I Think Sabbac Hit Winick With Sloth
The Good: Winick writes some excellent dialogue, and some of the comedy shines really bright in this issue.
Of all of the original Outsiders to bring in, Katana was probably the best choice for this team. Her status quo works very well for this story, and her general M.O. and attitude fit great with the team in general.
Sabbac's new 'Seven Deadly Sins' power has some interesting uses. He exerts it in some pretty creative and unexpected ways, making him an interesting opponent.
I really like Katana's new costume here. It pays tribute to her Japanese heritage, but is nice and minimalist in design. It's elegantly understated, whoever designed her new costume should've taken a page from this book.
Matthew Clark once again delivers fantastically. He does an excellent job with the action sequences, but again, where he does his best job is on the phenomenal subtleties of facial expressions. He and Winick seem to have such a perfect synch.
The Bad: My only complaint about Clark's art is that the powered up Sabbac looks weird. His proportions are odd in a bad way, his face is all stretched oddly, and his beard makes him look like a stereotypical wise old asian.
As much as I like Katana's new costume, Winicj didn't write her all that well. A lot of her dialogue felt really forced, and her personality was very flat.
Considering what Katana did, I thought Sabbac had given her Pride, not Envy. Envy makes things a little simpler and more shallow, Pride would've had more depth and impact to it.
The end of this arc is a bit of a downer. After some positively HUGE things last issue, they're nearly all resolved so quickly ad easily. It's like Winick pumped up a huge balloon, but just let all the air fizzle out.
And the characters' reactions to the return of Donna Troy were a bit mellow. None of them seemed to have 'known' for a fact that se was back, but nobody seemed particularly surprised.
In Conclusion: 3.5/5
This issue was chock full of missed potential. There were a lot of excellent things that didn't end up going anywhere. The writing still made things very entertaining, but the overall presentation left A LOT to be desired.