Give it a fair shake, this is a solid first issue
(I'm coming off a looong new52-induced hiatus from comics to write this review. Hang on to your bootstraps, kids, I'm out of practice.)
To clarify, this book starts after the events from Futures End. You absolutely don't need to read that saga to understand the basic premise of this book, but how about a little summary of that for you anyway:
Futures End takes place five years in the future of the current DC comic universe. Terry!Batman Beyond tries to arrive in present day DC comic universe but he actually arrived five years too late. Bruce (of the future) sent him (Terry) to help stop Brother Eye from taking over Earth.
Terry meets Tim (five years into the future) who is not a super hero; he faked his death after his team members (Teen Titans) were killed. He owns and runs a bar called The Wounded Duck under the name Cal Corcoran, cause he’s into that brevity and shit. He also grew a beard.
The beard is so important.
So Tim and Terry meet, and because Tim technically doesn’t exist (big death-faker, that he is), he sort of skates through Brother Eye’s security and Tim, very very reluctantly helps Terry.
Terry ends up dying to save the world from Brother Eye and Tim promises him that he’ll help and thus, Tim becomes Batman Beyond. While trying to defeat Brother Eye, Tim is transported back to the same time Terry is from (25 years into the future of current canon).
So the two Tim’s you see are the same-ish because one is still a 16-year-old in present day, and the other is an adult, probably around 22 in a different time period of the current canon’s Gotham City.
(Don't worry to much about Terry! I'm 100% positive he'll be back, probably pretty soon.)
This is Tim's comic, and this isn't Terry's world, not really. Terry's world was shiny and futuristic, while the universe that Tim is dropped into is more like Bladerunner, something dystopian and gritty, and I'm already so into it.
The first scene is a peak at Neo-Gotham where we see the Jokerz, and the movement that was created in the image of the original Joker. They are trying to steal the Veil, which is a cloaking tech used to keep Gotham's location a mystery from Brother Eye. Tim makes quick work of the Jokerz and starts establishing a dialogue with Alfred that is so charming and reminiscent of when Tim was Robin that it warms my heart. I always thought those two really had a special familial relationship and I've missed Tim being in the loop with Alfred and the Batfam over these terrible new52 years.
In the next scene, Tim drops by Nora and Matt's apartment. Matt and Nora are mourning Terry and Tim is expressing his condolences. It's in this scene that the dialogue is a little heavy-handed, I think, but I imagine it was a tough scene to write in such few pages.
Something to note is that, Tim says that this isn't what he wanted. Tim had thought he was done with being a vigilante, and it was Terry to sort of pull Tim out. I hesitate to say Tim was forced to be Batman, but Terry did ask in his dying moments, and I imagine Tim feels responsible and a bit guilty. (I don't want to speculate right now, so early on, but I do want to consider how Tim's Batman origin story coincides with his Robin/Red Robin story. I want to see how much his motivations have changed.)
Tim's first task is that he wants to go rescue Terry's friends. They're being held at a place called "The Lodge" and it's too toxic to travel there. Nora notes that Brother Eye is keeping them all just barely alive for information. Brother Eye cannot read minds.
On his way to the lodge he fights a Brother Eye controlled Superman. Tim's a little geek at heart, and even though Superman isn't Superman, and he's not at full power, when Tim does beat him, he nerds out a little. Little hints of Tim Drake from a few years ago are a nice touch.
The Batsuit shorts out when Tim defeats Superman, but I always thought of Tim as more of a Detective, "Wet Works" kind of character myself. He's definitely a grunt work-type, not necessarily gonna beat you in combat alone, so it's nice to see him ditch the suit and try to infiltrate the camp undercover.
That basically sums up the first issue. It felt a bit rushed all in all, the writing was a bit clunky at times, but honestly I really really enjoyed it.
The art is really dynamic and great. I love the incorporation of the duotone panels every now and then. It feels really sharp and modern and fitting for Tim Drake/Batman Beyond. Chang does a great job.
The biggest switch for me is that this is the first Tim Drake comic we've gotten in a while, and it's in sort of a different format then we're used to for Tim. Robin and Red Robin it was so much of Tim talking to himself. He worked alone a lot for side-kick, and so a good chunk of the books dialogue was in Tim's head and self-reflecting.
Batman Beyond isn't like that, at least not this issue. Tim has Alfred as a foil to voice his thoughts, and it's easy to see that Tim isn't necessarily comfortable with the status quo, but he's trying and he's learning and he just wants to help.
That's all Tim ever really wants, after all. It's why he even became Robin in the first place.
4/5 stars.
