Outsiders vs. Force of July Round 1

Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 - Pages 12-14
Let the 5-on-5 evenly-matched battle between two sucky supergroups begin! In the lame corner: The Outsiders sans Batman! In the forgettable corner: The Force of July! ...FIGHT!

Major Victory opens with a racist uppercut at Black Lightning's ego! Ouch! That's gonna sting the perfectly non-racist Conservatives in the audience! And Amanda Waller let this guy into her Suicide Squad later? Sadly, BL doesn't get a chance to teach this jerk a lesson because Geo-Force somehow correctly intuits that Major Victory's powers must include super-strength like his. Not that it helps.

See, the smart thing to do would have been to blast Victory from afar instead of charging at the unarmed obvious super-soldier. Just why Victory thinks it "figures" that GF would be the only one with any guts is a mystery as dark and dim as Mike Barr's dialoguing skills. Shouldn't the most obvious commie (from the accent) be the most craven? Anyway... Halo vs. Lady Liberty!

How easy would it have been for Halo to fly out of there? About as easy - and yet impossible to do - as keep the story coherent. If you'll remember, Eric Blairman basically told his team the Outsiders were dangerous because half of them had "foreign origins" of some kind. You can't trust non-Americans because they are by definition, unamerican! Except, Lady Liberty is French. And Mayflower is British:

That's the accent Barr is angling for with this "mum" business.  So we have 40% of a superpatriot team called the Force of July being foreigners. YES, the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France and SURE, the Mayflower came over from England, but that just doesn't work with the whole McCarthyism, American Imperialism, xenophobic thing you're going for, Mr. Barr! (And please, can someone remind Katana she's got big honking knives in her hands and grass cuts easily?) Ok, let's wind this down with Black Lightning following Geo-Force's lead and letting Silent Majority get close to him without firing off a single electrical bolt.

You know what really really REALLY bugs me? It's that the Outsiders call Halo "Gaby" and the Force of July call Silent Majority "Gabby". That's gonna get confusing. Hey, Sparkler, you gonna help or was your take-down of Metamorpho enough for you?

Oh man, Major Victory's lines are doomed to always be gibberish, aren't they? How does "permanent" play off anything in the previous sentence? And was Sparkler's discovery and ownage of Metamorpho really an accident? Over that whole estate, he just happened to sparkle through the invisible Outsider? What are the odds? Anyway, what's he shouting about? All the Outsiders are down already, and encouraging team mates and making sure the audience knows everyone's code names is about all that's left to do!  I guess he's asking the teenage sidekick in the team to kill unconscious Outsiders. With fireworks. But Blairman doesn't want that:

No threat to Project Orwell, eh? That's not what your slideshow said, Mr. Blairman. Even if you're correct in thinking only the Batman matters. Still, they ARE superhumans you're leaving on your estate in the hands of normal humans.

Why does Blairman have a kid sister instead of some employee? Because it makes him a Big Brother! Haw! And truly, the Force of July is a defense expenditure well worth it, because it allowed for the capture of the Outsiders. Wait. Did someone think of tying the Outsiders up before they left?

Oops! Rex's excuses would sound a lot better if Major Victory hadn't been planning on murdering the lot of them.

 Now they have to deal with army men on less than full hit points.

Halo to the rescue, and hey, look-outs, finally. The Outsiders are learning at least. Now to break down every door in the mansion until you find a giant ipad.

So ANOTHER new power for Black Lightning, one he learned from... Dr. Jace?! Though destined (some would say doomed) to become the Outsiders' scientific adviser/Manhunter agent eventually, she hasn't exactly been around since the very first story in Markovia. Just how much contact did she have with Black Lightning at Terra's funeral?

If that plan doesn't involve calling in the Justice League, BL, you've failed.

Next: Black Lightning fails!