Batman Beyond #4

Stop eating yourself, Batman!

I knew Batman Beyond was on the top of my stack so I took a break from "writing" last night to watch a movie. I really should start titling these Batman Beyond reviews as "Batman Beyond And A Movie." Unfortunately, I watched Upstream Color last night which gives me precious little to rant, rave, or wax pseudo-intellectually about. It does have some really cute pigs though. I watched it because I loved Shane Carruth's first movie Primer more than I love my mother. Maybe I should think of a better way to describe my love for the movie since I'm fairly certain I also loved Ghostbusters II more than my mother. Anyway, Upstream Color is more of an experience than a story. A bunch of people have a traumatic experience at the hands of a greedy asshole which they can't actually remember. But they do have a hole in their life which cost them everything, so that's something. Two of these people find each other and enjoy a romantic love story where they occasionally freak out for reasons unknown to them. The reason they feel something suddenly missing, or intense separation anxiety, or sudden, uncontrollable anger is because the pigs that now contain their hypnotic tapeworms are going through some really tough shit. Eventually they realize that they can recite Walden like a pretentious college sophomore believing they're the first to ever truly understand Thoreau, naturalism, and civil disobedience, and that nobody before them ever has realized that you can actually ignore people in authority to live your own life and help raise your psychically-linked pig's offspring as if they were your own. In one stunning and innovative scene, Carruth uses a swimming pool as a metaphor for the subconscious as Kris begins to regain some of her memories which later allow her to kill the farming DJ who's been killing her pig children. Anyway, I enjoyed it but the next Shane Carruth movie I watch will be Primer. Unless he figures out a way to finance that Topiary movie.

So last issue, Brother Eye hacked into A.L.F.R.E.D. and discovered the location of Neo-Gotham. That's probably bad news since Brother Eye has already destroyed and/or conquered every place else on Earth. Hopefully Tim Drake destroys him this issue because I'm sick to death of Brother Eye as the ultimate antagonist.

This issue begins with Neo-Gotham being invaded by hundreds of Brother Eye's cyborgs. So it's basically Futures End #52.

I'd say Gotham needs the "whole lot more" more than it really needs Batman.

Batman smashes A.L.F.R.E.D.'s hard drive because Brother Eye is using it against him. He gets distracted and is captured by a cyborg. But then Micron, the Ray Palmer equivalent of this time, smashes the cyborg and says, "Experience this." If I weren't reading all of DC's comic books, I would make it a rule to drop any book where a character uses the "[VERB] this!" line.

Inque, the villain with the ridiculously spelled name, decides to fight on the side of the good guys even though Brother Eye still has her daughter on the moon. Batman promised to help rescue her daughter and I guess she believes Batman is capable of it. That's because she doesn't realize Dan Jurgens is writing this story and Dan Jurgens' protagonists have a way of failing spectacularly at everything they do. Remember Justice League International and how depressing it was?! I need a Xanax just thinking about it.

Tim Drake and Micron are being overwhelmed by the first wave of cyborgs attacking the city. Just over the river, the second wave of cyborgs, full of old super heroes, stands waiting to join the fight. But before that happens, Tim Drake has to Narration Box some thoughts that make it sound like he's giving up only to turn it around at the last moment and declare he doesn't believe any of what he was just thinking at all. It's really fucking annoying. I often go about thinking things like, "You can't cross a busy street without risking life and limb. It's so dangerous that it should never be attempted, no matter how much delicious food is on the other side. If you want to live, you're stuck never crossing the street. Or so I once thought! Until I was taught about crosswalks and street lights and pedestrian overpasses! Thank you, city planners!"

After Tim decides not to lose because Bruce taught him not to lose, Barbara Gordon picks him up in a Batplane. They ditch Micron and head on over to the Batcave to find some helpful weapons and maybe a backup hard drive of A.L.F.R.E.D. Apparently the current Batman Beyond suit is the newest technology and Tim has destroyed it. So now the only thing left to use is some old bat armor that's going to make him look fat when he wears it.

Batman Beyond #4 Rating: No change. Hey Dan! Remember last year when Futures End came out every week? Remember how after 48 weeks, it sort of ended in unsatisfying failure? The part of it that I really liked was the part where it ended. I'd had enough of Brother Eye dominating the world. I'd grown sick of a DC Universe's future where all of the heroes had ultimately failed to stop a computer in space. So I kind of resent that the story is continuing. This is the future DC comics wants to maintain as the "real" future of the DC Youniverse? If so, it sucks. In thirty five years, everybody will have failed and it's up to Tim Drake and Barbara Gordon and a handful of other heroes to save what's left of the world. Is what's left really worth saving? Maybe they should try going back in time again and keeping this shitty ruined future from ever happening. Although it says a lot about how DC Comics views their universe and its heroes. Apparently they have no confidence in any of them except for Batman. And they want the readers to know it by introducing this future into continuity. "Hey look! Superman and Cyborg and Wonder Woman suck! Ultimately they're not the heroes you thought they were! But Batman survived! Sort of! He's the greatest!" This is the worst version of the future DC could come up with and it's the one they choose for their timeline. Idiots.