The Outsiders Get Maymed [sic]

Batman and the Outsiders 13 - Pages 14-16
Katana lost Batman and the Outsiders are (of course) having trouble finding him. I mean, "you could hide an army out there" (spoiler: this is foreshadowing). How difficult is it for five superheroes to find a hallucinating and dying Batman swinging from rooftops?
Pretty darn hard, apparently. Even if three of them can fly and at least two of them can create bright spotlights if they choose to. Welcome to the Outsiders, ladies and gentlemen. I guess I'd have trouble too if the world kept lurching like a dingy caught in a perfect storm. Talk about extreme Dutch angles! But Black Lightning has a plan! It's called "square one".
Oh look, another of Morgan Jones' ordinary guys with a code name - Watcher One! Does that fancy 1984 cordless phone count as a power?
Brrr. I don't want to know what Watcher One was planning to do to the teenage member of the Outsiders. Keep it clean, Mike Barr! He won't get a chance of course, because Mayme is planning nothing short of TOTAL OBLITERATION. I hope he's got more than that Maymobile in his arsenal. Back to Black Lightning's own plan:
Ohhh, so they were looking to far from the incident's epicenter! What kind of canvassing strategy were they using exactly? Starting from city limits IN? Katana and Metamorpho are already at the lamp post, so they must already have been close to Crime Alley, right? And they didn't see Batman either. This is looking like another Outsider Fail. Speaking of Fail:
Oh wow. How are the Outsiders ever going to spot the Batman, a super-stealth expert dressed in black, no matter how poison-addled, when they failed to spot Mayme's army. I mean, they had to truck in those giant lights, right?
Only in superhero comics is heavy fire used to "soften up" the enemy.
Jones really is their archenemy. He's even preparing for specific members' abilities and weaknesses now. (Feel the shame of that.) Turns out, there's nothing Rex can turn into that will free him from Carbonite plastic. Batman needs to give him chemistry lessons. I suppose the reason we don't see any other Special Forces weapons is that Rex is the only Outsider who doesn't have to breathe. Is that underevaluating the other Outsiders, or evaluating them JUST RIGHT?
Rufus? Luther? Are those supposed to be cool code names? Not unless you're Rob Liefeld or Jim Lee creations. Please insert your own gas jokes as you read the sequence below.
How NOT to handle a gas attack: Stay low even though flying high would probably get better results. Don't try to disperse the gas by flying through it real fast or otherwise fanning it away with your powers. Don't free Metamorpho (looking at Geo-Force here) who could TURN into a giant fan. And whatever you do, don't help "the women" and instead leave them to their fates by getting out of the gas' range. Result:
Mouahaha, Mayme has won, and all he had to do was let other guys do all the work and take the credit. But is this IT for the Outsiders? Will he mayme them in their sleep? The answers tomorrow are sure to make the Outsiders look even worse!

Comments

Martin Gray said…
It sounds almost as if you admire this bad guy. Me, I'm anti-Mayme.

The Outsiders were never a favourite. I liked the soapy bits all right, but apart from Metamorpho and Black Lightning, I never liked the characters. And Mike Barr's villains were, well, not my cup of cocoa
Siskoid said…
Mayme is rubbish, which makes the Outsiders even more rubbish to lose to him.
Jeremy Patrick said…
"Mayme is rubbish"

Hey, even a Mayme has feelings!
Wriphe said…
I'm sure when Mike Barr wrote this, he wasn't thinking of an AUNTIE MAME joke. No, I take that back. I have no idea what Barr was thinking when he wrote any of this.

By the way, what exactly is an "Outsiders Fail"? An Outsiders Success is the same thing as a fail for almost any other group of heroes (except maybe the New Guardians). An Outsiders Fail must be something like the Great Chicago Fire of 1971.
Wriphe said…
Or 1871. Whichever.

(See. That typo was an example of an Outsiders Success.)
Siskoid said…
Your logic holds up.