responsibilities so that he could have some "me time", but thankfully, he got on the trolley and started acting like Batman in time to save Barbara Gordon and Curare from the League of Assassins.  Too bad he was wearing the prototype Bat Suit that Bruce deems too dangerous for anyone to wear because it could mean the wearers death, but Terry doesn't have time for all that jibber jabber and ignores the old man so that he can continue kicking ass and taking names.  Eventually though, Curare and Batman had themselves some quiet time so that the assassin could tell our hero that the reason she was in town is because Ra's Al Ghul is back and plans on using the weakness of the world after the Brother Eye invasion to remake the planet in the image he's always wanted.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Terry smartens the hell up and gets out of that prototype suit or continues to do the dumb shit and makes us pull our hair out.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Bruce giving us the lowdown on the prototype Bat Suit and a history different than the animated series for when Bruce stopped being Batman.  It turns out that in our proper Universe, he was taking on a gang of Banes and got his ass seriously whipped, which led him to make a better Bat Suit.  One that would have A.I. that would take over when necessary to make sure that Batman never failed........... and on top of that, make it so that the wearer wouldn't feel any pain, no matter what the injury was.  Yeah, at the end of the day Bruce won the fight against the Banes, but afterward he realized that he had sustained serious injury and even then, he isn't sure that he would have been able to take off the suit because of the A.I. operating it if it wasn't damaged.  Over the years he tinkered with it and tried to make it better, but it's still not a 100% and we see that once Terry begins his adventure.

So yeah, apparently Ra's is still kicking in this timeline and Curare has come to Neo Gotham to recruit Batman to take him down, but before they could go off together to stop the Demon's Head, Ra's #2, Koru showed up to punish Curare for her betrayal.  Now this bit is a little forced because throughout the opening of this issue, Bruce is pleading with Terry to come back because the suit isn't safe and Terry kept responding that he didn't have time for that, but when Terry gets aboard Curare's craft, the auto-pilot takes over and he starts complaining that he wasn't ready to go yet.  On top of that Curare stays behind to keep Koru busy so that Batman can keep to her mission.  Yeah, Curare dies and even though Barbara Gordon is right there and it seems that Koru wants to kill her too, he says he doesn't have time and jumps off the building to possibly catch up with Terry.  

In the end, Bruce tricks Max and Matt so that he can sneak off to go help Terry on his own and Terry shows up to Ra's fortress, where he apparently kills a shit ton of assassins before confronting the Demon's Head himself.  As our issue closes, Batman knocks the mask of his foe and we find out that Ra's is indeed dead and that Damian Wayne has taken his grandfather's place as the Demon........ Which really seemed obvious in last issue.

That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and while I enjoyed the new history of Bruce's last days of Batman for this timeline, complete with the history of the prototype Bat Suit, the rest of the issue really came off forced to get us where we were going and keeping Terry in danger.  Yeah, I like the reveal and where that might take us going forward, but even that felt too telegraphed from what we got last issue, but I'm still intrigued with what will come from it.  The art in this issue is as great as it always is and I have no problems with it.  It's just the forced nature of the style of storytelling that we seem to keep getting from this series that's starting to wear on me.  Even with that though, this is still a decent issue and a decent series, I just hope that the writing evolves as the series continues.

Bits and Pieces:

Even with the forced nature of this issue, I still found myself having some fun with this story and loving the art that depicted it.  We got two decent reveals in this issue that shape how we got here and where we're going moving forward and even though the latter was pretty obvious from what we got last issue, I still found it enjoyable enough.

6.8/10