Outside the Norm
The Good: I love the idea of The White Casebook.
It keeps up with the established continuity and even moves the story along some. Looker arrives in Markovia. Also The Insider arrives here continuing the story from Road Home: Red Robin.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool as usual. Katana hears the rumor someone's trying to assassinate Geo-Force and when civilians overhear her interrogating thugs, decides to take the matter into his own hands.
Some really nice teamwork action. Geo-Force's Outsiders do function almost like a well oiled machine.
I did like how the Outsiders DIDN'T pass his White Casebook 'test.' Thus showing that not every Road Home is going to end with everyone proving to Bruce they are capable. Some are not.
Some excellent possible setup for the future of the Outsiders.
The Bad: The art was really ugly. A lot of the characters just looked out of proportion and badly drawn.
The writing was really off as well. Geo-Force was acting fairly out of character for how he's been lately and a lot of the dialogue was really shitty. In fact something Katana said blatantly defied continuity. "There were rumors you were... gone." What? Katana KNEW Bruce was 'dead.' That was THE VERY REASON ALFRED REFORMED THE OUTSIDERS. UNDER BRUCE'S POSTHUMOUS ORDERS.
Where the hell was Eradicator this whole time? No acknowledgement of him.
What about the other half of the Outsiders? The one ALFRED HAS BEEN IN CONTACT WITH? Does he not feel the need to check them out?
The place in continuity is awkward. It has to take place after Outsiders #33, but in a way that doesn't seem possible. I guess I have to wait for #34.
Seriously? You have a connecting cover image to span 8 issues and you come up with this? Each character in some fairly normal pose with a bunch of bats and some watercolor in the background? HUGE WASTE OF CONNECTING COVER IMAGE.
In Conclusion: 2.5/5
If you're a die-hard Outsiders fan, chances are you're going to get this no matter what. Same if you're going to collect all of The Road Home. But honestly, this issue wasn't very good. What it did for The Road home was really good, but all it did for Outsiders was mull about and suck. The writing was pretty crappy and continuously contradicted the current Outsiders title. Many things were left ou and other things were just done wrong. The art also left a lot to be desired. The action was well drawn, but the characters all looked like crap. If you have to pick one Road Home to skip, this would be it. All you need to know from it if you're following Outsiders is that this is when Looker reunited with Geo-Force's team in Markovia, which you already knew was going to happen and will probably be re-visited next issue of Outsiders. Granted, it's not completely awful, there is a few nice things, but overall it's completely forgettable and a huge letdown.
