On the Outs
I'm going to drop Outsiders.
The book has been a schizophrenic ride from the beginning, but under Dan DiDio and Phillip Tan it seems to be reaching a new low.
Sure, the book has been in some weird places the past few years. But under Peter Tomasi and Lee Garbett/Fernando Pasarin it seemed to have stabilized. Characters I didn't normally care about became interesting and characters I hate became tolerable.
But all of that seems to have been wiped away in a single issue. Geo-Force is more annoying that ever before. Katana is acting very strange. Owlman (one of Tomasi's best creations for the book) and Black Lightning are being played like chumps.
Now, it's possible that this is all part of some larger more grandiose plan. But if it is I'd like to get a hint that we'll be reaching a status quo that's acceptable to me as a reader. But all the hints were the other way. That's why the book is going into the discard pile.
Any other readers of Outsiders dismayed at the recent turn of the events? I mean, is the book really any good without Alfred?
Labels: Outsiders
posted by Diamondrock @ 6:12 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
People read Outsiders?
I kid, mostly. The only time I've read the book was when it was crossing over with Teen Titans (back when I was still reading Teen Titans) and Checkmate. But I never cared for anything I read in the book, and I guess I didn't realize Tomasi came on as writer.
The Eradicator reveal is, I think, intriguing and would actually make me moderately likely to read the book, but I've never read an enjoyable comic that Dan Didio wrote. The man killed Superboy twice (not to mention ReBoot), and I wouldn't be surprised to see Outsiders quickly fade away under his purview.
I'm going it give it one more issue. If Didio gives a good explanation of where the Eradicator has been and why he's here (and not on New Krypton), then the book will be on a month-to-month probation.
If not--it's gone. Alas.
It's my opinion (and, please, it's only my opinion) that the Outsiders have always been better in concept than in execution. Just sayin'.
Well thank Goodness. I thought it was just me. I only started reading Outsiders when Tomasi started writing it, and it was a nice concept, with Alfred, and I DID like Owl Man. Then, as you say, it suddenly all fell apart. If Alfred's not in it, then neither am I.
And to have Geoforce...GEOFORCE lording it over all others, is simply the last straw.
I work in my LCS, so I've gotten a lot of feedback on this book. My coworker hated it and joked that DiDio should fire himself immediately and bring in a real writer. Most of my customers have at least talked about dropping the book (with 4 or 5 actually dropping it). It's a medium seller for us, around 15-20 copies a month right now. Personally, I didn't much care for it, but I'll try it for the first arc. And then there was the one guy who, upon discovering the Eradicator's appearance, bought five copies of it and added it to his pull list, but apparently he's just a really, really big Eradicator fan!
Being a Legion of Superheroes fan is like asking for this sort of suffering. New writers come on board, and take characters in a direction you hate and contradicts a lot of what came before.
Still, there's always the hope that their pointed character changes can be explained, or at the least will be fixed by the NEXT writer.
As for the Eradicator, he was knocked into a coma by an OMAC back during Infinite Crisis. Maybe he just woke up?
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