Content

Getting to read both Batman Beyond‘s first arc in full and Justice League Beyond‘s arc in full really puts in perspective how different these two books are. Batman Beyond is far more plot driven and focused on character development whereas Justice League Beyond is more about fan-service, character histories, and amazing artwork. The pacing is inconsistent, there are also some weird logic gaps and plot holes throughout that are a lot more obvious when you read it without the month long gap between every ten pages, but as much as I can slag off the story (and I will in a bit) these team-up books aren’t usually where you go for a rich story. This is something I’ve said in my reviews before. These books are capable of having great narratives, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that they are few and far between. For the most part these character crossover/team-up extravaganzas are just about having fun seeing all your favorite heroes on the same page fighting something way bigger than you would ever see in their solo titles. And in terms of having great character interactions and incredible artwork for you to ogle this book is a roaring success.

But the story? Well, it isn’t much of a story. It’s instead writers Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs having a hell of a time playing with as many toys in the DC toybox as they possibly can. It’s really fun and DC fans have a lot of easter eggs and fun anecdotes about the Beyond Universe history to dissect  but the overall tale being told isn’t that great. When you’re done reading the book and sharing it with your friends (as you should do with all your comics) the conversation you have won’t be about the plot, it’ll be about how character X’s life turned out since Justice League Unlimited ended. It’s still enjoyable, just on a different level. You see, the story begins (and this is all in the opening 10 pages or shown on the back cover so no major spoilers) in Gotham with Terry teaming up with the Justice League to fight the Jokerz and the Splicers when suddenly there’s a call from Bruce stating that a horde of GOLeM robots is attacking Terry’s high school and there’s another call from Aquagirl saying that the Justice League needs to come back to Metropolis immediately for briefing. Since JLB takes priority, everyone heads back to Metropolis and we are left to assume Bruce took care of the GOLeM’s with some Ro-Bats (which sounds wicked awesome and we should’ve seen that happen). Back at the JL tower we get a briefing about Micron, who was discovered on an espionage mission regarding Kobra, who are trying to awaken a giant snake.

First off, pulling everyone away from an immediate threat in which multiple giant robots are attacking a high school is ridiculous. Superman’s chat could’ve waited. At this point the team didn’t know about the greater threat Kobra posed, they just knew Micron had been brainwashed. Secondly, how in the heck did Micron get caught on his spy mission? He is apparently an imbecile.  His job was to not be seen and his ability is that he can shrink down to the size of a MICRON, yet when he’s in Kobra territory he remained full-size and, wouldn’t you know it, he got caught! How…wha…why wouldn’t you change into the size of a mote of dust for a job like this or at least a mouse? You had one job, Micron. One job!

After all of this we get to the greater threat of the book, a giant snake that eats worlds. And the goofy thing is, it’s not like it’s even attacking the earth at first, no. Kobra apparently loves the prophecy of the apocalyptic snake, but wants to take it on a test-run first to other worlds to make sure it really can totally eat planets. This of course, is just an odd plot device to give us even more cameos from DC’s outer-space related characters and it works well at that.

The list of cameos is exhaustive and turning the page and seeing a character you know and love return in the Beyond Universe is one of the most fun things about this book. Friedolfs and Nguyen dug deep into the DC lineup. Really deep. And they found characters you didn’t even know you wanted to check-up on again. Often times when a surprise character makes an appearance the entire Justice League decides to take a break from the impending doom of the universe to hear a super awesome story about how such-and-such ended up like this since the last time readers saw them. It’s fun, just go with it. I really think it shows that this first arc was made by a couple of guys who really love the source material and wanted to put as much of it in one book as they possibly could. The energy and nostalgia for the animated series radiates off every page. And they got the character interactions down-pat and that’s a very important thing they needed to nail. Bruce and Terry’s moments are great and there’s a really funny scene with Bruce and Superman, but many of the other characters have amusing dialogue as well. One of the only characters I felt was underused was Aquagirl who shouldn’t be the person behind the computer. Ever. I don’t understand why you would make the person who can control water your team’s version of Oracle. Luckily, she’s only handled like that for the first half of the book.

The artwork, as you can see, is amazing. It always is when Dustin Nguyen is involved. This is, without a doubt, the best-looking of all the Beyond comics. Just look at that image. If you take out the speech bubbles, you’d swear it was a cell from an episode of the animated series that you never saw. Not only does Nguyen capture the Timm designs precisely, but he handles action spectacularly and the faces on all these characters are incredibly expressive. It’s a book that I can recommend for the artwork alone, truthfully. The only instances of complaint would be with the coloring in the first trip to Metropolis and the size of the snake. It’s night when the League is in Gotham then daylight when they go to Metropolis. I tried to reason that they were out fighting crime really late in Gotham and it was nearly morning, but when you consider that a high school sporting event was going on at the same time, well, that probably puts us at around 7-10PM and it’s just a coloring mistake. As for the snake, its size is constantly changing like Godzilla in Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla movie, but on a way bigger scale. In one scene it’s wrapped around an entire planet and in the next, its jaw is being propped open by Aquagirl’s trident.

Supplemental Material

The Justice League Beyond Origins tales feel like bonus material so I’ll just count them as such. These three stories offer a glimpse at the early days of Warhawk, Aquagirl, and Barda. Each is written by Nguyen and Friedolfs, but features guest artists Eric Nguyen, James Brouwer, and Ben Caldwell. All of the artwork is really fantastic, but Ben Caldwell’s style didn’t fit the story of Barda well at all. It’s a chibi look that reminds me more of Li’l Gotham than a dark tale of Barda’s origin. The other two artists captured the look and feel of the animated series perfectly and the colors are even better than those found in the main JLB chapters.

You’ll also get full page covers of all 16 digital chapters and it’s really great to see them in their entirety without being cut in half for the digital market or cluttered with cover copy for the floppy version. After you’re done perusing the covers, Dustin Nguyen included a 4 page sketch gallery with minor notes. Overall it’s pretty good bonus material and if you see the origins section as a bonus then it’s definitely a book with incredible supplemental material.

Value:   Full Price!

You would have to buy around 10 issues of Batman Beyond Unlimited to get this complete story on your shelf and at $4 bucks an issue, that would cost you a pretty penny. Unlike Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns, the entire epic from beginning to end is included so there’s no problem there. $16.99 is a great price for fans of the Batman Beyond animated series and this is indeed a must read for fans of that universe. If you’re not a huge fan of the cartoon but just curious about seeing some good artwork then I’d say pick it up for the sale price. Amazon is offering it for $12.16 at the time I write this article. I’m not so sure that the re-read value on this is all too high though. You’ll mostly be revisiting it simply to flip through the artwork again.

Overall

Are you a big fan of the Batman Beyond episodes The Call, part 1 & 2? Then this is a must-buy for you. It has art that perfectly captures the tone of the animated series and an overwhelming amount of character cameos and back-story that expand on the Beyond Universe. It’s really light on plot and the villains are rather unmemorable, but if you’re just looking for action and more insight into the world of one of your favorite cartoons, this is worth picking up.

SCORE: 7/10

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I couldn’t put Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns down and I’ve read the thing before. That says a lot. So why didn’t it get a higher score than 7/10? (7/10 is still very good, by the way. That’s almost 3/4 stars when you think about it and as we all know, stars are fantastic) Because it failed to include the epilogue! Once 10,000 Clowns was over, a story focused on Terry’s girlfriend, Dana, was published. That issue, while rather horribly drawn by a fill-in artist, resolved everything from 10,000 Clowns. It covered Terry and Dana’s relationship, the fate of our main villain, wrapped up Bruce Wayne’s subplot, and set up a new status quo for the entire series. Not including that chapter in this trade paperback was a huge mistake and it makes the book end really abruptly and not in a good way, like Road House. SHOW SPOILER ▼

Content

10,000 Clowns is by Adam Beechen and Norm Breyfogle. I have a soft spot for Breyfogle because he drew the Batman I grew up with. If you’ve read Knightfall, as I imagine every Batman fan has even if they don’t venture to far back in the mythology, you know Breyfogle’s work. In Batman Beyond, however his style goes under a bit of a transformation as he tries to capture the Bruce Timm designs of the animated series. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. His page layouts are also quite restricted because the series was created as a digital first comic, which means that it’s released 10 pages or so a month and those 10 pages are cut in half to accommodate a computer screen. Truthfully, if you want good digital comics you need to look to sites like Thrillbent, where they’ve figured out that the form should follow the function, not the other way around. These digital firsts that go to print are trying to please both markets by just splitting the page in half and I think both digital and print mediums suffer for it. The one big problem I think everyone will have with Breyfogle’s art on this book is his design for the main villain, the Joker King. In my opinion’s it’s just an awful, non-threatening look and takes a lot of the punch out of what’s otherwise a really disturbing story. Also, there are some pages in which the faces of Bruce or Terry seem kind of off as if we’ve reached this Uncanny Valley between Timm designs and Breyfogle style that’s kind of unsettling. Terry looked a bit like the Big Boy restaurant mascot in some panels. But for the most part the book looks nice. A two-page spread in particular in which the batmobile is flying over the lower streets of Gotham is so stunning that it still sticks with me. There were also some coloring mistakes on the character Vigilante in which he gains red accents on his armor during the middle of a battle.

Adam Beechen has written the adventures of Terry McGinnis before in the mini-series Hush Beyond and Industrial Revolution, which was comprised of the first 8 issues of the short-lived ongoing Batman Beyond title that was pushed aside when the New 52 began. I honestly didn’t care much for either of these stories, but I highly recommend you check out what he’s done here with 10,000 Clowns. It’s thrilling. However, even though I didn’t much care for Hush Beyond or Industrial Revolution, if you can find those cheaply then I suggest you pick those up and read them beforehand. The building blocks for much of what happens in 10,000 Clowns is laid out there. In a very short period of time, Adam Beechen made a pretty major impression on the Beyond universe.

Some of these changes you’ll love and some you’ll hate, but either way you have to salute the fact that he had the balls to push the series forward instead of trying to repeat old episodes. While I like to see what became of Dick Grayson, I also feel uncomfortable about Beechen retroactively changing the origin of Terry McGinnis. I didn’t like it when Justice League Unlimited did it either. That’s twice that Terry’s origin has been doctored and he’s a character that’s not even been around for 15 years. But while Beechen does put his own stamp on things he still handles the material with a great deal of respect and manages to capture the look and feel of Gotham (I refuse to call it “Neo Gotham”) and all the characters within. I think he does an especially good job with old Bruce.

The story here centers, as you can imagine, around the Jokerz. Beechen realized that Joker is such a larger than life character that if his infamy were to cause the youth of Gotham to form gangs, it would surely spawn even more gangs around the world. In 10,000 Clowns, there is a mass exodus of Jokerz to Gotham and it’s up to Terry to figure out why before something really terrible happens. It plays out like a much darker episode of the classic animated series. However, some things are way too obvious early on (the identity of the Joker King), slightly annoying (the revised origin of Terry) SHOW SPOILER ▼

While the story centers on the Joker’z we do take some time to visit other Batman Beyond characters as well. Dana is greatly strengthened as a vital part of the Batman Beyond story, Maxine has her own subplot and Henry Rollins’ character Mad Stan takes up about a quarter of the book before things turn into absolute chaos. Maxine’s plot will make little to no sense to those who haven’t read Industrial Revolution and it serves mostly as an annoying distraction here. I mean, it’s a plot that was started in 2011! I could’ve done without Maxine in the story completely. As for Mad Stan, he’s great! Remember how I said this was like reading a completely different book? When I first reviewed the short snippets that were released in Beyond Unlimited, I was bored to tears by the Mad Stan chapters which took months to finish and held no real weight at all. Collected in the TPB one-after-the-other, however, Mad Stan’s story is a necessary step toward the Jokerz finale and some nice lighthearted fun before we get into the heavier stuff that comes in the final act. It was terrible as a single month’s episode, but wonderful as the opening chapters of a larger work. And that seems to be the story of 10,000 Clowns. I saw it as being rather mediocre for the first 7 or 8 months of publication in the Beyond Unlimited series but now that I can take it all in at once, it’s an awesome ride.

Preview images courtesy of DC Comics

Supplemental Material

3 pages of Joker King character designs, none of which are very good. I had hoped that there would be one in there that I could say “Awww, they should’ve stuck with this!” but none of the sketches deviate far enough from the finished product, which was a pretty terrible look for our main villain in my opinion. You’ll also get the covers for each of these issues in full, which is fantastic. Many of these illustrations have never been seen by the print crowd or they have but they were cluttered with cover copy. All in all though this it doesn’t add up to much in the bonus department. For real bonus material, and I mean better bonus material than you can possibly get from just about any graphic novel in the store, go to writer Adam Beechen’s Youtube channel for 8-10 minute videos offering creator commentary on all chapters.

Value:   Full Price!

If you loved the Batman Beyond animated series then I think you’ll really get a kick out of this. It captures the look and feel of the series and it gets really intense in the second half. It might lack in the bonus material department, but it has a high re-read value. Amazon is currently offering it for $13.06. I say go out and get it. Yes, it’s disappointing that you won’t get to see the aftermath in the Dana epilogue, but you should still enjoy the ride.

Overall

This is the best Batman Beyond story that Adam Beechen has written and now that it’s in a TPB and not spread out over 15 months of digital firsts and printed anthologies it should finally get the attention it deserves. However, I can’t help but shake my head at the folks who put this book together because they neglected to include the INCREDIBLY important epilogue that ties up ALL of the narrative threads from this arc. You’ll still have a great time reading it, but the ending is abrupt and you won’t get all the answers you need to feel 100% satisfied. It’s a hell of a shame that that chapter wasn’t added.

SCORE: 7/10

The post Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns review appeared first on Batman News.

Batman Beyond and Justice League Beyond are starting brand new arcs with this issue. Superman Beyond, however is nearing the end of its epic outer space adventure. First I’ll talk about the Superman story by Krul and Proter, which is by far the meatiest of the tales included here.

Long ago, on a distant planet, Superman freed the cat-like Mangals from the oppressive Trillians and returned them to their forest home. Sounds nice, right? Well, this is a story that tries to show us that with big conflicts like this there truly is no good guy or bad guy and there’s definitely no such thing as riding off into the sunset. It’s a complicated situation where Superman must deal with the consequences of his actions. On one side he’s viewed as a war criminal responsible for the mass genocide that’s resulted in the years since the Mangal rebellion and the other side he’s worshiped as a messiah.

The mangals, still angry about being enslaved, want to topple the Trillian empire and they want their messiah, who they recently freed from the same bondage of the Trillians, to lead them into battle. So you can imagine their surprise when Supes says no. It’s presented as being really complex, but the evidence still feels very biased toward the Mangals. After seeing all the horrible stuff this civilization suffered under the Trillians, saying both sides can be seen as equally guilty is tough to swallow in my opinion. I felt like our hero should definitely be helping the Mangals bring down the Trillian forces then try to arrange a peace… but that’s me. That’s why I’m a Batman fan. I like vengeance more than forgiveness and hope.  So what we get is Superman jumping into the line of fire in an attempt to keep anyone on either side from dying. It’s noble, it’s epic, it’s Superman.

The next story in this book is from Justice League Beyond, written by Derek Fridolfs and illustrated by Ben Caldwell, and I didn’t care for it at all. The biggest problem I had was easily to do with the artwork. The heads of these characters are too big and their bodies too small, giving them the look of caricatures. It’s hard to take a story about abducted children seriously when the cartoonish characters are so exaggerated. So it’s not so much a matter of the art being bad, it’s actually quite good. The problem is that the illustrations do not jive with the tone of the story. It’s fast-paced, silly, and quite forgettable, especially after the heavy Superman Beyond tale that came before it.

Batman Beyond achieves a nice balance between the ultra-serious Superman Beyond and goofy Justice League Beyond episodes that came before it. We’re finally moving ahead with the Undercloud plot (which has been slowly unfolding for YEARS) and it turns out that the evil plot of this organization of hackers is a lot more over-the-top than we were led to believe. They aren’t just going to hack computers and attack the Gotham infrastructure. Nope. They’re activating a giant robot. It’s an odd direction to take things, that’s for sure and I can’t say that I’m feeling it. Breyfogle’s art looks nice for the most part though. His Max looks like she was lifted directly from the animated series, as does a surprise villain. Bruce doesn’t look quite right though and Terry is wearing a very Sinestro-esque t-shirt that I found distracting. Speaking of Terry, the real adventure here that you’ll care about is a bomb threat at a concert where the famed band uses unique frequencies to touch the pleasure center of their audience’s brain. If you can’t guess who the surprise villain is from a mile away then you must not know Batman Beyond as well as you think!

So, it’s 2/3 of a new-reader friendly comic but only one of those two stories was good enough to bring me back next month. Superman, as always, is phenomenal but Justice League Beyond brought this book way down in my opinion. If you’ve been reading the adventures of future Kal-El, you have reason to be excited for this $3.99 book. If you’re new to the Beyond books, however, it might leave you a little underwhelmed. Hopefully the final page of Batman Beyond will make you curious enough about the return of a great villain from the animated series that you’ll come back again for issue #16.

SCORE: 6.5/10

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Not the usual cover is it? It’s so dark and rather understated compared to the Batman Beyond Unlimited designs of the past and it would lead you to believe that this is a very heavy read. Well, in the case of Batman Beyond it actually is, but when it comes to Superman Beyond and Justice League Beyond you’re in for some fun. A great combo like that makes Batman Beyond Unlimited a book that’s definitely worth your time and money. Not only is issue #14 an enjoyable read but it’s also an important one. Things are about to get shaken up in more ways than one.

With Batman Beyond I thought that we were getting a brand new arc and I advertised it as such in the recent Upcoming Comics article. Well I wasn’t entirely correct on that one. This month’s Batman Beyond episode is called Legends of the Dark Knight: Dana. Now, a name like that might make you think it’s going to be similar to those one-shot origin stories from Justice League Beyond. It’s actually more of an epilogue to the 10,000 Clowns arc, but not an inaccessible one for new readers! Author Adam Beechen does an excellent job of tying up loose ends leftover from that epic, explaining all the important beats to the uninitiated in a painless way for the tried and true fans, AND he makes an ENORMOUS change to the Batman Beyond mythology that will be felt in the comics from this day forth. I found it to be a pretty well done, low-key story with a nice big punch at the end but the artwork hampered things a bit. Typically Peter Nguyen does terrific work (he’s filling in for Norm Breyfogle) but just looking at the very first panel you can see something is off. It makes Dana look like she’s 6’6 or like the bottom half of her body kept growing while the upper half stayed at around 15 years old. It’s weird. And there are several other panels from that point on where faces look soured and squished, hands look like flippers, and some panels where figures have no faces at all. It’s a crying shame for such weak illustrations to be used for such an important story in the life of Terry McGinnis. Be on the lookout for a comic book reference, by the way. It won’t be hard to miss. SHOW SPOILER ▼

For the second act, we have the always great Superman Beyond by JT Krul and Howard Porter. If you haven’t been reading from the beginning you’ll probably be somewhat confused by what’s going on here, but trust me, it’s good. It would be worth your trouble to find the older chapters on Comixology! In his youth, Superman once freed some slaves on a strange planet and today those slaves have risen up with their own civilization that is in constant war with their former captors. The slavers sought revenge on Superman and brought him back to the planet for punishment but he was freed by people who view him as a messiah. So… it’s pretty cool. Of the three Beyond features, Superman’s story is the one that I think is most deserving of its very own book. Batman and Justice League can have their short stories, but Superman’s has been far too large in scale for so little page space.

Lastly, there’s the Justice League story, Flashdrive Part 2. It’s a fun one that introduces us to the newest member of the Justice League, Flash. There’s really not much more to it than that. It looks great with artwork by Jorge Corona who captures the look and feel of the animated series well and writer Derek Fridolfs wrote a fun battle scene with some amusing lines. It’s a nice break after the massive year-long arc that Justice League started with. I figured this one would be just as big but this second chapter wraps everything up quickly– just like a Flash story should, eh?

It would appear that next month will have the middle of Superman’s journey plus 2 all new arcs starting fresh in Batman Beyond and Justice League Beyond. So if you’re a curious browser skimming through this article, make a note! Next month is the ideal time to give this series a test-drive. Not that this issue is too bad. In fact, I recommend you pick it up regardless just so you can see the surprise that Batman Beyond has in store for you. All in all, this is a comic that’s worth the $3.99!

SCORE: 8/10

The post Batman Beyond Unlimited #14 review appeared first on Batman News.

This issue starts off really strong and ends strong but I found everything in between to be rather lacking. I will say that now is probably going to be your best chance to jump on board this title if you never have before. Another opportunity like this won’t come around for quite some time. Justice League Beyond kicks off its second arc with this issue, Batman Beyond is ending the epic 10,000 Clowns storyline so you’ll get to see a brand new Terry adventure next month, but admittedly you’ll be someone confused by what’s going on in Superman Beyond if you haven’t heard anything about it before. These three different series have all been highly entertaining so far but cutting their stories up into such teeny tiny bits and passing the collected pieces off as an anthology month after month is making it a difficult monthly comic to recommend. It’s rarely ever accessible to new readers and even the smallest story arcs stretch on for months and it’s easy to forget what happened in the last installment. So… basically if you haven’t read Batman Beyond Unlimited before then I say pick up this issue and see what you think or, perhaps the smarter thing to do would be to just wait for the trades to come out. Those are going to be really excellent.

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St. Louis still exists in the Beyond universe– we made it! Ya know, that’s two St. Louis references in Batman comics in this month alone. It’s almost like they’re pandering to me…

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The post Batman Beyond Unlimited #12 review appeared first on Batman News.

The issue starts off strong with a lengthy Batman Beyond episode. This story has been riveting the past few issues. Bruce is hospitalized, Jokerz are bombing every corner of Gotham, Dick and Tim are both out of retirement and helping Terry, Dana is in danger, and Catwoman and Vigilante have joined the fight as well as Gotham is consumed in flame. There’s a lot going on and I think it’s going to make for one heck of a good TPB one day. The story only ever drags when “The Joker King”, who would be a far better villain if his character design wasn’t so terrible, explains his origin. That part felt unnecessary because he basically states what we could already assume from the bits of dialogue we’ve seen over the past few issues. None of his origin is very interesting or memorable and it stripped the scene of some of its tension. What should’ve been explained is how Joker King ever got his hands on this super-powered pistol or the suicide drugs he dosed his army with, now that’s something I would’ve wanted to hear. Still, Adam Beechen and Norm Breyfogle are performing at the top of their game right now. I recommend all Batman Beyond fans check this storyline out.

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The post Batman Beyond Unlimited #11 review appeared first on Batman News.

I don’t know how any fan of the whole DC Universe could look at this cover and not pick this comic up. How cool is that cover? I usually go for the simple covers that express what the comic is about in a minimalistic way but there’s something very satisfying about seeing all of these characters clustered together and looking so heroic.

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The post Batman Beyond Unlimited #10 review appeared first on Batman News.

It’s just as thick as Batgirl’s Annual that came out today only it’s a dollar cheaper and has a lot more variety. The bad thing is that it’s really, really unfriendly to new readers so I can’t recommend that anyone unfamiliar with this series pick it up. Seriously, if you open this comic and flip through the pages all you’re going to see is page after page of all-out-war. Come back next month, though. That’s when some new stories start fresh!

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The post Batman Beyond Unlimited #9 review appeared first on Batman News.

The $#!% hits the fan in this issue. All of the stories collected in this series are reaching their big climax at the same time and while that doesn’t bode well for new readers who will be confused by such a comic, the rest of you should be on the edge of your seat! Bruce is hospitalized, Gotham is under siege by suicide bombers, Metropolis is getting hammered by a giant robot, the planet is surrounded by a ring of kryptonite, and a giant world-consuming snake is about to devour Earth. And in a month where every DC hero is bursting out of a faded background, Batman Beyond Unlimited’s cover by Dustin Nguyen really stands out. It’s quite cool and what’s inside is good as well.

Also, I’m not going to give individual scores to each mini-story anymore. It’s getting too hard to grade some of the smaller tales.

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