I don’t want to be mean, and I don’t want to speculate about editorial decisions when I have no information. But this one-shot is so poorly produced that my first thought was that a higher-up at DC wanted the Outsiders book canceled.

Part of the problem is this assassination-spree subplot, which doesn’t really work in any of the books that used it (The Batgirl one-shot is awesome precisely because it doesn’t really care about that story). I don’t know why I should care about that story, and this book doesn’t help me much in that area. The other Road Home books at least work some good dialogue into the difficult plot, but this one doesn’t even manage that: when Jack Ryder quoted Pontius Pilate in his conversation with Vicki Vale I groaned aloud, and the book doesn’t improve from there.

And the art … again, I don’t want to be mean, but it’s hard to sugarcoat it. It’s messy. Jack Ryder looks basically the same as Bruce Wayne, and either of them could double for Dick Grayson if he were in the book. The fight between Bruce and the Outsiders is dull; Bruce vs. Katana in particular looks more like posed models than superhumans fighting. Good action art is especially important with characters who are not on DC’s A-list, where the readers might need a little convincing in their awesomeness. This book does not deliver.

I don’t recommend this, and there is nothing here to interest me in reading about the Outsiders now, in past trades, or in the near future.