Showcase Presents: Batman and the Outsiders by Mike W. Barr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Batman and the Outsiders finds Batman finding his own Superhero team and quitting the Justice League after the Justice League refused to compromise World peace to go in and rescue Batman's friend, Lucius Fox and by and by he ends up forming his own superhero group, "The Outsiders." Which is composed of two heroes who had been around a while but not quite become star characters (Black Lightning and Metamorpho.) as well as several newer characters.

There are some character moments as well particularly with Katana, Black Lightning, and Halo. What also makes the stories really work is that most of them are two part tales. Given the length of a single issue in this book is 23 pages (+1 page for cover), that gives 46 pages to tell a story which works really well for a comic book.

It should be clear that this book is part of its time when the New Teen Titans and X-men were up and coming stars, Batman and the Outsiders tried to tap into that same market but wasn't quite as good, but that doesn't mean it wasn't without merit.

What is problematic is the Batman and the Outsiders Annual which has the Outsiders battling group of evil metahumans who think they are heroes, but are really tools of a right wing plot It's a plot that goes to great lengths to illustrate how any conservative imagining a liberal conspiracy dominating the media is way off based as proven by this by this left wing biased comic book...Kind of ironic when you think about it.

Other than story, the stories are pretty good. The art by Jim Aparo is well-drawn. There's a bit of decline in quality in the issue Aparo doesn't work. Still, the book works far more often that it doesn't and overall this is a fairly enjoyable collection of comics.



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