Quote1 You've made your father's killers pay for his murder, then put your own needs aside to help the city when it most needed a hero. You've honored the reputation of Batman many times over and for that, I thank you. Quote2
-- Bruce Wayne src

The Beginning

Terry McGinnis was the product of genetic engineering by Project Cadmus director Amanda Waller, who saw that her once-adversary and now ally Batman would need a replacement and that the world needs a Batman to continue the fight for justice. By using her old Cadmus connections, Amanda began "Project Batman Beyond" by taking Bruce Wayne's DNA from blood samples left behind during his cases and created from it in a nanotech solution that was able to rewrite a male human's reproductive material into an exact copy of Bruce Wayne's. Amanda looked for a suitable couple in Gotham City with a psychological profile that was nearly identical to Bruce's parents, and found the McGinnises as the target subject. Warren McGinnis thought he was getting a flu shot at a hospital, when in reality he was secretly given the injection with the nanotech solution so that his offspring would actually be that of Bruce's in the biological sense. A year later, Mary McGinnis gave birth to Terry, who possessed half his mother's genetic material and half of Bruce's.

With the genetic element accomplished, Amanda thought of making Terry's decision to become Batman (or at least a crimefigher) complete by having the same thing done to Terry's parents as it was done to Bruce's. After Terry and his parents left the theater on an evening of watching The Grey Ghost Strikes, Amanda had the Phantasm go after Terry's parents and kill them, thus sparking the same type of trauma that inspired Bruce Wayne to become Batman. However, as the Phantasm tried to accomplish this task, she ended up refusing to go along with the plan and allowed the McGinnises to continue on unaware of what might have happened. Amanda argued with her hired assassin about her failure, but she ended up realizing that the Phantasm was right: that though the Batman was obsessive in nature and that he would do anything to achieve his goals, he would never resort to murder. Amanda ended up honoring all that the original Batman stood for and allowed the Phantasm to simply walk away.

His Life

By his own admission, Terry was once a "bad kid." A member of a street gang run by youthful racketeer Charlie "Big Time" Bigelow, Terry had his fair share of run-ins with the GCPD while in his early teens, even serving a three-month stint in juvenile hall. Years after Batman was last seen, he found himself on the run from another street gang named the Jokerz, who had modeled themselves after the deceased Clown Prince of Crime. Terry fled onto the grounds of Wayne Manor, where an aged Bruce Wayne assisted him in defeating the Jokerz. The strain of the fight placed substantial stress on Bruce's heart and he collapsed. Terry helped Bruce into the mansion and in the process, stumbled upon the entrance to the Batcave.

Bruce kicked Terry out, but when the boy showed up later, saying that his father, Warren McGinnis, had been murdered and that Derek Powers — who had assumed leadership of a merged Wayne-Powers — was responsible, he softened his demeanor. Despite Terry's insistence, Bruce, still shaken from the ordeal of having relied on a gun for self-defense, maintained that he had given up the cowl.

As soon as Bruce's back was turned, Terry took matters into his own hands and stole the latest incarnation of the Batsuit. Bruce admonished him through the suit's communicator (their mentor-pupil banter would become a staple of subsequent Batman Beyond episodes), but Terry was adamant on confronting Powers. Powers had ordered Warren McGinnis' death after the latter discovered Powers' plan to mass-produce biological weapons.

The high-tech Batsuit turned Terry into a powerhouse; he disrupted Powers' covert operation, laying a beating on the security personnel, only to have Bruce shut the Batsuit down midway at the touch of a button. Terry pleaded with Bruce for a chance to prove himself and persuaded Bruce to reactivate the Batsuit and let him carry on as Batman for the time being. Bruce's decision resulted in the moratorium of Powers' operation; at the end, Powers, who had been exposed to his own hazardous chemicals, experienced the onset of his mutation into Blight.

Convinced that there was still a need for a Batman, Bruce hired Terry as his personal assistant and began secretly training the teenager for his new role as Batman.

McGinnis and Wayne would continue to develop a working relationship with Wayne tutoring and advising McGinnis as the Batman from his reactivated Batcave. It was Wayne who largely still doing the mental detective work while McGinnis did most of the actual battles in the enhanced armored suit. Wayne at times would become incapacitated due to his advanced age or prevented from directly helping Terry for other reasons. This would lead McGinnis to depend on his long time technically savvy friend Maxine Gibson as his detective partner. "Max" who would puzzle out McGinnis being the new Batman and Wayne as the former Batman would join McGinnis as his active partner. Max was originally thrilled by her discovery and even for a time fancied herself to become the next active crime-fighting member of the reconstituted Batman Family. However, both the elder Wayne and Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon largely tried to prevent that, knowing fully the dangers of active costumed crime-fighting. But it was not until Max directly experienced first hand the intricate and explicit dangers that McGinnis was willing to endure as the new Batman where she was almost killed by the silent assassin Curaré did Max curb her childish enthusiasm about running around as a costumed crime-fighter. However, this made Max merely more cautious and more determined not to let her friend go out alone as Batman as shown in later episodes. It was unrevealed if Max ever became the next Batgirl or an active costumed sidekick to McGinnis, though it was suggested that she did.

When the Joker made his mysterious reappearance in Gotham City, Bruce wanted Terry to give back the Batman costume, fearing for the young man's life as he did for his former partner Tim Drake (the second Robin), who was kidnapped by the Joker and was forced into a "makeover" into the Joker's "adopted son" nicknamed J.J. However, Terry discovered that the Joker had implanted a microchip onto Timothy Drake that caused him to physically transform between his older self as Drake and an exact copy of the Joker. During a fight between himself as Batman and the new Joker, Terry used the Joker's electrical joy buzzer to destroy the implanted microchip, thus restoring Drake to normal. Drake saw in McGinnis a person that Bruce Wayne had found worthy to bear the mantle of Batman.

In at least one possible future, McGinnis was shown to have continued on being Batman into his middle age where he would finally decide to marry his long term girlfriend Dana Tan.



  • Batsuit: State-of-the-art Batsuit which automatically conforms to his size. The Batsuit features new gadgets such as glider wings, "thrusters" on the boots and even a cloaking device.
    • Enhanced strength by a factor of ten,[4] ultimately allowing him to lift up to 1700 lbs.
    • Minimal reduction (or increase) in flexibility.
    • Forearm spikes can extend out.
    • Enhanced visual assistance that allows him to see in the dark (visual from the Batsuit can be fed back to the main computer in the Batcave; it can also receive visual from the main computer, allowing for superior tactical planning). The visor can also serve as digital binoculars and an infra-red filter as well as a scanner.
    • Personal communicator allows Terry to keep in constant contact with Bruce at the Batcave.
    • Enhanced ballistic protection.
    • Built-in rebreather for underwater combat/exploration.
    • Disk can be fired from the top of the wrist.
    • Wrist-mounted laser capable of melting metal and stunning his opponents.
    • Grappling guns built into the forearms.
    • Flashbang grenades.
    • Smoke pellets.
    • Flexicuffs.
    • A lock decipher.
    • Launchable tracers.
    • Retractable Tweezers.
    • A frequency scanner to pick up hot spots.
    • Retractable wings under the arms to glide on.
    • Rocket boots enabling limited flight.
    • Electromagnetic pads in the soles of the boots enabling him to cling to walls and ceilings.
    • Sensitive touch microphone on index and middle fingers that permits eavesdropping through solid surfaces.
    • Sensors that work as a polygraph.
    • Drug identifier, utilized by dipping fingers into the substance.
    • Built-in cloaking device that enables almost complete camouflage. It allows camouflage extending into the visible light and infrared frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. A countermeasure used by Commissioner Barbara Gordon to this in one incident where she was hunting Batman down was through tracking him using an ultraviolet light to illuminate him.
    • Retractable claws which can be used to slice or facilitate climbing.
    • Can uplink with the Batmobile for remote piloting.
    • A remote kill function that can externally deactivate the suit from the Batcave.


  • In the Batman Beyond animated series, Will Friedle voiced Terry.
  • The "Justice League Unlimited" episode "Epilogue" was planned as the last of the "Batman Beyond" adventures to give some closure to this once popular set of characters. These characters as they were originally developed were used in a "Justice League Unlimited" mini-series time travel story entitled "The Once and Future Thing". In that story, McGinnis and other members of the future Justice League are all killed by the heavily overpowered street gangs known as the Jokerz, but this entire future sequence was eliminated due the efforts of Batman and Green Lantern. There have been no further adventures of these characters published in its original animation form due to the elimination of the WB animation studio.
  • An alternate version of the Batman has appeared in the 52 multiverse operating on Earth-12. The Earth-12 Batman debuted in Countdown to Final Crisis #21.
  • This version of Terry McGinnis has continued to appear in the New 52 Multiverse Earth 12, with some slight differences.
  • Terry was 16 when Bruce started training him[5], and since Terry's tenure as Batman started in 2039, that would place Terri's birth year in 2022 or 2023.



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