By this time next week, I will be on the road for the family Christmas getaway! Should be a blast! But until then, we’ve got a few comics to read, though this was one of those very light weeks for me.

Comic Book of the Week goes to Outsiders #2 because it was marginally better than the only other comic I read this week. Also, this is a cool sea monster design.

Meanwhile, I finished off Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which ended rather anticlimactically. I then splurged on Super Mario Wonder as my last video game purchase for a while (gotta save money). Haven’t played it yet, but I’m quite excited. I also watched Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix this past week and it was pretty amazing! So consider that a big recommendation.

Comic Reviews: Captain America #4 and Outsiders #2.

Captain America #4
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Lian Medina
Colorist: Espen Grundetjern
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna

I was all set to drop this comic, but then I saw I didn’t really have anything else to read and review this week.

Captain America fights the Emissary, but quickly finds out the guy is a demon, so he makes a strategic retreat and gets blasted into the river. He wakes up in a hospital bed with Sharon at his side, and they reach out to Misty Knight to get her up to speed. With this being a demon, Steve needs her help to contact Doctor Strange.

Meanwhile, back in the 1930s, Steve’s got a job on a construction sight, but works himself half to death and faints from dehydration in his building. There’s a nurse that checks on the girls, and she’ll be checking in on him. All the while, the Nazis are planning to blow up their own rally at Madison Square Garden, and the demon is involved with all of this too.

Comic Rating: 5/10 – Alright.

This is a very dry, very low key superhero comic book. Captain America’s narration feels so flat. He’s like an old, relaxed man just sitting back and spouting off a stream of consciousness, despite some crazy action happening on the page. Some of it is OK, but most of it is rather dull. And a lot of this series has been dull so far. I’m just not connecting with this story. Captain America vs. some random demon? Uh, OK. The fight with the Emissary is over quickly so that Cap can regroup and tackle this problem the proper way, which is calling Doctor Strange. You’ve got a demon? Call Doctor Strange and it’ll be handled. And yet that moment is treated like a big deal at the end of the issue. It would be a little more impactful (maybe) if the good doctor hadn’t already appeared in the previous issue.

The stories in the past are slightly more interesting, though this issue does not at all follow up on the idea of Steve working for a local gangster to learn more about the bad guy’s plan. We randomly find him overworking himself in some construction job, which feels like it comes out of nowhere and makes his normally stubborn disposition come off as genuinely stupid. Yeah, Steve, you can stand up to bullies all day. That’s great. But you physically can’t overwork yourself at a construction job all day. You’ll die. And you’re proving nothing to nobody. So that was just rather annoying.

TL;DR: This is just a very dull, dry series that doesn’t seem to have a lot to say. Some pretty standard stuff happens in this issue, leading to some pretty standard story progression.

Outsiders #2
Writers: Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly
Artist: Robert Carey
Colorist: Valentina Taddeo
Letterer: Tom Napolitano

Despite the strong writing and artwork…every single issue so far leads me to believe this team should not exist.

On Kate’s insistence, the Outsiders decide to go look into a massive storm at the Enlil Triangle, which has been raging since the start of the new century. Kate saw a sea monster there once. When they arrive, they find out that the latest iteration of the Challengers of the Unknown are already doing all manner of research and investigations here, and they tell the Outsiders to stay away. The Outsiders don’t listen and head down to the sea floor anyway, leading to a bit of a scuffle, during which the Outsiders lose.

On the ocean floor, they find a bunch of sea monster skeletons, and Kate goes out in a deep sea diving suit. Then her sea monster shows up and everybody’s ready to either run or kill it, until Drummer and Kate realize it’s a juvenile, and the bones are its family. So that bit of heartwarming news convinces everybody to leave the monster in peace.

Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.

So, uh, I’m fully on the side of the Challengers of the Unknown here and would rather read about them than the Outsiders. Is that weird? My biggest gripe with Outsiders is that it feels so slapdash. It claims to be this big organization, paid for by Fox and Wayne money, but is really just these three yahoos apparently going wherever they want and doing whatever they want. It’s so slapdash that Luke and Kate are still holding onto their Batman aesthetics, even though this team is supposed to be a rejection of doing things Batman’s way. Meanwhile, this second issue pits them against the Challengers of the Unknown, who actually are a large, well-funded organization that explores unknown phenomenon, and they have the gear, the logo and the matching uniforms to actually be a real organization.

So what’s even the point of the Outsiders? In two years, this comic will be cancelled and DC will recycle the name and these characters into other comics. Meanwhile, the Challengers of the Unknown will always be around. Maybe not this specific iteration, but they have staying power with this exact premise. So pitting the two teams against one another in only the second issue, and only for one issue, makes me feel like the Outsiders are children playing pretend while the actual adults are working.

Outsiders needs to have the courage of its convictions if it wants this book to catch on our work. There’s no reason why Kate Kane needs to remain as Batwoman in this situation. She’s not a super well known character out of comics. She doesn’t have any other media adaptations that need to be adhered to (not anymore, at least). Why not change costumes? Why not change identities? Why not become her own person and maybe just use ‘Batwoman’ as a nickname or something? Ugh. This is bugging me more than it should.

The overall issue is a good read. Two issues in, Lanzing and Kelly have done a fine job coming up with big, crazy, unexplained phenomena for our heroes to investigate. And the artwork easily keeps up. Carey and his art team draw a great sea monster. And the butting heads between the Outsiders and the Challengers really works. Honestly, this should have been a whole story arc. Spend one arc establishing the Outsiders, and spend the second arc pitting them against a bigger, more organized, established DC entity doing the same thing. That would have been interesting.

But nope. It’s just a seemingly done-in-one random adventure where the Outsiders are so outclassed and outmaneuvered and outwritten that I don’t have any respect for them anymore. This is a situation where Lanzing and Kelly originally pitched a Challengers of the Unknown revival and the DC bosses made them pivot to this Outsiders idea?

Kate Kane and Luke Fox casting off their Bat-identities in order to form a new Challengers of the Unknown, with this version of the Challengers as their supporting cast, and Drummer in the background building up a cool mystery, would have been a really neat idea.

TL;DR: Some story choices in this issue call this entire series into question, even if the writing and art remain strong.

The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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