DCU Comic Book Reviews

OUTSIDERS #39

Silver And Grey, Part Three:  Since You're Here...

October 2006

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Matthew Clark & Ron Randall

Inks by Art Thibert

Cover By Daniel Acuña

Synopsis

Monsieur Mallah ruminates to the Brain that he thinks if God were to be a dancer he would be a tap dancer, because while it may look like it is spontaneous and random, tap dancing is a structured dance.  This occurs to him because of the chaos caused by the Outsider’s attack to their home, which was quickly followed by Mallah and Brain restoring order and making the Outsiders their prisoners.  Three hours ago...The Outsiders were foiled on the attack by the presence of Mallah and Brain’s clone army (including one who looks suspiciously like Plastic Man).  The clones are able to capture all of the Outsiders but Katana.  Later, Mallah tests all of their DNA, although very little is useable.  Meanwhile, Katana is alone trying to get back to the team when she encounters...Shift.

Review

“Did you ever think we’d actually speak something so pedestrian as ‘who dares invade the inner sanctum?’  Please.”

Sometimes I wonder if Winick has an idea on where he really wants to go with this series.  On the one hand, we’ve got all of these clones running around, but it seems as if this is a secondary agenda to exploring the relationship between Brain and Mallah or to add small insights to the main characters without actually providing any type of revelation.  I specifically am thinking about Boomerang, whom we still don’t know why he “switched sides” as it were.  Now we learn the Shift and Metamorpho had been merged and we have learned that Grace is not what she seems to be.  All of these are intriguing discoveries, but they all seem to be small nuggets lost in the clone saga, which itself is buried behind Brain and Mallah and their lengthy conversations about God tap dancing.  I will admit I like the Outsiders, but to date there seem to be a lot of set-up without much resolution.  Even the brief appearance of Checkmate and Superman seemed to be nothing more than tease.  At this point, I think we need to get some answers to the questions Winick is asking to move the story forward rather than just spinning our wheels.

The ending to this issue was not much a surprise since Winick has been hinting at Shift’s presence for several of the issues.  Yet, I am intrigued to see what will happen to the two of them after Shift helps Katana free the team and defeat Mallah and Brain.  The first question would be why did Shift enter (re-enter) Metamorpho’s brain in the first place.  Last I recall seeing Shift was in outer space with Donna Troy and the rest.  Conversely, Metamorpho helped out Batman defeat Brother Eye, but I do not recall what he did after that.  Nor, do I recall if Shift came down from space with the others in 52. 

Why exactly did Mallah and Brain return to the bedroom when the attack only occurred three hours earlier?  What did they do, draw blood for the DNA testing and then go upstairs for a quickie or something?-- MRB

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