This Forgotten DC Team’s ‘00s Run Is Amazing (and It Needs More Attention)

DC Comics created the superteam as we know it. The Justice Society brought together the publisher’s most popular heroes, forming the basis for every team book that came after. Over the years, DC has continued to innovate the team comic, bringing readers teen teams like the Legion of Superheroes and the Teen Titans, villain teams like the Legion of Doom and the Rogues, magic teams like the Shadowpact and Justice League Dark, the various superhero families, and just about every other assemblage of metahumans you can imagine. Some teams have become legends, getting continually published for years, while other teams don’t have the same success and disappear, dusted off every few years for another try.

The Outsiders is a perfect example of this kind of team. They first appeared in the early ’80s. Batman had one of his spats with the Justice League and decided that he needed a team of his own, one that he chose and trained, that would listen to him. The first roster of the team combined Metamorpho, Katana, Black Lightning, Geo-Force, Looker, and Halo, fading away over the length of the ’80s. DC tried to bring back the team several times, always failing, and would take another chance with them in the early ’00s. This led to one of the most underrated team books of that era, one that deserves way more attention than it gets.

The Return of the Outsiders Was Part of the ’00s Rebuild of DC Comics

DC Comics went through an ’00s renaissance, one that was meant to turn the clock on the DC Universe back to the ’80s. There are numerous places where you could say this began, but Young Justice/Titans: Graduation Day could be the beginning. This story saw the two teams battle against a fully-powered Superman robot on the fritz because of the cyborg Indigo. Donna Troy was killed and the two teams decided to disband, with Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, and Beast Boy taking Superboy, Impulse, Wonder Girl, and Robin to form a new Teen Titans (get it? Like I said, ’80s). This left Nightwing and the older heroes without a name.

After the loss of Troy, Nightwing didn’t want a team of friends because he didn’t want to take the chance of losing anyone he cared about. So, like his mentor before him, he formed a new Outsiders, recruiting Arsenal (putting the lie to his not wanting friends hurt thing), Jade, Black Lightning’s daughter Thunder, a Metamorpho clone named Shift, Indigo, and Grace, a bruiser with a dark past. Writer Judd Winick was the man behind the group and DC decided to throw him a bone with the group.

DC had long been pushing the envelope when it came to what was in their comic. They had revolutionized the “mature readers” comic with Swamp Thing, which led to the legendary Vertigo line. In the early ’00s, the Comics Code Authority, a censorship body formed to make sure comics met certain standards for younger readers (actually to destroy EC Comics, which did gruesome horror and crime comics and outsold everyone in the ’50s), had lost its teeth because newsstands had mostly stopped carrying comics. DC allowed Outsiders (Vol. 3) to not go through Code approval, allowing Winick to go more mature.

The ’00s were the decade of edge, but Winick was able to use it intelligently. The violence was amped a bit and there were more sexual situations, including queer ones, with the team sleeping with each other constantly to put up with the stress of their missions. Nightwing pushed them hard and every member of the team was in some way damaged. It was fantastic and gave the book just the right tone. The book went to the gritty side of the DC Universe, battling enemies like Sabbac, the Fearsome Five, and many more. There was a whole story arc about sex trafficking, with an appearance from America’s Most Wanted‘s John Walsh. Winick was telling mature superhero stories and they still hold up today. This book could have been a disaster – the ’00s are known for being terribly edgy – but it sang.

Outsiders Was Never as Popular as It Should Have Been

Outsiders (Vol. 3) was a blast of energy at just the right of time. It took an old school team that was known for going their own way and being the strike team for a vigilante from one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and brought that into the 21st century. It was definitely part of the wave of re-Bronze Age-ification that was sweeping through DC at the time; in fact, it was almost certainly the beginning of that wave. However, even back then, it was never given the credit it deserved.

This was during the days of JSA, JLA, and Teen Titans (Vol. 3). Those are three of the most well-known teams in comics. The first and last of them were as hot as the sun because of writer Geoff Johns, who was on the rise, and JLA was in the middle of the awesome Joe Kelly run. Outsiders (Vol. 3) was the odd man out, so despite the fact that it was doing stuff that no other team book was doing, it never really got the recognition it deserved. It’s a fantastic series; eventually Batman took control of the team again and the book petered out as it just became the old Outsiders again, but for a time it was one of the most unique team books on the market.

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