In spite of the name, Kelly & Lanzing's Outsiders are unlike any before them. Disturbingly, the series has far more in common with Wildstorm's late 90's series Planetary. This includes blatantly recreating the team structure, Wildstorm cameos, and Luke straight up copying Elijah Snow's outfits. As the Wildstorm mystery continues to come together, it isn't long before the Outsiders wonder, "Where do we fit into this at all?"

Landmark Final Issue

Twelve months before the story began, Lucius Fox has an eschatological experience. Fox refers to this event as "seeing the face of god," but in actuality it was a stroke. As a result, Fox decides to invest the Wayne Fortune he forgot to give back into the Outsiders excavations. In the process, he recruits Drummer and the mission began in earnest. However, issue #6 reveals that Fox has been building up to a massive cosmic equation behind the scenes. Using the intel Drummer conveniently acquires on the last mission, the team manage to partially solve that equation. Consequently, this puts Fox face to face with not only his mortality, but awareness of his fictional reality.

Drummer's weird logbook continues to serve as an expository narrative device. Often, the excerpts show up as overly descriptive purple prose on ugly brown pages. Yet, Drummer's description in the book is uniquely complementary and generously hypes up the "legend" quite a bit. Maybe it's the copy, maybe it's the arrangement, color, or the text itself, but these snippets are an eyesore. Furthermore, Lanzing and Kelly use the classic DC move of cryptic, in panel teases on white boards. In particular, the writing team explains this week's "snowflake" McGuffin the best they can. In a nutshell, the snowflake is the creative mathematical answer to the question of "what does the multiverse look like?" Unexpectedly, the 196,833 known universes manifest as potentially infinite snowflake fractals.

Into The Bleed

Unfortunately for the Outsiders, nothing good ever comes from solving equations in DC. Imperceptibly, the situation triggers Carrier to freak out worse than issue #1, and the team jettison into the Place Between Pages against their will. Or so it would seem. Before the team get their bearings, Drummer suspiciously takes off running! Additionally, Carrier seems to have transformed into a humanoid. Naturally, it manifests as a doe-eyed white woman with pretty grey hair, allegedly on the verge of self-destruction. Fortunately, Kate spends the issue walking the living ship through her odd panic attack. While comforting Carrier, Kate learns the Bleed is yet another pocket dimension not unlike the Batmen "narrative singularity" a few issues ago.

At the same time, Fox and Fox wind up exploring the singularity's fabricated town. In a way, out of print characters like Superman, Cave Carson, Richard Dragon, and more occupy the infinite bleed. Albeit, there is no conflict whatsoever and none of them can use any of their notable abilities. For some, the world is like heaven, but for others it feels like a cruel prison. In reality, the bleed is a graveyard for anything DC has cancelled or isn't using at the moment. For Lucius, despite totally ignoring the fourth wall breaking, this place feels like the long rest he has been hoping for ever since his stroke. For Drummer, it is another infuriating dead end to their mysterious goals.

Recommended If...

• You are a Wildstorm/Planetary enthusiast.
• You like self-aware, fourth wall breaking characters.
• Outsiders is your kind of mystery.

Overall

This was alright, but the actual Outsiders are taking a backseat to Wildstorm! What is abundantly clear is that this is DC's attempt at literally reviving Planetary. With Drummer's secret partially revealed, I can comfortably recommend this to any Wildstorm lover enjoying all the revivals around DC at the moment. The biggest flaw of this book is the uselessly colorful dialogue and narration. Nobody talks nor writes like that except other writers. Moreover, I believe Carey's art style is disappointingly inconsistent, but may not affect enjoyment at this stage. Lucius's portion is interesting and regrettably should have been a bigger part of the book sooner. Overall, this book has had its share of incomprehensible ups and downs, but this issue at least provides half of the answers.

Score: 6.5/10

DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purposes of this review