“What are we all shooting at?” Who cares, it’s the 90s!”
Outsiders #0
DC Comics (October, 1994)
“From The Ashes”
WRITER: Mike W. Barr
PENCILER: Paul Pelletier
INKER: Robert Bampanella
COLORIST: Tom McCraw
LETTERER: Kevin Cunningham
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Eddie Berganza
EDITOR: Kevin Dooley
Tracking down the creator of a set of guns that appear to make their wielder addicted to them, Eradicator calls on former teammates Looker, Halo, and Faust to track them down, rescuing Wilde in the search. That search ultimately leads them to aliens who feed off of violence and created the “hyperguns” to addict users into being more violent. The heroes manages to take them down, but during a news report a reporter calls them the Outsiders only to be corrected by Geo-Force, Katana, and Technocracy, who say they’re the real Outsiders.
Um, Tech, they never claimed to be the Outsiders. The reporter did. They just stopped some bad guys, although you don’t know that part.
I like the general idea of a team and this group seems to work pretty well. We also get some interesting backstory into the current incarnation of the Eradicator. It’s just not a story that works with me for some reason. It’s not that it’s a bad story. It’s actually fairly decent. Barr is a good writer. Is it the second potential anti-gun message I’ve reviewed this month, is it the fact that I can’t tell if the Pharon Empire creatures disgust me that much, or does the team not connect with me despite being a good balance of magic and superpowers (lacking in the high-tech mind you)? I don’t know.
If someone were to ask me if they should give this one a look it would be hard for me to answer unless I knew their tastes well enough. It just doesn’t connect with me, but it’s not necessarily bad outside of a bit of rush before the final conflict. I only know that I’m not keeping this one.
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