Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Batman Beyond #35 Review



High Toned


Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Rick Leonardi, Ande Parks, Chris Sotomayor, Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 28, 2019


Thirty-five years from now, Terry McGinnis and the rest of the future Bat-Family are having themselves some trouble because not only are they dealing with a villain with super speed, who can split into two, but we also have the Beyond version of False Face, who can take over your life completely and leave you an amnesiac mess.  That's exactly what's happened to our hero and hopefully Bruce Wayne has something up his sleeve to not only take down the villain, but also save Terry.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.



For this issue of Batman Beyond we see the villains The Splitt and False Face teaming up and while that's all cool, not to mention that we get an origin story for The Splitt and the idea that False Face is just trying to keep upping his game with the next person he impersonates, powers included, what we have going on in the background to get this is the continuation of all our heroes just really sucking at being heroes and that's something that this series just does over and over again to the point that I wonder why anyone would want to continue reading a book because every time you open an issue, Terry McGinnis is about to die and if that wasn't enough to piss you off, we had that each time Terry went to fight The Splitt in this arc, but now that False Face is Batman, he immediately stops the threat, no fuss, no muss.


Terry's not the only problem either, Matt sucked as Robin and has been grounded, much to many readers chagrin and now for this issue we have Ten, Melanie Walker to save the day and she's instantly taken out.  Thankfully, we have a cliffhanger to this issue that will get many readers' attentions because it's the first bit of hero world building that we've seen in this book beyond Dick Grayson for years now and it looks like it could actually lead to some fun for the next issue.


All in all, the art is great in this issue besides for when we get The Splitt's backstory because out of nowhere we get characters who are barely outlines, but beyond that I was happy with the way this book looks, I just wish I could be as happy with the story.  I love the villains, but the heroes just come off as incompetent with every issue and for how long this book has been going on now, this series and the last, I would think that Terry and company would be able to take care of themselves a little better by now. Cool cliffhanger though, I just hope it's not there for "wow" factor and leads to something bigger.

Bits and Pieces:

Somehow with decent art and interesting villains this issue still feels kind of lackluster because nowhere in this book could I find a competent hero beyond our cliffhanger reveal and that factor to this book is getting kind of old.

6/10

2 comments:

  1. Melanie being taken out right away is par for the course. I'm guessing that at least this time she doesn't spend the whole issue as a hostage tossed around by a villain? I'm not surprised that the villains are far more competent than the heroes, since that's been the pattern for ages now, but I'm still disappointed.

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  2. There's gotta be a change in this book sometime before it's cancelled, where I can open it up and in those twenty-two pages I find a story where our heroes just don't plain suck.

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