Dc Rebirth: Understanding Batman Beyond

Dc Rebirth Batman Beyond

In order to understand Batman Beyond in DC Rebirth, first, I gotta take you back to Future’s end. Remember this hot mess of a story? It was painful to read but I went through it again just so I can understand how it relates to the main DC universe and DC Rebirth. The simple fact is that it doesn’t. DC head honcho Dan Didio stated that the futures end universe is a possible future for the main DC universe: 35 years to be precise. This sets the platform for Terry Mcginnis to make is comeback as a starring role in a major DC event.

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He returned to stop a malevolent AI called brother Eye from enslaving the world. The problem is that he died in an attempt to do so.  This is when an aged Tim Drake takes on the mantle of Batman beyond. Tim went back in time to convince a younger brother eye to self-destruct. Thinking that he succeeded, Tim got thrown into the future. This is when he finds out his plan went sideways. Brother eye enslaved the entire world except Gotham. The Wayne Powers company housed a device that created a veil around Gotham shielding it away from Brother eye. The veil eventually gets disengaged Brother eye attacked.

The new Batman beyond, equipped with Jim Gordan’s Bat Mech suit, takes the fight to Brother eye’s base of operations on the moon. This is where Tim finally takes out Brother eye saving the world. But now this leaves a problem. His time line is gone, Terry Mcginnis is dead and he is totally lost. He cant go back in time because of the whole time travel paradox thing. So Tim acclimates to his new life in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world where Neo Gotham is the only known established functioning city in the world.

Tim Drake Batman frees this worlds justice league which consists of the green lantern Kai Ro, Aquagirl, Barda, Warhawk, and Superman. This new beyond universe set up by Dan Jurgens gives us a glimpse of the kind of man that Jon grows up to be. He basically follows in his father’s footsteps.

This is also a good time for me to touch base on how this new beyond universe connects with the animated tv show. The simple fact is that it doesn’t. The animated TV show continued in the comic series for a while but Futures end changes things. From all of the research I did, I found no connection or hint that the Futures end Terry Mcginnis is any way related to the batman beyond Tv show. It is up to us to connect the dots so I would like to think that this is the Terry Mcginnis from the TV show.

Ok so we have established that this new future is not connected to the TV show. We have Tim Drake as the new Batman Beyond. He rescues the future Justice League. The League leaves to rebuild a war torn world and as far as we know, Neo Gotham is the only functioning city in the entire world. We saw what happened to Metropolis. People live there but not by choice. Everyone is making their way to Gotham.

There’s one thing I want to point out about this version of Tim Drake. Because Drake time travelled to the future after Terry’s death, Tim basically vanished from existence. This threw Bruce Wayne into a downward spiral. It’s known that the death of Jason Todd had a deep impact on Batman but Jason came back and he is the current red hood, an antihero and a big ally to Batman. Tim Drake flat out vanished. Batman spent years looking for him but came out empty handed. Bruce died thinking that he failed the 3^rd robin.

After reconnecting with Barbara Gordon, the new police commissioner, and Luke Fox, ex Bat-wing, current Mayer of Gotham, Tim battles it out with a future villain named Rewire. This is where it gets a bit confusing. Heck it gets VERY confusing.

We discover that Rewire is just trying to survive by stealing powered batteries. But because he is a known villain, Tim takes him on. But rewire always escapes because Tim’s Bat suit shuts down.

Rewire returns home where we find out that he is currently sheltered by Spellbinder disguising himself as an elderly lady. A flashback scene shows us that brother eye attacked the future with his metal creatures. Terry Mcgginnis took on brother eye. He won the battle but got a concussion and suffers from amnesia. This is where SpellBinder convinced Mcginnis that he is Rewire and that he is a hero for fighting Brother eye. A device attached to his heart keeps him alive but the battery won’t last forever. So Terry kept to the shadows and steals stronger battery to charge the device so he can live. But of course this leads him into a battle with the current Batman Beyond Tim Drake. Normally, Batman comes out victorious but since Rewire is actually Terry Mcginnis, Rewire always escapes the battle by shutting down his bat suit via voice commands. He does this subconsciously because at this point, he still thinks that he is the villain rewire.

During a battle, Rewire lost his helmet exposing his face. Tim Drake couldn’t take on Terry and Spellbinder alone but this is when Terry’s Brother Matt Mcginnis came and helped his brother remember the real truth.

With Spellbinder defeated, the heroes reconvened in the batcave. Now this little interaction between Terry and Tim is a bit interesting. Terry looks at Tim and states: ‘Shouldn’t you be older’? This suggests that They met before. If you remember back in the batman beyond return of the Joker animated movie, we actually meet an aged Tim Drake. This gives us a bit of a connection between the animated tv show and this comic book series. But they could not have met because Barbara Gordon clearly states that in this universe, Tim Drake vanished a long time ago. If we take Barbara’s statement then we can assume that the time stream in linear, meaning the events happened in the same universe, but at different stages in the time line.

But then we clearly see Terry MCginnis die during Futures end but when Tim travels to the future, Terry is indeed alive. He never went back to the past to stop brother eye. Heck he never left Neo Gotham but instead, he got a concussion from an attack wave.

The only explanation we got is when Tim states: the timeline you died in was reconfigured, which is why you are alive, here and now.

He further continues saying how all of his experience and personal memories happened to him and him alone. This means that the Tim Drake that vanished in this timeline has no connection to batman beyond Tim Drake. Furthermore, Tim confirms that this isn’t his world and it never was. We can safely assume that the parallel dimension concept is in play.

Tim Drake returns the suit to Mcginnis stating that he never had any ambitions to becoming Batman. Mcginnis reclaims the title of Batman and Drake leaves Neo Gotham to explore a new world. During a bike ride, a flash of light appears in front of him pulling him into it. Tim Drake essentially vanishes.

According to Dan Jurgens, Tim’s disappearance at the end of the issue is a direct tie in to present day DCU and is a connection to the ending of detective comics 940. If you haven’t read it yet, I will be discussing some spoilers, so be warned. At the end of detective comics 940, Tim died to a drone strike, but in truth, he got plucked the moment before his death and placed in a prison by Mr. Oz. Dan Jurgens stated to Newsarama that present day Tim Drake’s imprisonment is tied to his disappearance from the future in batman beyond.

Now I want you to take a closer look at Tim’s prison as per the picture below.

There are 2 other cells beside present day Tim. To our knowledge, Doomsday was taken at the end of the path of Doom story line that we covered here on Comic Island. Could it mean that one cell belongs to doomsday? It is possible that the future Tim Drake is in the other cell.

Ok back to batman beyond. The new rebirth series takes place in the same world, a post-apocalyptic world after Brother eye’s attack. Bruce Wayne died during said attack so the supporting cast for Terry will be his Brother Mat  MCginnis, friend Max Gibson and love interest Dana Tan.

the final thing that I wanna bring up regarding batman beyond is the return of the joker. One of Batman’s greatest villain is the joker so it is no different for future batman. Issue 1 sets the stage for a possible return of the joker. but DC rebirth gave us a huge revelation that there are 3 jokers. No other comic book has really addressed the 3 joker mystery but I think that this joker in batman beyond will be one of the 3 jokers told to us during the one shot DC Rebirth issue.

That being said, I believe that’s everything I think you should know before reading DC rebirth batman beyond. I hope I cleared a few things up and answered questions that you didn’t know to ask.