Outsiders Week!

In the spirit of Yuletide, I'd like to devote this week to

HATING THE OUTSIDERS.

Even though a week is clearly not enough time for that... .

There are so many crimes against comics for which Enemy of Society Mike W. Barr should be tried, but creating the Outsiders is the one that should get him the chair. Once that's done, they should turn the current on again for about another twenty minutes just to make the corpse twitch. Hey; I'd watch that on YouTube; Pay Per View, even!

My reasons for detesting the "Outsiders" are both manifest and manifold. Even more than "the NEW Teen Titans", they were a loose grouping of ersatz characters cobbled together in the Marvel mold. "Fear us for we are a rough and tumble bunch of ass-kicking rebels! We have contempt for authority just like you young people! We are McBain, a loose-cannon cop who doesn't play by the rules! We are ... OUTSIDERS!"

No, my dears, you are not. The Doom Patrol are outsiders; you know, the freaky kids in high school who wind up founding software companies, opening art galleries, dying in gutters, or moving to Montevideo to do all three. You are surburban Catholic-school girls, toying with dark mark-up and calling yourself "naughty" because you let a boy get to first base without knowing his last name. The Doom Patrol is a group of people who have been labelled as outsiders by others; you are people trying to label yourselves as outsiders. So unsure and insecure about what you are that you need to define yourselves by what you are not.

This is a group that actually called themselves the Outsiders. Now that is what I believe the kids today would call "lame". Oh, and they were founded by *snicker* Batman. Now, it's funny enough when Marvel tries to portray Wolverine (who's in every third Marvel comic) as an outsider. I mean, at least he smokes cigars, wears leather, has funny hair, and drops the 'g's from present participles. But Batman ... ?!

Hey, Batman! I've got some snapshots of you in my photo album wherein you are:

• chatting with Mr. Barnabas on Batman Island!
• selling war bonds!
• piloting the Batsubmarine!
  
• testifying in court!
• answering a summons from your personal searchlight on police headquarters!
• racing against Willie Von Dort!
• founding yet another version of the JLA!
• performing a tracheotomy on a baby with a ping pong ball lodged in its throat!
  
• giving your silent stamp of approval to some new hero in issue 3 of their new soon-to-be-cancelled title!

I like my Batman fairly dark, you know. But I'm still not going to pretend that Batman, even at his darkest, is an "outsider" in any meaningful sense of the word, and a credulity-straining tiff with his colleagues in the Justice League won't be changing my mind. Batman's not a naif; he knows that the JLA's job isn't to do everything it can everywhere, but to deal with things that no one else can when it's necessary to do so.

So Batman goes off in a huff and forms a group called "the Outsiders"? Ridiculous. How come the only consistently mature versions of any of DC characters are in its animated line, which is theoretically made for kids? Children get DC icons that act like adults, but we adults get DC icons that act like children. Maybe it's supposed to be comic book irony.

The "Outsiders", as you would expect from a rebellious outsider group, had a high-tech HQ and a VTOL jet, connections with old world royalty, at least one member who's a model, and lived in a "real" city (or rather, Los Angeles). Did DC pay Marvel royalties for the Outsiders? That check should go out every week in the mail right after the ones to Siegel & Shuster.

You know what might have worked for me instead? You know what might have at least been funny?

"Green Arrow and the Outsiders"; because he's just that kind of jackass.