In the midst other news released by DC today was an early solicitation for the newly announced ongoing Batman Beyond title which hints further at the possibility for a new Batman, a return to the character’s original time, and establishing Batman Beyond as “THE definitive future of the DCU.” The full solicitation reads:
At last, Batman Beyond gets his own ongoing series in THE definitive future of the DCU! But this isn’t the Beyond you think you know! With the Justice League missing and without Bruce to guide him, this new Batman will need to explore this bizarre world on his own while fighting to raise humanity from an opponent that’s already won. “The heroes Batman knew have failed, the world he knew has been turned on its head, and every step he takes will lead him either toward finding home – or further down the road of disaster!
Many have speculated how Terry McGinnis’s involvement in The New 52: Future’s End would leave things for both the character and the future of the DCU, this new solicitation as well as several interviews with the creative team on the first ongoing title for the character as part of the main DC continuity seem to have answered some of these questions and raised just as many new ones.
We already had some clues that some changes might be coming to the character given the cover to Future’s End #46 (release date 3/18/15) suggests a tragedy might befall Terry and an advertisement that seems to show Tim Drake putting on the Batman Beyond mask (see above) but this new information suggests the changes could be even bigger than had been previously speculated.
In an interview released by DC Comics, writer Dan Jurgens commented:
With Futures End, we began to integrate Batman Beyond into the DC Universe, but the context we saw him in was more present day DC Universe, or more accurately the DC Universe five years from now. What this is going to do is start to integrate Batman Beyond into the DCU by way of his own future. Futures End is going to come to end, Batman Beyond will return to the future and we pick up on his world there. We start to explore how that world thirty-five years from now is different, how the DC Universe gets there, what the differences are and what we can play with to make it really fun and adventurous for readers.
In a similar interview given to Newsarama Jurgens said:
Well, we showed Terry McGinnis, our “Batman Beyond,” 35 years in the future right there in the first issue of Future’s End. He came back to our time, and has been working as Batman Beyond. So even at that time, way back when we started putting Future’s End together, we were thinking, “Well, maybe. Maybe when we’re done with this weekly series, maybe we can keep playing around in that future and show the world what the DCU is like 35 years form now.” So it was always kind of a thought in the back of the head that, yeah, maybe, we could do it. And as Future’s Endwound to a close, we kind of decided, yeah, there is something of worth there. So we go for it.
Jurgens and artist Bernard Chang also went on in those interviews to mention other important details for the future of Batman Beyond. They commented that the suit and it’s powers would be fairly similar but would explore some new possibilities, we’d see a new cast of supporting characters and villains, and that Bruce Wayne will still be in the picture as a mentor (although the solicitation for issue #1 suggests Bruce will not be involved at least in the first issue).
Stay up to date with TheBatmanUniverse.Net as more news is released ahead of the start of this new title in June and be sure to check back for TBU’s review of the issue after it has released.
