Batman Beyond #14 Review and *SPOILERS*

Cards On The Table

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Phil Hester, Ande Parks, Michael Spicer, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: November 22, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Alright, we're back to Batman Beyond good and proper from where we left off with Terry going up against Damian Wayne........... I'm so happy because if I had to deal with another one-shot I was going to blow my top.  So yeah, not a lot of prep work going into this issue besides for the killer Batman Beyond suit is now gone, Damian and Bruce love each other again...... which won't come up in this issue at all and we have our heroes back in Neo Gotham where they belong.  Let's jump into this issue and see what Dan Jurgens has been working on while he took two months off.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with me being immediately underwhelmed by the art in this issue and while I'd like to say that it gets better as it goes on, at best all I can tell you is that it gets less noticeable in the fact that the story is at least compelling enough to make me stop caring about it.  With that being said though, Terry, Matt and Bruce are back in Neo Gotham after Bruce apparently needed back surgery after his tangle with Koru in the last proper arc and because of that, Terry and Matt have decided to move into Wayne Manor because Bruce isn't about to start hiring out caregivers and filling up the mansion with strangers.  I really dig this development because we're one step closer to having a Bat Family of the Future, especially since Matt spends the entire book eyeing up Damian's old gear and talking about how cool it would be to be Robin, but I also dig it because Terry has put all his mopey bullshit behind him and has decided that Batman is the life that he wants, but hopefully he isn't being too greedy because in his mind, he can have Dana with that life as well.

While Bruce works on getting the old suit upgraded so that Batman can get back in the game, Terry pays Dana a visit, where he tells her his intentions and with them immediately going into sexy time, I'm guessing she's game as long as he is.  There's no time for love Dr. Jones though because the bat signal is out in the sky and Batman is called into action because the Royal Flush Gang....... sans Queen and Ten are back in town and have been hired to kill Batman for some mysterious character, who may or may not also be a new vigilante in town that we get teased about here.

In the end, after Bruce is lectured by Barbara Gordon about how he never bettered the lives of his wards in the past and that she hoped that this time with Terry things would be different,Bruce is forced to watch as Ace picks Terry up and breaks his back the way that Bane did to Bruce all those years ago.

That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and while the art took away a lot of the pleasure I could have gotten out of this book, especially for how family oriented it felt, which I'm all about, I still found myself enjoying this issue in spite of that, which is odd because the Royal Flush Gang bit of this book, which kept making it's way in every few pages wasn't all that interesting at all until the cliffhanger to this issue, but seeing Matt going over all the Robin gear and Terry putting his life the way he wants it........... and the way I want it, kept me interested.  This is a strange issue to review though because of all the highs and lows we have here, but all in all this was a good issue of Batman Beyond and I hope that we get more like it.

Bits and Pieces:

While I wasn't a fan of the art at all in this book, the family oriented nature of everything that was going on here kept me hooked to the pages and made it so that I can't wait for the next issue to come out.  This is really more of a new status quo for our Batman Beyond and what he wants his life to look like from here on out and I can only hope that Terry gets his wish because everything we saw here........ besides for the cliffhanger, is exactly what I want for him too.

6.5/10