Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #2

Chip Kidd has gotten sloppy with his cropping.

This issue say Batman and the Outsiders on the cover so if you were a Batman and the Outsiders fan, you might think, "Hey! Maybe I should pick this up and enjoy some sweet, sweet on the bus stealth masturbation in my pants with this comic on my lap!" But you'd be wrong because you should only masturbate in public even if you are female and I'd like to see that while riding the bus. But especially if you're a guy because I don't want to see your O-face or have to dodge your bodily fluids when you reach enlightenment. Is that how you reach enlightenment? If it is, I must be doing it wrong because I usually just reach naptime. Maybe I just need more practice?

Anyway, what I was trying to say before my brain sidetracked me is that Batman and the Outsiders fans are going to be disappointed when they open this book and realize they're reading an OMAC comic book instead. Fucking OMAC. This is where if I touted myself as an unbiased comic book review site, I'd say, "Now, I have nothing against OMAC but when I purchase a Batman and the Outsiders comic book, I want to read Batman and the Outsiders." But I'm a completely biased comic book review site and I have everything against OMAC. Even DC Comics decided he was stupid which is why they changed his name from One Man Army Corps to something else which I can't remember. And he's always taking orders from artificial intelligence trying too hard to seem human. So for a long time, "Brother" Eye gave him "suggestions" on how to "save" the world. This comic book begins with not Brother Eye commanding him but Godmother. So I guess this is going to be some kind of fairy tale? Will OMAC eventually become a real princess/boy/woman respected for her accomplishments instead of just her good looks (although she'll still have the good looks because Hollywood is pretty sure audiences only have a limited ability to suspend disbelief)? Although now I'm sort of hoping this comic book goes all Boxing OMAC on me.

Geoforce does manage to show up on about page four which I'm grateful for. Not because I like Geoforce! It's just that a knife in the kidney is better than a thin, long needle up the urethra. I think. Having never experienced both of those things, I can't really compare.

Hey Letterer! That guy flying up in the air in the second panel? Not Geoforce.

Black Lightning is busy recovering from Sudden Onset Lightning Powers while a little kid bothers him. Then a big kid named Batman bothers him with the usual Bat-orders: "Drop everything and do what I say!" He probably stamps his foot as he says it while Alfred mutters to himself about spoiled brats and shitty health care.

Halo has recently exploded out of a coma burying Katana and a number of the hospital staff in rubble. But that's okay! She's a hero! Normal people should be glad to sacrifice their lives for added drama in the lives of super heroes.

Jesus Christ, Letterer. Am I going to have to continually correct you?! It's GABY not GABBY!

I suppose I should learn who the letter is on this comic book but I haven't hit the credits page yet and I don't want to skip ahead and see spoilers! Plus I should probably be yelling at Andreyko and not the letterer. Andreyko is definitely the one that scripted Halo yelling "Katana" and not "Tatsu" like she probably would have. Maybe Halo just learned, after repeatedly being threatened with hospitalization for punctured lungs, not to call Tatsu by her name in public.

Meanwhile Rex and Sapphire climb out of the shower and wrap camping tarps around their naked bodies because they're fucking weird, I guess. Metamorpho grosses Sapphire out. I don't mean he started making racist comments! He just turned into a monster while they were fucking and had trouble keeping his face from sliding off of his "skull." Skull is in quotation marks because Metamorpho doesn't really have a skeleton until he thinks about it and makes one for himself.

How does Metamorpho control his ability? If I had the ability to turn myself into any element, I doubt my body would respond to my brain thinking, "Turn into gold!" What do I know about the properties of gold?! It's shiny and it's the color of gold! Half of that you could have guessed without even having ever seen gold in real life! At least I could probably come up with a semblance of gold. Maybe pyrite. But how would I turn into other elements like magnesium? Or neon? Or Einsteinium? Is that one?

Geoforce meets up with OMAC and I forgot that Geoforce's name had a hyphen in it. I don't care. I don't think it should have a hyphen in it so I'm going to stubbornly refuse to type it correctly. Later I might even misgender him for kicks.

Batman and the other Outsiders arrive to help Geoforce defeat OMAC which is when I learn the letterer is Steve Wands. Don't worry, Steve! I'm not going to blame you for the previous gaffs. I'm sure they were due to Andreyko's scripting. And if you write anything about one of the characters being raped, I won't blame you for that either. We all know who's responsible for that! *touches side of nose because I think it means something*

The rest of the comic will probably be one long fight followed by an earthquake followed by everybody hugging Halo because she's better while Metamorpho cries in the corner.

Black Lightning insulting Batman to his face.

The earthquake actually hits in the middle of the fight because why not get that editorial mandated crap out of the way as soon as possible. After that, Andreyko returns to making mistakes in his script.

Halo was in a coma for the same amount of time Rex was human. She doesn't know he's "back"! It's also possible Steve fucked this up and that should have been Tatsu's line. Maybe I should just blame Marc and Steve equally for all of the mistakes.

Batman and the Outsiders defeat OMAC and he disappears along with Kamandi's New York. I guess. I actually don't think any of the cities will remain non-existent at the end of this. I think some of the creative teams took the Multiversal Thunderdome too seriously. Especially since these battles are set up in such a way that a city shouldn't disappear simply because one of the city's champions lost their own individual battle. I bet at the end of Convergence somebody snaps their fingers and all the worlds magically wind up in a happy place where their universe gets to exist in a state that never changes from each huge pending Crisis (in this case, Crisis on Infinite Earths).

After the battle, Batman is all, "Hey Rex! I hope you're not planning on killing yourself now? Oh wait! You can't kill yourself! Ha ha!" And then Rex is all, "Don't be too sure about that! Elemental Woman took her own life! Or will take her own life! Or...do Vertigo books count in our universe?" And then the story ends and everybody lives ambiguously ever after!

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #2 Rating: I enjoyed the art! It was happening! The story was average. There were mistakes. So I guess I'll rate this comic book 6 Roy G. Bivs out of Ten!

Divergence: Batman Beyond
"Trapped in the future, Tim Drake becomes the new Batman Beyond as he protects a Gotham City that stands on the edge of a great disaster."

I bet all of the Terry McGinnis fans are dancing in the streets over this decision, amirite?! That was sarcasm! I probably shouldn't use sarcasm because it makes me sound like Chandler Bing and nobody knows who that is anymore. The good thing about Tim Drake having time traveled to become Batman Beyond is that my theory about Tim Drake being Harvest has inched that much closer to being correct! He's got thirty five years of the time travel part down! Now he just needs to time travel another 965 years and somehow become a vampire!

In the Sneak Peek, Tim Drake learns that he needs to fight cyborgs and rescue survivors in the name of Terry McGinnis. Terry McGinnis fans learn that this comic book sucks donkey vomit. I think it's just more Futures End repackaged in a less interesting, um, package! And it's written by Dan Jurgens so it'll be set in the future but it'll feel an awful lot like 1986.

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #1

Whenever Geoforce passes out at a party, somebody always writes a big "Y" after the "F" on his chest.

Batman and the Outsiders were my first favorite super hero team. I had a crush on Halo. I thought Katana was bad-ass. Metamorpho was fucking hilarious to a thirteen year old boy. I wanted to be Black Lightning. And I thought Geoforce was the most boring fucking fictional character ever created. Batman just seemed like the parent that wouldn't let them do all the super cool stuff they wanted to do. Maybe it's because of this series that I never really became a huge Batman fan. I just saw him as a bossy parental figure that I wanted to get away from.

I've been rereading the old series and it holds up in the way that comic books from the early eighties hold up. Which is not very well but you give the comic book a lot of slack and try to view it through the eyes of your younger self. One of the things that series taught me was that you could build characters best not through conflict but through the downtime out of the super hero suits. Marvel probably does that better and more often but they also tend to overdramatize problems that I, even when I was younger, barely saw as problems. Stop fucking whining and deal with it, assholes. You can either be a victim and allow everybody around you an inordinate amount of influence on your life or you can just say "Fuck 'em all" and get on with being who you want to be. I'm looking at you, Peter Parker! Unless I'm looking at Scott Summers. I don't know! It's been a long time since I really read any Marvel books besides Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Superior Six, and Inhumans.

Speaking of overly dramatic writing, Mike W. Barr must have thought he was writing Shakespearean plays at times. Holy fuck can he turn a ridiculous phrase! And Jim Aparo's facial expressions! Hoo boy, do these cats react to shit! The last time I saw so many open, gaping mouths was at Glory Hole Fest 2014.

But that's the old days. This may be the old Outsiders but Andreyko will probably (hopefully) give them a bit of a modern sensibility. And maybe somebody will get raped! I mean, not really raped! Just, you know, hypnotized into thinking they like the person and then being told afterward by the "hypnotist" that you can't hypnotize somebody into doing something they don't want to do so being fucked while under hypnosis is implicit consent! So there, fandom!

I don't care how many people call me a misogynist. Without the outside controversy and Andreyko's insistence that Batwoman wasn't hypnotized, it was actually a well done story about hypnotism. Especially the way the hypnotist reacts when confronted by the victim and piles all of the blame onto her. But I guess nobody is allowed to write hypnotism stories anymore because women aren't allowed to be victims of hypnosis anymore because it perpetuates hypnosis culture which causes more women to become victims because when a person reads that story they realize people can get away with hypnotism and not getting away with hypnotism and getting thrown in prison for it is the only thing keeping somebody from hypnotizing.

I mean, you know, aside from the fact that nobody wants to see their favorite character whose comic book they're supporting go through a bunch of horrible shit that they shouldn't be going through since they're the hero trying to prevent this kind of crap. Unless it's Batman. Fuck Batman.

I opened this comic book just now and realized it's the first one from the third week which means a new Fight Card! Just as I thought by the characters being spotlighted this week, the battles take place in Earth-One Pre-Crisis Gotham City. The other cities featured are Kamandi's New York, Vampire Batman's Gotham, the Atomic Knights' Durvale, and Central City from the Tangent Universe. I don't know anything about the Tangent Universe. I hope Infinity Inc. deals with those guys. I want Batman and the Outsiders to battle vampire Batman so that the Outsiders can take all of their Batman is a dickhole frustations out on a surrogate Batman.

The beginning sounds a lot like a Mike W. Barr comic book.

This issue is called "The New Normal." This normal is really new for these characters that have never known a true DC Crisis event! They're used to a lot of weird shit happening but things continue along as normal. Although occasionally some really fucking weird shit goes down and everybody just agrees to pretend that it never happened. The old normal was chill like that.

Batman has been working on the mystery of the dome for 364 days now. He gives Jim Gordon an update on his progress which amounts to "I don't know shit but that won't stop me from 'investigating' it more." At what point do you stop calling what you're doing detective work and just admit that you're killing time? It's not like he has any clues to follow. Any analysis of the Dome would have taken place on Day 1 of the investigation and that was probably the last day any progress was made.

What is Dr. Thompkins shocked about in the fourth panel?

I guess when the Dome came down, Gabrielle's parasitic alien whatever-the-hell stopped functioning and she slipped back into a coma. Unless I'm remembering her origin incorrectly. I haven't gotten that far in my reread to get a refresher on Halo and her powers. But I guess she gets her hair cut after Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Meanwhile Geoforce is moving masses amounts of broken asphalt with his bare hands. What the fuck is that about?! Was Dr. Jace so good at giving people Earth Powers that he retained them after the Dome fell? Or is Geoforce just that naturally boring? I mean strong!

Geoforce goes off with the others to...*snrrk snrrl SNORE*

Where...what?! Oh, uh, sorry. I seem to have passed out there for a second. I drooled all over my comic book. Let's see, I was probably done reading this Geoforce crap so let's skip ahead to Rex and Sapphire.

Why Mrs. Stagg! Is your butt trying to seduce me?!

Metamorpho might be the only person truly happy under the Dome since he now has a real flesh and blood penis to put inside of any one of three magical Sapphire Stagg orifices. Unless he only has access to two of them. Or just one. Hell, just one is more than he deserves, the big mug.

Back in the Batcave, Batman continues his investigation.

See?! I knew it! The big fucking phony! Pretending that he's got some kind of investigation going on!

The next day is the day the Dome drops. Everybody is going about their normal business and, luckily, Rex and Saph are getting one last good shower fuck in. Because it's time for Planet Brainiac to welcome everybody to Thunderdome.

Luckily Rex's dick isn't inside Sapphire when he regains his powers and he just burns the shit out of her arm and probably her boobs and maybe her stomach. But mostly she's probably okay. Good thing Rex didn't transform instantly into Magnesium, amirite?! No seriously. Am I? Would that have been bad?

Gaby comes out of her coma, Geoforce flies up into the sky, Katana's sword probably starts speaking to her again, Black Lightning recharges, and Batman hits a big red button. It's probably a call to gather The Outsiders because they're going to be battling OMAC and an army of mutants from Kamandi's world next issue.

Convergence: Batman and the Outsiders #1 Rating: It seemed like a lot to pack in since this is a pretty big team for this two issue set up. But I like the glimpses we got of all but one of the characters. Actually, Black Lightning had a pretty boring arc. And Katana's arc was really just worrying about Halo. And Batman's arc was just showing how fucking useless he really is. So Rex's story was the only one that was truly interesting. And mostly that's because it had fucking in the shower.