As a long time fan of Outsiders in particular the original run and Nightwing’s 2000s team…I had pretty high hopes this would scratch the itch. In some ways it does, the scenes between Katana and Jefferson Pierce alone are amazing. If nothing else this book is worth reading to see how the two play off each other.

The lack of cohesion between the majority of the team though is almost distracting. If Batman put this team together and let’s them off the leash almost completely unsupervised you’d expect something a little more impactful when seeing them in action. As I said before Black Lightning and Katana definitely measure up but Orphan and Signal feel like two characters from a different series just happened to appear in the issue cuz reasons.

Not a bad first issue don’t get me wrong but definitely brush up on the Detective Comics issues before tackling this one and keep in mind, despite a couple familiar faces this book is Batman and the Outsiders in name only. Batman himself serves as more the Charlie to their Angels as well so I wouldn’t expect to see him in action along side the team for at least a couple issues.

The only real gripe I have with this issue is Caliber, it’s very hard to ignore a lot of the late 90’s New Mutants/early days of X-Force influence on this book as it unfolds. To just drive the point home a blatant Cable knock off shows up at the end turning a dramatic scene of a teenage runaway barely making it day to day into something almost laughable. Even so I would still recommend it for a read but yeah faux Cable is clown shoes.