Batman Beyond: 10,000 Clowns

One of the defining characteristics of today’s comic book franchises is their employment of the multiverse concept. The way this works, there’s no one single Batman or Superman or Spider-Man but a host of alternative heroes of this name existing in different timelines and with different backstories and relationships. They might even die in a particular, short-lived universe and it makes no difference because all the other universes remain unaffected.

Batman Beyond is one such Batman universe, which had its beginning as a TV show and then branched into comics. The basic premise is that it’s sometime in the near future (mid twenty-first century) and Gotham is now filled with hovercars and there’s a new generation of crime-fighters and criminals afoot. Most notably, a kid (he’s 18) named Terry McGinnis, who is Bruce Wayne’s biological son, has taken over the role of Batman because Bruce is finally too old and beat-up a warhorse for the job. Meanwhile a gang of hoods dressed in clown costumes and calling themselves the Jokerz are basically a cult of you-know-who.

I liked the depth of the villains and anti-heroes here. Dana’s brother Doug is good as the violently bitter number-one son who hasn’t lived up to high parental expectations and so becomes the Joker King. The Vigilante is a bit of a bore in terms of his powers, but he’s a real person in his armoured suit. Mad Stan and his dog Boom-Boom were effective as semi-comic relief. The new Catwoman was the only real misfire here as she just looks like another robot and she wasn’t needed at all in this storyline.

So a good story then with some good new characters. I wasn’t as keen on the art, as there are some really lazy pages here, especially when the action flags. But I mainly just felt a little cool toward the whole project. In many ways it seemed like an essay on Wannabeism. Terry is a wannabe Batman and there’s a whole city full of wannabe Jokers. And in being a younger, wannabe Batman Terry basically becomes Robin, doesn’t he? I know he has to have a different look so he’s a lot skinnier and almost as rubbery as Plastic Man, but he just doesn’t have any of Batman’s weighty angst (though, to be sure, few comic-book characters do). The way he can fly now with his jet boots adds to the feeling of him just being something flightier than Batman should be. Again, it’s clearly a direction they wanted to go in, with Batman as battle tank being replaced by Terry as sleek speedster, and they try to even things out in this and other Batman Beyond titles by having Terry getting the crap beaten out of him fairly often. But in the end, and just to repeat my earlier point, he feels like Robin redux more than Batman reborn.

Graphicalex