Batman/Static: Beyond #6
"Possibility Space"
Writer: Evan Narcisse
Artist: Miguel Mendonca
Colorist: Wil Quintana
Cover Artist: Nikolas Draper-Ivey
Nothing brings opposing sides together quite like an alien invasion.
Just look at Independence Day. All it took was giant spaceships blowing up major cities for humanity to finally get on the same page.
Batman/Static: Beyond #6 works on a similar principle, only instead of world leaders and fighter pilots, it's superheroes and supervillains putting aside their differences long enough to stop everybody from dying.
Previously in Batman/Static: Beyond:
Terry McGinnis's classmate Melvin was exposed to Q-Juice (the substance that created Static and the other "Bang Babies" in Dakota) and became the villainous Shutdown. Not being in control of his powers or his emotions, Shutdown caused a blackout that has affected the entire Earth. Now Batman and Static are making a last desperate effort to stop him, while at the same time the Justice League are returning from a diplomatic mission in deep space…
From Beyond the Stars
Shutdown wants to detonate containers of Q-Juice outside of Neo-Gotham, which will cause anyone in the city to either mutate or die. Thanks to his no-tech Batsuit, Terry is able to get close enough to slap a power-dampening cuff on him. Suddenly, Shutdown is teleported away by an alien armada that has appeared above the Earth. They intend to use the teen as a weapon, but the returning Justice League may have something to say about that…
Bonding Activities
Well, that pretty much played out as expected.
Thanks to the scheming aliens from Tamaran and Kwai, the Justice League got sent home without membership in the Cooperative. They arrived just in time to help fight off a fleet of various mercenaries that were sent to Earth to retrieve Shutdown. There was definitely no shortage of big-time superhero action in this issue.
What was disappointing was how some of the character conflicts were resolved, most notably the ones between Batman and Static, as well as the conflict with Shutdown. Our two leads have spent the majority of the series generally being condescending jerks to each other, and in this issue, that's all basically forgotten in favor of your bog-standard team-up. As for Shutdown, the whole series has been built around his aversion to technology and his general paranoia, and how his powers amplified those traits to turn them into violent rages. Here, after getting slapped with power-dampening cuffs and captured by space mercenaries, that's all forgotten, and suddenly he’s back to milquetoast Melvin again, albeit with superpowers. It just felt like the easy way out was taken on everything.
Even if I think the ball was dropped on some of the meatier issues at play, there were still things to like about this issue. As mentioned earlier, there's a lot of superhero action here: Bang Babies fighting with Cadmus soldiers, Batman and Static infiltrating an alien ship to rescue Shutdown, and the Justice League making short work of whole alien fleets. It's certainly entertaining. Blight showing up literally out of nowhere to fight the group on Earth, which at that point didn't even include Batman, was certainly a choice. He’s only Terry’s first—and biggest—villain, the man who killed his father, and we're going to give him a glorified one-page cameo? Lame.
Fortunately, Batman gets a few awesome moments throughout the issue. Thanks to the Blackout, he isn't able to use his normal high-tech suit, so he's using an old “throwback” suit (complete with cape) that he pulled from Bruce’s storage. Without his normal array of tech or the OG Batman in his ear, he's forced to rely on his own skills. Fortunately, he's a very competent fighter in his own right and gets to single-handedly face down a horde of goons like only Batman can.
In the end, bad guys are punched, the blackout ends, and the day is saved. Forgotten are the deeper conflicts of the series, such as Shutdown’s anti-tech vendetta and the ethical debate around the usage of Q-Juice as a power source. Future team-ups are teased, though, and that’s what really matters, right?
Making Plans
Just like Static’s intentions to use the Q-Juice for good, I’m sure the creative team set out to make the best book that they could. They just came up a bit short, thanks to the demands of a standard superhero team-up.
Evan Narcisse plotted a very well-paced superhero slugfest with plenty of big moments. It’s just unfortunate that it came at the expense of some of the broader ideas about power, technology, and fear. His voice for the lead trio remains strong, although everyone lost a little of their “edge” in favor of the big team-up. As for the rest of the Justice League, they return just in the nick of time to fight off the alien armada. You can’t convince me that the whole subplot with the Cooperative wasn’t just an excuse to get the League off Earth so that the series could play out the way it did.
The artwork by Miguel Mendonca has varied in quality throughout the course of this series. Here, it remains strong overall. He handles action well, showcasing different powers and fighting styles all at once. His design for Terry’s “throwback” Batsuit is a solid one; you can see elements of the familiar blue-and-grey suit as well as Terry’s regular “capeless” suit. I do wish that it had looked like the cape threw off his movements, since he never had one before, but he always looked as fluid as ever.
The colors by Wil Quintana and the letters by Wes Abbott have to be discussed together because, together, they cause a few issues. I know that Earth is under a massive blackout, but everything is just so dark here. It makes sense for the scenes outdoors, but the interior scenes on the alien ships and even the bits in outer space are all just as heavily tinted. I know it’s not a “fun” story and it fits the cyberpunk aesthetic of the setting, but everything needs to be a little lighter. This ties into the lettering, notably on captions and location markers. The fonts are so small, and the colors are so poorly contrasted, that it’s almost impossible to read most of them. Just some really questionable choices there that left me zooming in on my iPad just to read what they were trying to say.
Into the Light
Batman/Static: Beyond #6 brings the series to a close with plenty of big-time superhero action, but the bigger questions and complex themes of earlier issues are all but forgotten in the haste to reach a conclusion. Add in the issues with colors and lettering, and this series as a whole is a study in missed opportunities. Nothing about it is bad, but it could have been so much more than just the sum of its parts.