Outsiders #7 review

Years ago, Elijah Snow, The Drummer, Ambrose Chase and Jakita Wagner discuss Planetary business. They’re succeeding in keeping the world strange, and safe. Elijah feels so on top of things that he’s not only ready to retire and pass the Fourth Man role to Jacinta, he’s planning to reveal the secrets of reality to the world. 

And then said reality doesn’t so much intervene, as crumble. 

Everyone fades away but Jacinta finds herself ripped away from the wave of nothingness and thrown into a different world, with only The Drummer’s sticks to anchor her to the life that was. Keeping herself apart from the superheroes, she learns about this new world – which we readers recognise as the Earth of the New 52 – by reading books, while trying to make a new life for herself, a quiet life. 

Life has other plans. More than once the Earth around her vanishes, and she lands in the next world, ‘Up the stack’, as this issue’s title has it. 

Now she’s living on Earth 0, a member of the Outsiders organisation, helping to catalogue the weirdness around her as she did on her home Earth. She’s telling her story to associates Luke and Lucius Fox, and Batwoman Kate Kane. The former believe her story, and are sympathetic. But not Batwoman. 

Blimey, what a cow. Kate Kane has seen enough DC Multiverse tomfoolery to give Jacinta the benefit of the doubt, but off she flounces. Good riddance to Bat rubbish, I say. Personally, I found Jacinta’s tale compelling. Life is going great but again and again the cosmic rug is pulled from under her. Finally, she’s given hope that she will see her Planetary pals again, and that’s why she’s working with the Foxes. By issue’s end her determination to escape the tyranny of the reading stack, and anger at, well, us readers, blazes off the page. 

Kudos to writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly for a compelling read, elegantly bridging the worlds of the Wildstorm and DC Universes. Unlike Animal Man, who previously learned he was a comic book character and nearly went mad, Jacinta’s background as a Planetary investigator has prepared her for this ultimate weirdness – she doesn’t like it but she’s going to do her darndest to make the best of it.

I can see why the New 52 reality would have collected editions of 52 as that was an adventure involving the previous versions of the DC icons, but what the heck is Convergence doing there? That came between the New 52 and DC Rebirth. And then Rebirth itself is also on Jacinta’s reading pile…

Jacinta’s explanation that her Drummer character is her tribute to Elijah, Ambrose and The Drummer makes sweet sense, and it hadn’t crossed my mind that her drumsticks were the original. I wonder if Ambrose’s gun, which also entered the space after the void with Jacinta and said sticks will prove Chekhovian before story’s end.

The Final Knight – an older, alternate Duke Thomas – from the Death Metal event shows up to let Jacinta know her old friends are possibly waiting in the gutter of some comic/reality for her. Which is useful, but I never want to see anything connected to the Batman Who Laughs, thank you. 

Robert Carey once again provides straightforward, but not un-stylish, storytelling, nicely capturing Jacinta’s confusion, anger, frustration and sadness as she finds herself a Pariah figure, destined to see worlds die around her and see the big picture even Planetary never dreamt of. Amid the grimness, Carey finds room for a great visual gag involving Wonder Woman and her robot plane. 

And there’s an excellent splash showing how suddenly a vibrant world can become a desolate shell, well coloured by Valentine Taddeo. As for the lettering, Tom Napolitano lays everything out attractively and pertinently. 

This month’s cover is a Crisis on Infinite Earths homage by illustrator Roger Cruz and colourist Adriano Lucas. It’s not George Perez, but it’s decent. 

After a shaky start, Outsiders has become a must-read for me. With five more issues expected I can only wonder where the heck it’s going. And I like that.