The Batman Beyond reprinty thing averaged out to be pretty okay. I missed these comics in their original run, so they were all new to me. All three stories were written by Hilary J Bader, who was also a writer on the show.
The first story is far and away the highlight; it really hits it out of the park. It focuses on Barbara Gordon of the Future, who Bader herself introduced us to in Touch of Curare. And remember when Babs got dosed with fear gas in Over the Edge? Of course you do. Well, it turns out she never really recovered; every few years she starts having flashbacks and now she's trying to fight them while racing the clock to save a kidnapped child.
It's fantastic stuff, and while I'm warming up to Beechen, this makes his mini look like amateur hour. Where he bent over backwards trying to make his story dark and invoke past continuity, here Bader does it better and makes it seem effortless.
Pity the other two stories aren't quite as good.
Bader loves her some team-ups (she wrote the Steel, Dr. Fate, Aquaman, and Green Lantern episodes of Superman). The second story is a teamup with the Demon (and, from the dialogue, I infer it's not the first one in the comic). It's well done and gives us the type of magical story we seldom saw on Batman Beyond.
And the last story is a two-part JLU teamup that doesn't really need to be two parts and just kind of drags. Most of the JLU never really develop personalities, particularly GL, who unfortunately is the main character in the story. Warhawk and Barda are kinda fun but one-dimensional; the plot doesn't seem to go anywhere and the ending is too cute. Disappointing, particularly the pacing -- the Barbara story proves Bader capable of excellent, compressed storytelling; this two-parter proves she didn't always use it.
And the art: well, it's serviceable. I'm a little turned-off by the "make it look like the cartoon" edicts of series like this, but on the other hand, there are worse things than competent artists aping Bruce Timm.
All in all, $8 is a little steep, but it IS 100 pages, the first story is fantastic, and the other two aren't bad. Lord knows I've been known to spend $8 on 44 pages' worth of worse comics than these.
