Batman and the Outsiders #2: Like New Mutants Except Not Good.

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.