Broken Frontier

When a mysterious event rocked India fifty years ago, there was only one survivor: Michael Desai. Seen to the world as the Outsider, he has gone from tragic birth to triumphant adulthood. When Cyborg, the world's greatest hero, comes asking for help, the Outsider is more than willing to aid in saving the world… as long as he doesn't get his suit dirty, and Batman's on board. He may not have time to save the world as is own world comes crumbling down around him; someone wants the Outsider dead.

The Outsider is one of the many three-issue miniseries spinning out of Flashpoint, focusing on its characters. Some of these books, such as Lois Lane and the Resistance, focus on alternative versions of characters we know, while Kid Flash focuses on one we are familiar with. The Outsider, on the other hand, focuses on a character that appears to not have existed outside of this timeline, but a name that's been used before. Batman's butler Alfred used the title in the Silver Age, and Batman and Nightwing have each lead a team of Outsiders.

Split between showing his side of the conversation in Flashpoint #1 and a battle with a trio of intruders, Robinson successfully bandies the two parts of the story back and forth. Javi Fernandez does a decent job that the Hories only help with. Kevin Nowlan's cover seems to perfectly echo an older era; it is only one or two steps away from having the DC checkerboard logo and bombastic "This is it! The Outsider takes them all on!" attention-grabbing notices of a story not in the book.

Much of the fun that comes from alternate timeline stories is seeing what happened to our favorite characters. Michael Holt, soon to be the star of his own book for the first time, is still Mr. Terrific, but this time his wife (dead in the main timeline) joins him as Mrs. Terrific. Rather forgotten Global Guardian, the Rising Sun, having last notably appeared as a critic of the Super Young Team, even has his role in the issue. All of their roles combined equate to nothing more than chess pieces moving the plot along. As the characters exhibit no real traits to their main version beyond superpowers (and in the case of Mrs. Terrific, no personality traits were previously established), these could have been any other character that Geoff Johns isn't using primarily in the main series. A namedrop to the previous Outsider, Alfred Pennyworth, rounds out the role the main DC Universe has in this modified timeline.

One character who's yet to show up in the Flashpoint timeline is Lex Luthor, but he may well be a driving force behind Project Superman. If not, then the Outsider could easily fill his role, as at times he appears to be a direct parallel to the character. Played much like the 1990s businessman Luthor that Superman: The Animated Series perfected, Michael Desai is always dressed sharp, always multitasking, and at face value, is a bald businessman who may not exactly be a hero or a villain. Thinking one or two steps ahead of his contemporaries, he shows off his smarts by stepping in and out of holographic discussions (as seen in Flashpoint #1) while running his own world.

Robinson has introduced us to a character that works well in this universe, but could be too similar to Lex Luthor in another world. Still, he's an entertaining character, and the mystery of his role in Flashpoint is interesting enough to follow. Give the book a shot if you're a fan of superheroics that avoid spandex for a nicely pressed suit.