The Comic Book Longbox: Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1 (2022)

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with this week's comic book review. Today I'm going to take a look at a comic that I just got on Sunday, when Brad dropped by, Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #1. So let's get right into it.

I have an interesting history with Batman Beyond. When the series aired from 1999 until 2001 it was on YTV here in Canada. However, my siblings and I didn't watch it for whatever reason. We were still watching YTV as Animorphs, Radio Active, Digimon, Pokemon, and reruns of Sailor Moon, but I don't remember any commercials for it during any of those shows. However, we did have access to The WB and it's kids block, The Kids WB, when we were up at the cottage with our grandparents so I remember watching Batman Beyond from time to time up at the cottage but that's it and I've never watched the series from start to finish, though that is on my to do list since I have the complete series DVD set.

The comics on the other hand are a completely different story. The first comics came out from 1999 until 2001 and were directly based on the TV show, similar to the The Batman Adventures, Batman & Robin Adventures, and Superman Adventures that were tie-ins to Batman: The Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and Superman: The Animated Series. Following the end of this run in 2001, Terry McGinnis began making appearances in the main DC Universe, most notably in Batman #700 (2010), before a third series debuted in 2010, prior to the 2011 change over to the New 52. A fourth run ended after eight issues in 2011. There were also a few other series that got published from 2012 until 2020 during the New 52 and DC Rebirth, leading up to this issue.

So when this issue starts Terry is still Batman, but Bruce is dead, and someone named Donovan Lumos has taken control of Wayne-Powers Industries (Derek Powers had taken over Wayne Industries in the original continuity of the TV show). Terry is on the run as the Batcave, Wayne Manor, the Batmobile, and everything else is gone. The only thing Terry has is the Batsuit.

I actually enjoyed this issue. Even though I haven't seen every episode of the TV series, I do like the idea of a futuristic teenage Batman. And while Terry isn't a teenager anymore in this book, it's still a spin-off of that basic concept, which is cool. Terry doesn't have any of his supporting cast, aside from Commissioner Barbara Gordon, another carry over from the TV show. Not sure where Max or Dana are in at this point in the Batman Beyond comic book continuity. But that's okay because I'm glad the issue focused on Terry given that I haven't read any of the Batman Beyond comics before now. 

The art in this book is done by Max Dunbar, whose work I'm not familiar with, though according to the DC Wiki, he's worked on the most recent Damian Wayne Robin series, as well as Batman: Urban Legends. So he's a more recent DC artist. Also, he's Canadian, from Victoria, British Columbia, according to the DC Wiki, so that's pretty cool.

Like I said, I enjoyed this issue. Unlike alot of comics these days, this one doesn't require you to have too much knowledge of what had happened in previous Batman Beyond comics as it does a really good job of catching you up on what's relevant to this issue's story, which is a problem that I had with I Am Batman #1, which I've reviewed on my old blog, The Review Basement, but I'll review it on here at some point. If you can get your hands on it this is a great issue to pick up. I have the variant cover rather than the original one, which is fine because I actually like the variant cover, which you can see at the beginning of the review. It's the second image that I have in this post. 

And that my friends is going to be it for me for today. I will be back on Friday though for my reviews of Star Trek: Picard season 2, and the pilot episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.