Use Your Illusion
Written By: Dan JurgensArt By: Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 3, 2016
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
It's time to head on back to that strange, strange future we all thought we knew from watching the Batman Beyond cartoon or from reading the comics, but this "shway" world isn't what we thought we knew because Futures End had to go and fuck everything up and trade our lovable Terry McGinnis in for the emotionally broken Tim Drake....... also from the future, but not one that exists anymore, so it doesn't really matter. Anyway, now that you're all caught up on the gist of this book, let's get to the nitty gritty. It seems that while we saw Terry McGinnis die in Futures End, all that shit doesn't count anymore thanks to the mind fuck that is time travel and our former Batman Beyond is now Rewire...... thanks to the mind control powers of Spellbinder. Yeah, shit is crazy, but all of this is leading to getting Terry McGinnis out of the Rewire suit and back into something that fits a little more snug. Let's jump into this issue and see how Tim Drake snaps Terry out of fairy land, where he believes that Batman has been persecuting him for years and years, to the point where Terry..... or Davis as he goes by here, thinks that killing the Batman is the only way to find some peace. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with rolling blackouts throughout Neo Gotham and leave it to the populace of Gotham to get up to a whole ton of trouble once the lights of the city go out and it's up to Batman and Barbara Gordon to keep all the hop heads and junkies from looting all the drug stores in the area........ but goddamn, those hop heads are spread out far because as soon as they stop one, another store is broken into...... and really, it looks like it's going to be a long night for our heroes. The funny thing is, for all the encounters Batman and Barbara have had with Rewire over the last bunch of issues, it for some reason never occurs to them that these strange blackouts might have anything to do with an electricity based super villain........ that is of course until Matt McGinnis informs Batman that while on route to stopping another group of looters, Barbara Gordon was taken by someone and that her car had scorch marks on it that looks like it was done by electricity........ which leads to Matt saying something about Rewire being responsible for the blackouts and Tim responding like he knew it all along. Fake it till you make it, huh Tim?
With the knowledge that Rewire has taken Barbara Gordon, Tim knows that the big bad is calling him out and to make matters even more clear, it seems that the villain (who we all know to be Terry McGinnis, but who believes he is Davis Dusk) calls Tim to his location at the abandoned Black Gate Prison by shining a Red Robin symbol in the sky.......... Only thing is....... How the hell does Rewire or anyone else besides for Barbara or Matt know that Tim is Batman Beyond and that he used to be Red Robin? Yeah, once we get there and find out that Barbara has also been brainwashed by Spellbinder, we can assume that maybe she spilled the beans, but even with that....... Where the hell did they get a Red Robin signal at that time of night?
In the end, after Tim walks directly into a trap, he first battles Barbara Gordon, finds out that Spellbinder is involved and then Tim gets the shock of his life when he knocks Rewire's helmet off...... which seems loose as hell in this issue because it happens twice, and finds out that Terry McGinnis is alive....... maybe not well, but alive.... and let's not forget about young Matt McGinnis back at the Batcave monitoring the situation. He must of shit himself when he saw his brother. As our issue closes though, even with the revelation about Terry, it doesn't seem like Tim is able to talk any sense into him, what with Spellbinder hanging out and continuing his whammy and Terry believes that the only chance he has at staying alive is by killing Tim and using the bat suit to keep his futuristic pace maker going.
That's it for this issue of Batman Beyond and while this issue simply keeps what we already knew going with Spellbinder playing his head games with Terry and convincing our former hero that he needs to kill Batman, it does finally reveal to the rest of our players that Terry is indeed alive so the emotional connection and revelation is a nice touch finally, but I just want to know why it seemed that up until this point that everyone believed that Terry did in fact go back in time to meet his fate like Tim told everyone he did. Now, I know that Tim should believe this because he saw it and never considered time travel being a bitch and all that, it's just odd that now that we know what happened to Terry, him fighting cyborgs and simply collapsing just doesn't jive up to what we've been reading so far. That's about it though as far as story is concerned........ not much going on here, but luckily the art continues to be top notch in this series.
Bits and Pieces:
While this issue of Batman Beyond won't "WOW" anyone, it does putter along to get us to Batman Beyond's renumbering and hopefully someplace where the story isn't constricted by all the doom and gloom that this series has had to be all about because of Futures End. That being said, we do get our characters in place to have some decent emotional moments in the next issue, but besides for that and some fine ass art, there isn't a lot to be said about this straight forward typical Batman Beyond story.
6/10
I no like Bernard Chang art.
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