DCU Comic Book Reviews

OUTSIDERS #44

Pay As You Go, Part One:  The Skeleton Crew

March 2007

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Carlo Barberi

Inks by Art Thibert

Cover By Mathew Clark and Art Thibert

Synopsis

One Year Ago...The Outsiders defeat a small group of Dominators.  However, the team is fragmented, still trying to deal with the loss of several team members, including the death of Jade.  Meanwhile, Anissa Pierce (aka Thunder) is attempting to deal with her father, Jefferson Pierce (aka Black Lightning) being imprisoned for killing a man.  In Gotham City, Nightwing encounters the Red Hood, who tells the Boy Wonder than he has some information:  Black Lightning is innocent. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I am having a hard time getting excited about this particular flashback.  In contrast, when Winick wrote the Green Arrow flashback, I was interested, mostly to see what Ollie was doing in the missing year.  For whatever reason, I am not excited to see what the Outsiders were doing.  I am much more curious to see what kind of reaction the world and the super hero community has to the non-death status of the Outsiders.  This look back, this attempt to fill in all of the dots seems more like an attempt to complete the puzzle than a look at the characters.  In Green Arrow, for Ollie and gang, not much happened in the missing year so his story was about him and how he changed during the year.  But with an entire team, all of whom went through changes, all of whom experienced significant events, it seems like a lot to cover.  Moreover, there are some developments (such as Thunder and Grace’s relationship) that I just don’t see the need to go into too much detail.

Captain Boomerang, Jr. is still unaccounted for although I am wondering if this is related to the Black Lightning angle since Boomer is supposed to be in jail during the missing year.  Maybe working to help Black Lightning from inside prison allows him to go free and join the Outsiders.

I always knew that Winick had a thing for Jason Todd (aka Red Hood), but, man, he not only shows up in this issue, but also Green Arrow (issue #70) on the very same day.  Sadly, Jason’s appearance here adds very little to the story other than to scream out:  hey, look Red Hood and Nightwing together. And naturally they have to fight because, good lord, they couldn’t be adults and have a decent conversation before resorting to fisticuffs.  Although, the six pages in this issue are easily better the first couple of One Year Later issues in Nightwing.