Okay, so Batman Beyond has *finally* come out. It was supposed to come out two weeks ago, but for reasons I don't know, it got delayed by two weeks. So as the BB fangirl that I am, what did I think of the first installment?

Follow up:

Cover
8/10

The actual artwork is really nice, and the artist did most of this with watercolor, not digitally. Which I must say is really impressive, but the problem is it doesn't look like Terry. He's too bulky. Remember sports fans, Terry was 16 in the show, shorter than Bruce Wayne and lanky.

Interior Artwork
7/10

The interior artwork was done by another team than the cover, like most Western Comics. The coloring is really good, and I love how they drew Terry and Bruce, and for the most part it's a really nice style used, cartoony but serious. However, in places the inking was awful, with some panels looking really rushed and weird uses of black on faces. And Ace looked completely wrong, which bothers me since he's as important a character as Max or Inque.

Characters
9/10

The writer did a fairly good job with Terry's dialog and his bitter wit, and keeping with the characters personalities, except Terry keeps called Bruce 'Mr. Wayne'. They'll remember about Slappers (those steroid patches made from Bane toxin when his nurse at the hospital stole the recipe), but not the fact Terry only refers to Bruce by his last name when talking to other people about his 'part time job'

Story Consistency
10/10

The team clearly paid attention to the show when it came to the stories. In this issue they had Spellbinder and 'Slapheads', Micron from the Justice League, and they stayed within canon except for calling Gotham 'Neo-Gotham'. It's annoying, but it's not enough to fight over, so I'm letting it slide

Story

And now the meat of the issue. The storyline for this mini-series has mostly been kept under wraps and I'll try to avoid spoilers. At Cadmus labs a patient has escaped, killing many of his guards and removing his tracking chip. Meanwhile Terry is fighting against Spellbinder when he is approached by Micron again to join the Justice League. After refusing, yet again, Terry returns to the Batcave to let Bruce he's feeling overworked. Just when he's about to have the night off reports of a murder have come through, apparently, one of Batman's old enemies. Terry goes to investigate and notices some peculiarities about the way the man was killed, and then learns that the nearby hospital, where many of the Arkam residents have been housed after the Asylum was shut down, has just been attached. Terry goes to try to save one of the patients, and saves a nurse who was attacked. She reveals to him what the man told her before trying to kill her, giving a clue as to the identity of the killer.

9/10

It's hard to say what's going on so far, but I think it's official that Batman Beyond is canon. The events from the story match the Batman RIP storyline from last year. I do like it so far. Hopefully in the next chapter they will have more of the other BB characters like Max and Barbara Gordon.

Total: 8.6

It's a good start, but I wouldn't call it 'brilliant' yet. The art has some problems and some minor shifts from the original source. The plot hasn't been revealed enough to say whether it's good or not, but it has a lot of potential.