Batman Beyond #50 Review

What The Future Used To Look Like

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Sean Chen, Sean Parsons, Chris Sotomayor, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: December 22, 2020

It's the final time we'll be heading off to thirty-five years from now..... at least for the time being, Future State notwithstanding, and with that, we'll see Batman Beyond go up against something he's seen time and time again..... A final issue. There's no real arc to detail going into this so let's just quit with the jibber-jabber and see what Dan Jurgens has planned for us for Terry's final (for now) flight. Let's check it out.

Since it's the final issue, it's time for characters to come out of the woodwork so that we can have a proper goodbye to this title. Too bad that all the characters who show up here that you haven't seen in a while don't make any sense to be in this book from what we've seen previously. Like right off the bat we have Dana Tan call up Terry because Bruce and Matt were attacked and are now in the hospital...... Why the hell would Dana Tan know and be the one to call Terry about this development? This being in the book isn't a deal breaker by any means, but it's just odd and it's the first of a bunch of odd things to be thrown out there just because this is the final issue.

As for the rest, we have the villain Inque show back up for a story that's similar to her appearance in the animated series, where she was looking for a way to stabilize her body and while that's fine if it wasn't so reminiscent of a story that was actually better presented, Inque in this continuity was last scene sacrificing herself on the moon when our hero was stopping Brother Eye so her showing up here doesn't really make much sense and is only really used here to show the compassion of Terry McGinnis. Who does Terry need to prove his compassion to? Why Wonder Woman of course and for some reason, she's going to introduce Terry to the Justice League...... which we've already seen happen when he saved them from Brother Eye. What a weird disjointed final issue that only tries to play on your feels instead of telling a story that feels right for this series.

All in all, I enjoyed the art in this issue and would be happy to see everybody show back up for this finale as long as it made sense for the situation....... you know, like Max Gibson..... she would have been cool here, but instead, we get Melanie and Dana for some reason..... and Wonder Woman for some reason and ultimately it just leaves me to wonder why this was seen as the best approach to a final issue because all we really achieved was seeing that Terry McGinnis is a good guy and if you've been reading the series up to this point..... I'm pretty sure you know that already. So yeah, a bit of a whimper to end this series which will probably be taken out of continuity with Future State showing up next month. I guess we'll just have to wait and see when the next time we'll get the further adventures of Terry McGinnis.

Bits and Pieces:

While I dig the art and the idea of calling back to classic characters for this finale... I just wish they would have made sense to the continuity we've been establishing for a Batman Beyond in this timeline for years now. Sadly that's not the case though and we just have characters thrown in here just for the wow or nostalgia factor while I would have liked a good story to end things out instead.

5/10