A Blight On The City
Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Sean Chen, Sean Parsons, Chris Sotomayor, Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 27, 2019
Let's head back to the future of Neo Gotham and Batman Beyond as we continue to find out if Terry McGinnis will remember who he is and hopefully figure out who the new Batwoman is. Previously, we saw Matt McGinnis and Bruce Wayne placing their bets on who this new figure standing in for Terry while he's gone is and they better hope that whoever is behind the mask is capable because in the background we also have the return of Blight. Let's jump into this issue and check it out.
While you won't get any answers to who this new Batwoman is, we definitely take a good portion of this issue in determining who it isn't...... namely, the two people who Bruce and Matt believed it could be, but beyond that we see the return of Blight here and I wish it was a little more disconnected from the cartoon series because this just seems to be going that Derek Powers has been gone since his original defeat in that and with this being the actual future of the DCU, I would have liked for there to be differences in the continuity, especially since we already have an Earth that's dealing with Batman Beyond, but Blight is back and that's all that really matters here.
For our action portions to this issue we do see Batwoman proving herself quite capable in taking out different crimes throughout Neo Gotham, I just hope that he's prepared enough to take on Blight because now that he's back, he doesn't seem too pleased to encounter a new Bat, especially since he seems to want to get revenge on Bruce Wayne and isn't about to let anyone stand in his way. In this issue as well we get to see the further progression of Terry McGinnis as a criminal on the run from the law, but mostly that portion of the book is all about the friend he made, who just happens to have a connection to Derek Powers......... so yeah...... pretty convenient for what we're dealing with here.
All in all, the art in this book is really good and I do love the idea of the mystery of the Batwoman, even if it seems kind of obvious that it's Dick Grayson's daughter, Elainna, but we're just not getting enough from it in my mind and where we could have had a cool new origin for Blight or even a cool resurrection, we instead just have him back and ready to pick up where he left off and it just seems kind of lame ultimately. Hopefully things pick up because right now most of what we're getting comes off as cliched, but thankfully it at least has its moments of fun because that really elevates the book in the long run, but I still want more from the storytelling by the end.
Bits and Pieces:
Batwoman's kicking ass and taking names in this issue, but don't count on finding out hers here. Instead we're dealing with a huge big bad, but the only problem there is that........ well, he's just there. No real background is given for the character or his resurrection and it seems that Dan Jurgens is relying too much on the cartoon series than actually developing this Neo Gotham for this continuity's future. Thankfully though the art is good and there's some fun moments.
6.5/10
No real background is given for the character or his resurrection and it seems that Dan Jurgens is relying too much on the cartoon series than actually developing this Neo Gotham for this continuity's future.
ReplyDeleteI'd say he's relying more on namedropping the cartoon series. Every time he's taken something from the cartoon it's been handled in a really shallow way with very little logical progression from the original and not much depth even in his own story. Just look at how all over the place Melanie is and how shallow our other mains are.