Batman and the Outsiders #2
Recap
Sofia is a young metahuman on the run from a meta hunter named Ishmael, Batman cuz reasons sends a knock off Cable to hide her away and then sandbags the Outsiders so they're always showing up a day late and a dollar short.
Ra's Al Ghul is behind Ishmael and wants to recruit Sofia against her will to use her powers for his own purposes. Knock off Cable is bad at the one job he was given and Ishmael succeeds leading to a dramatic "reveal" that Ra's plans to train her in the use of her powers cuz bad guy reasons.
Review
I’m gonna be brief out of respect for the creative team here but straight up this book is not good. There’s some glimpses of hope when Hill writes Black Lightning dialogue between himself and Katana and Batman, even some potential in the interactions between Duke and Cassandra Cain…..and that’s about it.
If you’ve ever read Messiah Complex as featured in the X-Men, Claremont’s New Mutants or X-Men or literally anything that Hope Summers was ever in then you’ve already read a better version of this story. Not knocking the attempt, I mean there’s a ton of “new kid on the block” trope based stories like this that are still amazing, I mean look at the various runs of Valiant’s Harbinger or Generation Zero all heavily inspired by the New Mutants and yet all really friggin good like so good. This one though just falls completely flat.
It’s super predictable, the team despite being loaded with highly skilled capable members come off like dusty noob scrubs when action pops off and it feels like if a Garfield Monday was made into a superhero team comic.
The only saving grace so far has been stellar art work by Dexter Soy and Veronica Gandini, that along with the tiny spurts of good writing in the mix of mud gives me just enough motivation not to tap out just yet.
Final Thoughts
It's hard not to be disappointed with what we've got so far considering the long history of criminally underrated Outsiders books that exist. At this point I just pop open an issue of the Judd Winick or Alan Davis runs after each reading of this one to remind myself why I was excited for it to begin with. Not the worst comic I've ever read but considering the Outsiders' legacy left to it and the amazing work by Tynion and Hill up to this point.....well this just ain't up to snuff.
Batman and the Outsiders #2: Like New Mutants Except Not Good.
- Writing - 5/105/10
- Storyline - 5/105/10
- Art - 8/108/10
- Color - 8/108/10
- Cover Art - 7/107/10
IMO, the art isn’t even all that great, but in fairness it’s a style that isn’t in my particular wheelhouse either.