DCAU #305: Magic Is Everywhere

IN THIS ONE... Jason Blood and Etrigan help Terry fight a demon possession.

CREDITS: Written by Hilary J. Bader; art by Joe Staton and Terry Beatty.

REVIEW: Batman Beyond's first guest star shows up in the comics, not the show, which is perhaps too hard a sell. The Demon is a good choice, of course, because he and Jason Blood are immortal, though as we see, Blood HAS changed his methods to keep up with the times. To reign a demon in, he uses a friendly hacker/whiz-kid to trap it inside a laptop. So there. Okay, while I'm not opposed to the notion of Beyond combining technology and magic together given its sci-fi setting, it's still weird for Jason Blood.

In the setting, it does work, however. The demonic villain is, in fact, summoned on a computer, using a scanned-in grimoire. The kid who calls him becomes host to this thing, and in a rather adult turn, screams for his master when it is banished at the end, very much an addict. But then there's also some silliness to be had - a fight in a zoo with an ape taking part and giving Terry a case, for example.

I'm also intrigued by Axilano having been Merlin's other choice when picking a defender of Mankind. The very fact that he wants revenge for that slight is proof he would never have cut it as Jason Blood's alter ego. But a rival for Etrigan? That's something that might have been interesting in the comics, though these have long since stopped pretending Etrigan was in any way sympathetic to the human cause without Blood's influence.

IN THE MAINSTREAM COMICS: Axilano is original to this story and has not appeared in the regular DCU. The Demon's appearance may have led to Jack Kirby references, or am I reading too much into it that Terry and Dana stand by the Kawandi cage at the zoo (very close to Kamandi), the reference lions and apes, two of the more developed peoples of Kamandi's world?

REREADABILITY: Medium - An odd mix, but a solid adventure and guest star