Batman Beyond #1 (1999) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with a comic book review and this week I'm taking a look at the first issue of the original 1999 Batman Beyond comic book mini-series. I'm going to try to make it as spoiler free as possible, but, it's a comic book that turns 25 years old this year, so I'm not as concerned about including spoilers. Let's get into it.

My history with Batman Beyond is weird, because I remember watching it at my grandparents's house whenever I was visiting them at the lake, but despite it airing on YTV at the time, I didn't watch it at home. I think that's because YTV didn't advertise it and at the time I was only watching certain shows on the channel like Radio Active, Animorphs, Digimon, Pokemon, Uh Oh!, The Odyssey, System Crash, The New Addams Family, and Incredible Story Studio, so I didn't actually know that it was on on YTV. Until a month or two ago I thought that it only aired here in Canada on the Kids WB, which I only got on Satellite TV up at the lake. And because I wasn't buying new comics in 1999, I didn't know that DC was giving the show the same comic book treatment that it had given Batman: The Animated Series and The Adventures of Batman & Robin with The Batman Adventures and The Batman and Robin Adventures throughout the '90s. I'll get into my history with the TV show more when I actually review the show at a later date. Right now let's get back to the comic.

This is the first issue of the six issue mini-series that DC put out prior to the production of an ongoing monthly based on the TV show that started only a few months after the final issue of this mini-series was published. This issue and the following one adapts the show's two-part pilot episode, "Rebirth". I don't have the second issue, for a reason that I'll mention later, so I don't know what additions that issue has to the story, but at the beginning of this issue, before we first see Bruce Wayne in the Beyond suit, there's a sequence where Batman, in his The New Batman Adventures Batsuit, takes down a few thugs with an apparatus on his right glove that was a prototype for the technology that he would later use in devising the Beyond Batsuit. The thugs were trying to steal a weapon from a place that I'm assuming is Powers Technology, as the CEO who gives Batman crap for destroying the weapon looks like a much younger Derek Powers, wearing a moustache.

From there we go into the episode itself, which opens with the scene that fans of the show are familiar with. There really isn't much to say about the story or characters, because it's the first episode of the show in comic book form. If you've seen Part 1 of "Rebirth", then you've read this comic. Aside from the opening of the comic, I don't think there are any other differences between this version and the televised version. I also don't remember if anything was removed from the story in order to compact it into comic book form. The issue is written by Hilary J. Bader, whose comic book work I'm not familiar with. However, I am familiar with her work on Star Trek as she wrote several episodes of TNG, DS9, and Voyager in the '90s. She also wrote several season 1 episodes of Batman Beyond as well.

The artwork is the standard The Batman Adventures style that I grew up looking at as the artists on this book are Rick Burchett as the Penciler, and Terry Beatty as the Inker. Both of them worked on both The Batman Adventures and The Batman & Robin Adventures. It still looks amazing in the context of Batman Beyond too. 

The issue was collected with the rest of the mini-series in a trade paperback collection in 2000. This collected edition is long out of print though, and I've never seen it at a con, comic book sale, or a comic book store, even back in the 2000s when I was starting to buy new comics again. The cover looks really cool though.

DC published a Facsimile Edition version of this issue in December 2023 (the publication date on the first page is March 2024), and that's how I got the issue. I was at my local comic book store with Brad two weeks ago and I saw it on the month old rack so I decided to pick it up, even though I could probably find the entire mini-series at a con or comic book sale. And each issue would probably be about the same price as the Facsimile Edition is too.

What's fun about this version is that it's actually the first Facsimile Edition version of a comic from the late '90s that I've seen. So it has ads for Pokemon: Red Version and Pokemon: Blue Version, Batman Beyond on The Kids WB, the collected edition, Batman in the Sixties, an order form for the US Postal Service reprint of Action Comics #1 (1938), the Prestige One-shot special, Impulse: Bart Saves the Universe, Wizard Magazine's 6th Annual Fan Awards ballot, a subscription form for the more kid friendly comics published by DC such as Animaniacs, The Flintstones & The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century's premiere on Disney Channel (Family Channel here in Canada), a letter from then President of DC Comics, Jenette Kahn, about the death of Bob Kane, the co-creator of Batman (he was known as the sole creator of Batman outside of the comic book industry at this time unfortunately), and the back cover is an ad for a Pop-Tarts sweepstakes where someone could win a spot in a Pop-Tarts TV commercial. Which is cool. 

Overall I recommend picking up this Facsimile Edition. The issue is a great adaptation of the first half of the pilot episode of Batman Beyond. It's also great to relive memories of the late '90s if you were a kid back then and watching Batman Beyond and reading the original mini-series. I have no idea if Facsimile Editions for the remaining five issues of the mini-series will be published or not, but it's cool that they at least published this issue.

Alright my friends, that's gonna be it for me for today. I'm probably going to be back on Friday with another blog post, but I honestly have no idea if I actually will or not. I have a medical appointment really early tomorrow morning, and while that shouldn't affect my desire to do a blog post on Friday, it might. Especially because next week is looking like it's gonna be busy. So we'll see. If I don't see you on Friday, I hope you have a great weekend. If I do, I hope you have a great evening tonight and a great day tomorrow. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.