Review: Batman Beyond Vol. 1- Brave New Worlds

Quick Summary

Pros: The book’s approach to action is effective and the storytelling adds a layer of suspense to everything that happens. This book’s world is interesting and is fun to learn about. The artwork looks good and makes the action even better.

Cons: The stakes in this book may feel a bit too over-the-top if readers come to this collection without reading Futures End.

Overall: This volume delivers on excitement in a cool setting. Within this book, great fight scenes combine with a tense and interesting narrative to make a book that is hard to put down. The story is fun to read and the artwork enhances everything. Coming to this book without knowledge of its predecessor may disrupt the tone a bit but even this is not too critical of a flaw. Readers looking for an action-focused Batman book should consider checking this out.  

Story

Batman Beyond Vol. 1: Brave New Worlds, by Dan Jurgens, is a solid book that is packed to the gills with action and excitement. This book excels in depicting intense and high-stakes battles set in a futuristic world. Watching an intense conflict unfold in this world and learning about the world while doing so makes this a read that is anything but boring. The only downside to the book is that it heavily builds on events from the Futures End (Reading Order) event in a way that makes this book somewhat of a finale to events from that book, rather than a great starting point for new readers. Even with this downside though, this collection is solid and gives me hope for this new Batman Beyond series.

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Right from the very start, Brave New Worlds is about excitement. Tim Drake jumps from enemy to enemy and pulls out a wide array of different tricks in nearly all of this volume’s fight scenes. Whether he is taking on thugs in the middle of Neo-Gotham or fighting a cyborg version of Superman for the fate of the world, the action is exciting. In addition, the fact that Brother Eye is always out there, watching, adds an additional layer of suspense to all of this.

The other achievement in Brave New Worlds is the volume’s understated approach to worldbuilding. While the majority of the book is focused on the conflict between Tim and Brother Eye, there are brief moments where readers learn about the dystopian future in which this series is set. Sometimes this is direct, like when Barbara is reintroduced or a new version of the Atom joins the fray; other times, it is more subtle, like when characters hint that there may be other heroes or even other cities that have survived Brother Eye’s purge. This allows readers to learn about this new world while making sure there are plenty of mysteries to uncover in the future.

The only problem with this volume is that its nonstop parade of high-stakes action and epic confrontation may be off-putting for some readers. The volume works as a continuation of Tim Drake’s fight against Brother Eye from the Futures End series and, in some ways, even feels like a finale to that fight. However, for readers coming into this volume looking for a Batman Beyond story, the result is a bit different. Instead of having an epic showdown between two established enemies, this volume sets up and then destroys its main villain over the course of just a few chapters. In general, the impact of this volume is different depending on if you are coming to it from Futures End or not.

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Art

The artwork in Brave New Worlds looks good and really suits this particular comic. Bernard Chang’s visuals consistently look crisp, clean, and help bring the world of this series to life. They are also particularly effective in ramping up this volume’s action scenes, which is one of this book’s biggest achievements. The fighting here is dynamic and comes with page structures that feel unrestrained and creative. Plus, the colors from Marcelo Maiolo really nail the futuristic and almost cyberpunk vibe this comic is going for, allowing certain scenes to glow with the hum of technology while never getting so colorful that the book strays from its dystopian theme. Overall, the artwork here contributes to a better reading experience all around.

Continuity

Batman Beyond Vol. 1: Brave New Worlds is the first volume in this Batman Beyond series. However, it directly continues Batman Beyond’s story from the conclusion of the Futures End (Review) (Reading Order) event and makes a number of references to what happened in that event. 

The story here continues in Batman Beyond Vol. 2: City of Yesterday (Review).

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• Tim Drake’s origin as Robin is mentioned. This story was originally told across Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, collected in Batman: A Death in the Family.
• Tim Drake’s recent time with the Teen Titans (Reading Order) is brought up. His adventures with the new version of this team started in Teen Titans Vol. 1: It’s Our Right to Fight (Review).
• Near the end of this collection, several references are made to the suit Commissioner Gordon wore in his time as Batman (Reading Order). This suit debuted in Batman Vol. 8: Superheavy (Review).