Friday Flipthrough: Batman Beyond Unlimited #18
Friday Flipthrough is where I just gab about something for a little while with a lot less thought put into it. Think of it as a weekly reading diary for me. If there's something you want to see in the flipthrough, message me.
Okay! Welcome to the first ever requested flipthrough! I'm excited, you're excited, we're all pretty excited about this. Thanks to the great run-rabbit-junk for asking for me to give this a look-see.
So, some context for this - this isn't the current Batman Beyond comic series (which is Batman Beyond 2.0). This is the print compilation series of digital-first issues of Batman Beyond and Justice League Beyond comics that ran in 2012 and 2013. The link at the bottom is to the digital edition of one of the issues compiled in here, which is actually Batman Beyond #27, #28, and #29.
But don't worry! The confusion doesn't stop there possibly for you. What's Batman Beyond, you say? It was originally a TV show that's part of the DCAU (DC Animated Universe) that ran in the late 90s and early 2000s. The basic premise is "Batman in the future". The show focuses on Terry McGinnis, who through unfortunate circumstances takes on the mantle of Batman under the mentorship of a super-old and extra-crotchety Bruce Wayne. Here's the opening credits. The show was big enough to encourage DCAU people to expand the Beyond universe, and so an animated series was spun off of the popular Justice League show called Justice League Unlimited, which features other second- and third-generation superheroes alongside Terry and an older Superman. EDIT BECAUSE I HAVEN'T WATCHED THIS SHOW AND AM A FOOL: called Justice League Unlimited that continued the show and expanded the roster of characters. While Batman Beyond has had quite a few comics based on the show over the past years, I believe this was the first run of comics based on (or at least named after) Justice League Unlimited and features a cast that's timeline-wise in line with the Batman Beyond universe.
All that is to say that I didn't know much about the comic world for either of these series coming into this; so I read through the whole of the Unlimited run. I'm fairly unimpressed overall frankly, though run-rabbit-junk certainly did pick a highlight for me to talk about. Y'see, BBU #18 collects the Batgirl Beyond arc, in which Commissioner Barbara Gordon develops a sort of mentor-almost role to a new Batgirl, Nissa.
I like the costume, and I enjoyed the complete lack of cop reality by having Gordon patrol on her own in a riot (that also blew up her squad car) before having a hit taken out on her the next day while doing a line of interrogation and accusation at someone's business. Okay, I enjoyed that in a "this is kinda crummy writing that isn't reflective of a decades-old character but whatever yayyy riots" but moving onwards! I'm not sure how much there is to say about Batgirl/Nissa herself. We really don't know much about her by the end of this arc. Is her personality that she's a high-school aged brown girl? Because that's not a personality. She seems sort of snarky. But so did every other character in this story, so I'm not sure if that's an actual form of characterized speech.
Look, I'm happy that they wanted to introduce a Batgirl Beyond. It's an obvious enough idea for a 15 year-old franchise to try out... but why at the end of the run? And why does she not appear in the following series, Batman Beyond 2.0? And why do we have a story that actually focuses more on Barbara Gordon coming to terms with Nissa's activities than with, well, Nissa? Compare that with, say, the origin of Terry, which centers him and his experiences as the empathic protagonist. Here I'm left with little emotional investment or understanding of what could be a fun new character who excitingly, yes! is a woman of color. But she needs to be a character to achieve that - someone where I can spend some time and understand her as a person unto herself.
I'm trying to practice writing more while doing this blog. That's part of the point of it for me, actually. As a result I'm reading a lot, and a lot of things that are of varying quality. I'm finding something that separates "good" writing from "bad" writing for me, in terms of work that I will find engaging and thought-provoking, is the ability of the author to provide characterization and context for the actions of the people populating their work. Otherwise, they're just little names on a page that I'm left doing the work of projecting myself into. And here I'm left desperately doing that, with very little payoff. We know almost as little about Nissa at the end of this book as at the beginning. The costume can't be more important than the character wearing it.
Again, thanks run-rabbit-junk for suggesting this to me. The new Flash in Justice League Beyond is quite a bit of fun and this got me re-watching the show, which I suspect will go dangerous places like me trying to understand the DCAU finally. Feel free to suggest more titles to me and I'll try to write about them in a timely manner ^^ I assure you that I will not always be scathing just about the stuff that other people suggest I read.
