Outsiders #19 - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Outsiders #19
By Hervé St-Louis
June 27, 2009 - 07:49

DC Comics
Writer(s): Peter Tomasi
Penciller(s): Fernado Pasarin, Jeremy Haun
Inker(s): Prentis Rollins, Wayne Faucher, Jeremy Haun
Colourist(s): Hi-Fi
Letterer(s): Travis Lanham
Cover Artist(s): Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott
$2.99 US

It’s the Outsiders versus Deathstroke the Terminator as the team wants to prevent him from running away with the body of a slain man containing a precious meteorite. But Black Lightning is questioning the leadership of Geoforce as he concentrates more on getting revenge on Deathstroke who tortured him a few months ago than saving innocent lives. Can Geoforce stop Deathstroke without alienating his team?

The thought of having Geoforce as the leader of the Outsiders is weird. He’s hardly the most experienced of them all. Black Lightning would make more sense to me, especially when considering how he was written in the Justice League series. Geoforce reminds me more of a Johnny Storm-type of character. He’s a hot head. Even Katanna would do a better job and would be more level-headed. Obviously the fight with Deathstroke is a re-enactment of the one the Justice League had with him in Identity Crisis. Although at the time I criticized both writer Brad Meltzer and artist Rag Morales for the poor choreography with the Deathstroke versus Justice League fight, comparing their effort to the choreography in this issue makes them look extremely good. The storytelling by Pasarin is fine, but there is no creativity in how Deathstroke fights the outsiders. In Identity Crisis, the staging was very important and every move Deathstroke made counted for something. Not here. It’s just a brawl.

Still, Pasarin’s artwork is very good and does remind me a bit of Morales’. It’s important for a series like this one about characters that are not important and cannot hold their own series, to look good. Although some of them, like Owlman don’t do much.
Rating: 7.5/10