Justice League of America #58 & Batman and the Outsiders #40

Two more DC books to take a look at, one of the last issues of JLA I plan on picking up(sorry, as long as Chairman Johns is writing that series, I'm not reading it!) before the DC reboot. The other comic is the last issue of the Outsiders, or as the cover claims, “Batman and the Outsiders” even though this series dropped the “Batman” portion of the name from the title months ago... *sigh* Let's just get on with it...

Justice League of America #58:

Summary: Eclipso has managed to split the moon in two, creating widespread chaos on the Earth. In order to fix this, the JLA has to do two things, free the Shade from Eclipso's grasp, and then defeat Eclipso himself. To that end, Batman(Dick Grayson for this issue) decides to fire a bullet containing the Atom and Blue Starman into the Shade's head with the hope being the Atom can figure out a way to free the Shade from Eclipso's mental thrall. While the Atom and Blue Starman are splashing around in the Shade's gray matter, Saint Walker(who I hate...) tells the JLA that Donna Troy has the best shot at defeating Eclipso because her life really sucks or something. I didn't really get it because I hate Saint Walker and my mind starts wandering when he starts talking. But that seems to be the gist of it. So the JLA attack Eclipso's forces, pretending their mission was to free Zauriel, when in actuality it was to get Donna close enough to fight Eclipso. Donna engages Eclipso in battle, and as luck would have it, this issue ends with Eclipso apparently killing Donna... Again...

Thoughts: Eh. With the exception of Saint Walker's inclusion here, I had no real complaints. The JLA very clearly outlined their plan and enacted it, while Eclipso's forces fought to defend their master. It was all pretty straightforward. No problems here, so we'll simply move on.

Score: 7 out of 10.Donna's dead? Is it that time of year already?!


Batman and the Outsiders #40:

Summary: This issue gets started with Batman(Bruce Wayne here) thinking back to the MANY versions of the Outsiders as he heads to Markovia to deal with the mess the Outsiders have become. Upon arriving in Geo-Force's throne room, Bats finds the fourteen members of the Outsiders arguing about... whatever the hell has been going on here these past few issues. Bats tells them enough was enough and that they were officially done fighting. Bats puts out the olive branch and tries to get Geo-Force to rejoin the team, but he refuses Batman's advances and flies away from the castle. With that, Bats loads the other Outsiders on to his plane and flies back to the States, while Geo-Force watches over his war-ravaged country, realizing that he was an outsider amongst Outsiders.

Thoughts: You know, this must be the most confused comic series in the history of comic books... I mean the title switches back and forth from “Batman and the Outsiders” to “The Outsiders” so much it's crazy! But enough about all that, let's get to this comic. This comic wasn't bad, probably because the majority of it was Bats thinking back on the various Outsiders teams in big splash pages. Even somebody as talentless as Dan Didio couldn't mess THAT up. Sure there's some terrible dialogue here and there(basically anytime Freight Train opens his mouth), but like I said, it was written by Didio, so that's no surprise. The bottom line here is that I'm not sad that this is the final issue of this series. It had practically no direction from the start(they should have just left Judd Winick's version of the team alone), and once Didio decided he'd name himself the writer, you knew things weren't going to end well... So long, Outsiders, better luck on the other side of the DC reboot.

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.Blah, blah, blah.