TV URBAN LEGEND: One of Batman Beyond's villains was originally created by one of the show's creator when he was just 10 years old.
Batman Beyond was set in the future, when Bruce Wayne is a lonely old man. He trains a teenager to become the new Batman, using a futuristic suit of armor that Bruce had designed years earlier. The show, created by Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, was meant to be a lot more than just showing what the future of Gotham City looked like, but it was to have its own unique identity....
One of the ways that the show's creators achieved the feat of giving the show its own identity was by making sure that the villains on the show were almost entirely new. Sure, there were the Jokerz gang and by the end of the show, a few other longtime Batman foes had updated versions in the future (and obviously, the Batman Beyond movie involved the Joker), but for the most part, the name of the game was being distinct. Not just having it be, you know, Two-Face 2039, Penguin 2039, Scarecrow 2039, etc.
In a lot of ways, though, the way that they worked was by taking a basic concept of a Batman villain and then doing a new twist on the idea. Like how Inque was sort of like Clayface mixed with Catwoman...
However, with such a great need for new characters that stood on their own distinct from the original Batman mythos, there was a high priority placed on coming up with distinct ideas and so this led to one of the show's creators, Alan Burnett, going back to an unusual source for an idea.
At New York Comic-Con, Burnett told reporters about how he grew up as a comic book fan in the 1960s and, like most comic book fans, he would create his own comic book characters. One of the superheroes Burnett came up with when he was 10 was basically the Repeller, costume and all (well, the basic design of the costume, not the futuristic aspects of it).
So, forty years later, Burnett adapted his childhood superhero into a brand-new Batman Beyond villain....
The Repeller wasn't one of Batman's biggest foes on the series, but it really WAS a cool design.
It is hilarious to see the odd places ideas can pop up from!
The legend is...
STATUS: True
Thanks to Alan Burnett for the information!
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