Batman Beyond #26 Review

Been There, Done That

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 28, 2018

The Joker is back, but can that save this series that has been pretty underwhelming since it started?  Yeah, that's a bit harsh, but I really expected a lot of this series that seems to be struggling with what it wants to be and with what continuity it wants to take since it got renumbered after Rebirth started.  Hopefully now that Matt McGinnis has become the new Robin and with the hype of a geriatric Joker, not to mention the new art team on the book this can become something that I've wanted for a long time now and can move away from the mediocre.  Let's jump into this issue and see if the Joker is able to play out his sequel to the Killing Joke since we left last issue with him pointing a gun at Barbara Gordon.  Let's check it out.

Well......... this is certainly an issue that looks good.  Yeah, for being the arc that brings the Joker back to the Batman Beyond we sure do have a lot of nothing going on here.  Yeah, we did just have a runaway train take out a new Wayne building, which would cause a lot of destruction, but when you have the Beyond Dynamic Duo going around in this issue just flying around and looking for survivors........... Well, it doesn't make much of an interesting story.  Yeah, these are chapters to the bigger whole, but this chapter is pretty goddamn lackluster to the point that it seems like it barely needs to be here at all.  

Now, I try to stay away from big spoilers for people who haven't read the book yet, but I am going to give you the gist of the book because it doesn't seem to be all that big of a shock......... and because it literally doesn't take up much room here at all.......... and comes off pretty goddamn cliche.  The Joker wants to go after the new Robin now that he knows he's a thing.  Yup.  There ya go.  

So yeah, while we have something that should be big going down in this series right now, this whole issue really comes off really underwhelming for how it uses the characters here and while I love Brett Booth's art, one thing that I think he's not portraying properly is the age of the characters involved because Barbara Gordon and Joker seemed to have de-aged significantly in this issue, which isn't terrible, but just comes off odd.  There's just no gravitas to this story and when you find out what the focus is going to be by the end of the issue you just end up rolling your eyes because it's a "been there, done that" situation that I don't need to see again and just comes off as hokey and cliche at this point.

Bits and Pieces:

While I love that we have a new Robin in this book and love the idea of Joker coming back for this arc...... the reality is that while we have those things, they really aren't being utilized great in the series and everything that we get out of this just comes off as boring to get to our big cliffhanger, which comes off cliche.  I love the art team on this book, but I don't think that they're enough to save this mediocre series.

5.3/10