Comics Fondle

I’ve been waiting issues for Alan Davis to show up, to bring something new to Outsiders. Well, he’s shown up and he doesn’t bring much. The first issue is bad, the first half of the second issue is okay, then it ends bad too. He draws these long faces and has real problems with features. The faces look rubbery and two dimensional.

As for Barr’s story–the true origin behind Halo–eh. Batman both acts like an arrogant jerk and smiles a lot. He also stares down primal forces of the universe. Maybe if Barr were doing some kind of acid-induced Kirby tribute, this story might work, but as is… it’s just absurd. It brings back that weird typed font DC used in the 1980s sometimes–in this case for the primal forces’ dialogue balloons. I can’t remember where I saw it before, but it’s recognizable and obviously never a good sign.

Barr manages one neat storytelling trick, absolutely idiotic, but it’s still a neat turn of events. Unfortunately, he wastes so much time on it in the second issue (after wasting half of the first issue with the Outsiders’ tour of the JLA satellite and lots of drama from Batman), there’s no emotional heft to the story. He essentially removes Halo as a character–not in physical presence but in humanity–and the only one who responds at all to it is Katana, as usual. The first six times Katana got all sad about Halo, it was effective. Now it’s just annoying.

C-

Recommend on Mahalo