What if you threw a Crisis and nobody came? That pretty much sums up the final issue of Outsiders, one of the most brazenly confusing comics I’ve ever read. I never covered the last issue because it was also a headscratcher, one I gave the benefit of the doubt. Surely the double-sized final issue would make sense of things?
So, in the last few months we learned that the DCU Outsiders’ female Drummer was actually Jakita Wagner of the Wildstorm Universe’s Planetary organisation. Last issue she turned on more recent associates Batwoman Kate Kane, Luke Fox and dad Lucius Fox as she used the Carrier – the Authority’s multiversal-traversing spaceship – to try to bring back her lost reality.
This issue the carrier, embodied as a silver lady, turns on Jakita and gives her peeks into (possible?) futures.
First that of Lucius.
Then Luke.
Then Kate.
For those about to die…. forget it, the Carrier’s plucking you out of time and giving you a big opportunity.
Write a better ending! Did anyone tell that to Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly who scripted this guff? I like DC metafiction as much as the next fan of Animal Man, but it has to make some kind of internal sense. How can Jakita, then the Carrier, then Luke, Lucius and Kate pull the strings of reality? If we’re in some kind of wishing space where the person with the most willpower gets to decide what reality is, just say so. I can take nuttiness, but put some effort into it!
Anyway, cue fighting, talking, Jakita being persuaded to bring back the DCU and a two-month jump ahead in which we see that Luke may be renaming his gang of Outsiders, The Authority. As for Jakita, she’s in some cosmic library enjoying a Planetary trade paperback. ‘End.’
Or not, as that’s the entire message of this comic, so far as I can gather – characters and books come and characters and books go, but they always come back.
I’ll be fine if this series never comes back; I’ve given some issues good reviews, but as it’s gone on it’s become more and more confusing, daring the reader to admit they haven’t a Scooby as to what’s going on. Well, I admit it, I get the macro-picture – Jakita tries to rewrite the DCU into the Wildstorm reality, and fails, but she’s finally OK with that – but the details? Forget it. I don’t understand Lucius or Kate or Luke in this series. I don’t understand why the Usual Gang of Superheroes didn’t show up to help out. I don’t see why writers keep trying to make Wildstorm happen within the DC Universe.
I do know that illustrator Robert Carey and colourist Valentina Taddeo produced some attractive visuals. The compositions and tones hinted at a story I couldn’t find. Tom Napolitano’s letters were champion, the chunky Carrier font a standout. And the cover by artist Roger Cruz and Adriano Lucas promises a lot more than the comic delivers.
So, who wants to tell me what I missed?
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Sadly I have to agree! I thought around the middle of the series there was some goo stuff and had been ready for some metafictional ending, but a metafictional ending has to comment on something (like the Doomsday clock stuff about Supes being the heart of the universe). We seemed to be edging towards it with the stuff about Bat-stuff overwhelming narratives and the need to break from that, but then we took this weird sharp turn.
The Jakita is Drummer revelation would have landed better if they hadn’t whitewashed her, but even then, why would she hide her identity on a world that doesn’t know of her? And Elijah certainly wouldn’t have been down with her destroying things – she was the wrong character for this.
Kate never sat well in the book, and we didn’t really learn much about why she was there, is the idea that she’s a better version of Jakita?, which again makes me wonder what the original pitch was, because I feel like this wasn’t it, and whether that would have worked any better. In my head there’s a version of this where they explore forgotten bits of the various universes that comprise the current DC universe but that was obviously expecting too much.
This is one of those things that happens too much in comics nowadays. There are plenty of villains, so why do we have to keep having heroes going bonkers for some reason? And why was it so easy for Jakita to destroy the universe?
What makes me very sad is that I used to love a lot of the Wildstorm books but no one now seems to know what to do with them now. The WildCATs revival was similarly weird and not built to appeal to a wide audience.
Stu
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You must be spot on, Stu, this reads like a series that is not the series it was meant to be. When it was announced it definitely sounded like the Outsiders would be travelling all over the DCM, they’d be outside any particular Earth. I wonder if, as plans for Absolute Power firmed up, what with Amanda tinkering with parallel worlds, it was decided that direction had to be blocked off. It’s a shame, this series had so much potential.
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