Not picking Up the Next Issue
This wasn't an entirely terrible issue but its not one of the better tie-ins. Michael Desai is The Outsider but the issue is padded with mindless action, cliched backstory, and lack of story.
We open to the birth of Michael Desai. His mother dies in pregnancy and his father disowns him. However it doesn't matter because his powers cause a nuclear fallout that destroys a massive part of India. He runs away from his orphanage later on. So he has a tragic backstory but it really doesn't define him. That being said, the character is interesting and cool addition to the Flashpoint universe, however this issue doesn't make him anymore interesting since his debut in Flashpoint, offer more to the main series, or give me a servicible reason to pick up the rest of the series.
My main problem is Robinson's trademark slaughter. In order to establish a character as powerful, he has a slew of lesser characters killed. He did it with Mist who killed Justice League Mist and he did it with Prometheus with The Global Guardians and Bloodpack. Here he kills Mr. Terrific, Mrs. Terrific, and Rising Sun. And they die in that order. It's just terrible that the DC Universe's 3rd smartest man is killed so quickly and brashly, even if it's an alternate version. He later kills off Mrs. Terrific and Rising Sun, new and obscure characters. I doubt anyone has any real emotional connection to them, so to have them anchor the dramatic weight to the siege was a poor choice. The other Flashpoint titles have killed off characters without much thought but there's a difference to how they handle it. In Grodd of War, Catman is framed and mercilessly killed off to showcase the cruelty of the suicidal Grodd and also to prolong the attempts to take his life, and there's not much Catman could do about it. In The Outsider, these characters are killed off in uncreative and pointless ways.
To sum up the issue, it was a dramatic account of his birth, pages of The Outsider's communication from Flashpoint (direct lines with very little new material), and then The Outsider snobbishly killing 3rd string heroes. The hook of a mysterious threat trying to kill him is so uninteresting and probably spoiled if you see the solicits for the cover of issue 3. I have to disagree with the other reviewers. There is no mystery, just a lack of details. His powers aren't defined and the ones that are shown, aren't intriguing enough to leave them that way. And for that reason I can't find a reason to pick up the next issue. The Outsider comes off as more of a caricature than character. When his suit is ruined and when he demands tea after killing his opponents, it doesn't read as un-cliched but quirks for the sake of identifying him.
Javi Fernandez isn't bad but there's nothing really dynamic about the art and it comes off messy and a bit rushed. The cover by Kevin Nowlan, while misleading, its quite dynamic and sharp and really captures the refined character. It's probably the best part of the issue.
