Review: Batman Beyond Vol. 3- Wired for Death

Quick Summary

Pros: The book centers around a very interesting mystery. The exploration into this mystery is well done and creates plenty of excitement. The book’s conclusion builds excitement for the next era in this series. The artwork is mostly positive.

Cons: The storyline surrounding Tim Drake is pretty disappointing. The artwork dips in quality in the last chapter.

Overall: The conclusion to this version of this series is mostly satisfying. It has an interesting narrative, does some great things with the characters, and concludes in a way that builds excitement for the comic’s Rebirth reboot. Unfortunately, fans of Tim Drake will likely be underwhelmed by his personal story. Readers who have been enjoying this comic so far should keep reading here.

Story

Batman Beyond Vol. 3: Wired for Death, by Dan Jurgens, manages to get most things right. The volume dives headfirst into an interesting investigation as the volume begins exploring mysteries that have been around since this series began. This investigation is well-written and leads to a pretty epic conclusion. By the end of the book, I was ready to see what is up next from Batman Beyond. The one point of contention is that Tim Drake’s personal story is lackluster and disappoints in some regards. Overall though, this is another solid volume that fans of the series will likely enjoy.

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Wired for Death immediately feels different from its predecessors. While the past two volumes focused on energetic displays of action and fighting, this one focuses more on the slow reveal of one of this comic’s main mysteries. This change is highly effective, as it keeps things fresh and interesting while maintaining a similar level of suspense throughout the volume. I found myself just as excited to learn about the mystery surrounding Rewire as I was to see the downfall of Brother Eye in this comic’s first volume.

The way in which this mystery is approached also keeps it interesting all the way through. It starts out with a red herring. This builds some early suspense while ensuring the return of Terry McGinnis is completely unexpected. Then, when Terry does return and faces off against the Bat-family, the series is able to hit a new highpoint when it comes to emotion and drama. This process of buildup and payout works out well here and makes the reading experience even better.

The downside is that the Tim Drake storyline is a letdown. The volume spends a lot of time hyping up the mystery behind Tim’s disappearance but ultimately leaves the mystery unanswered. Even the modern Tim Drake storyline concludes in a way that makes it feel like Tim is being sidelined once again. I ultimately am excited to have Terry back for future volumes but would have liked to see Tim get his due before this series concluded.

(spoilers end here)

Art

The artwork in Wired for Death mostly maintains the level of quality seen in the past two volumes. Bernard Chang’s visuals are imaginative and dynamic, which makes the characters and backgrounds look good while ensuring the action is engaging. Meanwhile, colors from Marcelo Maiolo look great and help ensure every page of this book has the proper tone. As flashbacks play a more prominent role in this story, I also appreciate the way in which the page structures and the coloring help compare and contrast the past and present, while preventing the jumps between the two from becoming confusing.

However, the quality of the artwork dips in more places than it did in previous books. The opening chapter features some good-looking work from Philip Tan but jumping from Tan’s work to Chang’s is a bit jarring. Then, the book’s final chapter brings in a new artist, who’s work simply isn’t as good as the rest of this series has been. These dips in quality are relatively small but prevent this volume from being quite as impressive as the previous two.

Continuity

Batman Beyond Vol. 3: Wired for Death continues the story from Batman Beyond Vol. 2: City of Yesterday (Review).

This Batman Beyond series ends with this volume. However, the next Batman Beyond picks up the same storyline in Batman Beyond Vol. 1: Escaping the Grave (Review).

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• A number of references are made to the reality of and the events that took place across the Futures End (Review) (Reading Order) event.
• Elements of Tim Drake’s history are mentioned.
  • Tim Drake’s origin as Robin 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) started in Teen Titans Vol. 1: Its Our Right to Fight (Review).