Writers: Greg Rucka and Judd Winick
Artists: Matthew Clark, Ron Randall, Joe Bennett
Publisher: DC Comics
The Outsiders have been operating under the radar for the last year, letting people believe they were dead, but their actions have led to too many incidents that cannot be ignored. Checkmate, the UN force put together to monitor and deal with metahumans, has a job they need the Outsiders for. So rather than play nice; Checkmate are bringing the Outsiders in now.
Lately at FM we’ve criticised DC a lot for their comics, but I’m happy to say they got this crossover right. Greg Rucka and Judd Winick have put together a story that serves both titles well and comes out like a well prepared tale evolving from the plots of both books. There’s characterisation as the teams interact and they even manage to make one of the goofier readditions to the DCU into a credible threat.
Rucka and Winick continued to write their own titles and advised on the dialogue for their characters. This allows both to deliver some scenes that are very true to the cast no matter which book they came from. It had not dawned on me prior to the story how interrelated some of the characters were which allows for the new Captain Boomerang to propel Checkmate plot long past this crossover and also allows for some shared memories between Nightwing and Checkmate’s Black Queen, a former lover and confidante of Batman. The initial capture sequence gives a nice twist on superhero teams fight and then work together, but also flows very naturally from events in the Outsiders’ book. It is also a testament to both writers that in the midst of all the explosions that both books have a lot of their future as separate books established. This turned out to be Winick’s swansong on Outsiders and it’s a shame as I would have liked to see what he could have done with the new purpose he gives to the team here.
To an extent the villains the teams face are really secondary in the overall scheme of things. Picking up on one of the strands left from 52 Rucka and Winick manage to make Egg-Fu into a credible threat, particularly as a behind the scenes manipulator.
Overall that is a fun espionage romp that delivers action and characterisation all without falling into many of the traps that DC of late has limped along using.
Mark Peyton – has a MA in History and Research from the University of Hull specialising in the Hundred Years War. In a complete departure from that he now runs communications and membership for a UK based Trade Union as well as being a part time writer/journalist.
He is a founding member of Millarworld acting as a moderator and as an editor for Fractal Matter.