Popverse's top stories

• Five Nights at Freddy's comics delayed, but not cancelled, in the wake of criticism about the art
• Explaining Rachel Rozman, Natasha Lyonne's Fantastic Four: First Steps character [Lore Corner]
• Alien: Earth star Timothy Olyphant couldn't sell Larry David on the show in the perfect real-life Curb Your Enthusiasm moment

Dakota’s finest hero is back, and he’s teaming up with a certain Dark Knight in a new six issue comic book series from DC launching this fall — but neither Milestone Media’s Static or Batman are exactly as fans might expect them in the upcoming Batman/Static: Beyond.

Written by Evan Narcisse (Marvel’s Rise of the Black Panther, DC’s Waller vs. Wildstorm) with art from Nikolas Draper-Ivey (Static: Season One), the new series from the DC Elseworlds imprint is set in the near future as an adult Virgil Hawkins teams with Terry McGinnis, the cyberpunk hero from the animated Batman Beyond series to save the world just as humanity stands ready to join an interplanetary network and enter an era of unprecedented peace. After all, of course, not everyone wants that kind of thing to happen…

“Static is a former teen hero who grew up to take on even more responsibility for his city and the larger world, while Terry is still figuring out how to do those things in his own way,” Narcisse said in a statement about the project. “Terry's still a high school student but he's also got the weight of the Batman mantle and the expectations that come with it as key parts of his life now. As an adult member of the Justice League, Virgil's at a different part of his journey. But he's driven by an adolescence where systemic injustice changed what it meant to live in his hometown of Dakota. Their approaches to making the world a safer, more just place are extremely different. That difference energizes the big question they have to deal with: can they learn to work together during a critical moment when everything they've taken for granted has fallen apart?”

Even those unfamiliar with the two characters will find something to appreciate in the series, adds Draper-Ivy: “This story is intended to be a commentary on our overreliance on technology and the imminent dangers becoming complacent and too comfortable using AI to substitute our own imagination and human ingenuity. We now use our watches to find our phones, we use our phones to connect to everything else. We don’t rely on our own memories. We rely on technology to remember for us. That deeply concerns me. I worry that we are getting to a point where if all these things were to be suddenly taken away from us in an instant — at the rate we’re going now, humanity will be at a huge disadvantage.”

Batman/Static: Beyond doesn’t just build on a short that appeared in 2023’s Milestone 30th Anniversary Special that teamed an adult Virgil with Terry — that short was titled ‘Static Beyond,’ and written and drawn by Draper-Ivy, notably — but also on years of animated lore; both Static and Batman Beyond were established as members of a future Justice League in their respective 1990s animated series.

The series will launch November 12 with a first issue featuring covers by Draper-Ivy, Dustin Nguyen, Rahzzah, and Denys Cowan and Ho Che Anderson; you can see the covers in the gallery above.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions