Nearing the end of the series, Lanzing and Kelly decide to tie all their loose story threads into a bow. Instead of the seemingly random episodic format of the series, Outsiders finally frames its finale on the big picture. Just as soon as the team gets back together, Outsiders #10 puts them odds for the future of the universe. Let's attempt to explain the penultimate chapter below!

Deep Disrespect To The Laws Of Reality

Outsiders is complex but not intricate. From the beginning, Outsiders copies and pastes Planetary into the modern DC universe. Much like any monster-of-the-week style sci-fi series, each issue focuses on the study of various multiversal anomalies for the team to confront. However, this is all just a front for Jakita Wagner posing as her teammate nobody knew the name of in the first place to change the universal narrative. Naturally this upsets her teammates, and they disband for two and a half issues. Still, during that time they encounter two different, extremely meta artifacts shaped like guns they add to the team arsenal. Yet, despite avoiding firing the Chekov's gun and destroying the universe last issue, Jakita spends much of this issue trying to shoot it anyway.

Sadly, Jakita chooses to embrace a harsh heel turn and uses The Carrier to combine the last two artifacts without telling the Outsiders. As a reminder, the cannon is able to destroy every universe in a system or just one. Although, it isn't clear how the curse of the Hex Gun applies apart from being an easier trigger to fire. Nevertheless, Jakita sadistically decides to use Noctuna's immaculate baby from issue #5 as ammunition. Diminishing the seriousness of infanticide, Jakita reasons that the child was always "nothing" in the form of a baby. With every piece of her weapon together, Jakita seeks to "shoot the snowflake" and destroy the cosmic library to bring her reality back. Worse of all, by the time the Outsiders find out, the weapon is halfway complete!

Be A Shame If Somebody...

Of course, Lanzing and Kelly also shoehorn Jinny Hex and the other Century Babies from the book. This includes the Kraken child from issue #2, Jenny Crisis from #4, Jinny Hex from #8, and a random panel of The Final Knight in #3. Although sticking with the tv series style writing the book began with, none of the returning "guest characters" feel organic. They have nothing in common other than appearing in previous issues of the series. It is hard to believe the Outsiders would call a group of random folk they met over the Justice League or Bat-Family at the very least. Under the premise that they were all Century Babies, I would've defended this choice to involve them. It would make sense that Carrier would only transport familiar beings, but in that case Jinny is a loophole.

One highlight of the issue is the scale of the action. In spite of the mostly stiff gestures, Robert Carey renders out cinematic effect sequences, creative paneling, and detailed backdrops. Particularly, the look of the Carrier spacecraft and it's moody machinery is sci-fi gold. In contrast, the poorly designed facial expressions are undeniably the weaker elements. Especially the butt ugly baby. On the subject of weak elements, if you're writing them like an action film, don't point out that they talk like one. The practice of writing badly to call out bad writing isn't the best strategy. Because the story itself is extremely meta and esoteric, the best thing to do is to rely on honesty. That said, it is hard to know what this writing duo is saying about Luke Fox and his beliefs. Although, Ousiders #9 supposedly justifies the implication that Jakita influences Luke to become more passive.

Recommended If...

• You like Planetary.
• You miss WildStorm Comics.
• Stylized storytelling and meta commentary doesn't bother you.

Overall

The overall feeling about this title is that is can't be over soon enough. There is such a wide range in quality of writing and artwork throughout the series that makes it feel inconsistent. Lanzing and Kelly's use of previous characters feels transparently like an unnatural wrap up to the series. Moreover, Jakita breaking the team up again for a second twist betrayal feels like the same twist, but with a "How about now?" Rather, Drummer's heel turn feels like the wrong kind of escalation for her character. I thoroughly enjoyed the action of this issue, but none of it really makes much sense.  Ideally, the penultimate chapter is supposedly a culmination of the ideas and themes introduced in the series, but this feels like improv.

Score: 5/10