Batman and the Ousiders

This run for me has been a surprise. Art is absolutely beautiful and a great mixture of characters I don’t normally follow.

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I agree it’s been a pretty fun ride so far and I’m excited to see what they have in store for us going forward :slight_smile:

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This has been great so far! I’m so happy to get a good Duke and Cassie story. Plus, Black Lightning and Katana. Bryan Hill is doing a great job with this series.

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@Row.Harper,

Good to hear! I’m waiting for the trade, or for the issues to eventually become available on DCU. Are there any Easter eggs for fans of the old-school Outsiders?

Unfortunately, I didn’t read any of the old school Outsiders. So, I’m not sure if there are any Easter eggs.

It’s been a great book. I was looking forward to it since Hill started this Outsiders run in Detective. I was gutted when it kept getting pushed back, it finally came out tho and I wasn’t disappointed.

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Agree. Starting off just right.

I adore this series, as well as the overall concept of Batman and the Outsiders. The original volume of BATO is not only one of my all time favorite Batman titles, but also a favorite team title too.

Bryan Hill’s run on 'Tec was okay, but he’s hitting a homerun issue after issue with Batman and the Outsiders.

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I look at Hill’s ‘Tec run as a prelude to this book and actually felt it was far better than most of the previous writers’ work on that title. I was not a fan of Tynion’s run there but then again I’m not a fan of his anyway.

This book though is even better than Hill’s brief 'Tec run and its probably my favorite DC book at the moment. I haven’t been disappointed in it at all and I enjoy all the characters in it to.

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I really like the art and Black Lightning/katana relationship is the best part of the book for me. I also like Bruce taking Black Lightning under his wing. However, the story is moving too slow with more than one issue leaving me feeling like hardly anything happened. I don’t know if it is year of the villain is the reason or something else, but I might start just waiting for the trades.

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@CrookedSpoke,

I agree with you about slow moving stories, as I’m not a fan of decompression. I prefer shorter stories that provide a nice balance of action and soapy melodrama. This is one of the reasons that I liked the original Outsiders stories by Mike W Barr.

In fact, here’s a review of the Volume 1 collection of “Batman and the Outsiders,” which commends that series shorter stories:

One thing I really like about this collection is that the stories are short. Shorter stories means more stories, so you get a lot of bang for your back and it’s really easy to just pick up and read a issue or two. Longer arcs are fine when they’re warranted, but I like episodic storytelling just as much as serialized storytelling. Both formats have their place, and the former works best for this book.

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I feel like in the past this was the case with most comics, you would get a complete story in a single issue and sometimes it would spread across 2 issues or maybe 3. Nowadays I feel like everything is spread across 6 or 8 issues just so they can have a trade. That’s fine if the writer has a story worth telling at that length but for the most part I don’t think most of them do.

I think something as easy as cutting down on panel size and having more per page could do wonders. The last detective comics issue had two characters talking for the first 6 or 8 pages… to me that is absolutely ridiculous for a comic book of ~24 pages. There can be comic books that can pull this off and can be amazing (Criminal series comes to mind), but for most ongoings from the big two it just drags out the stories too much.

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