Outsiders

8 years ago - 31-year-old Bruce Wayne forms the Outsiders, who go into the nation of Markovia to fight Kobra. & save a kidnapped Lucius Fox. 43-year-old Dr. Helga Jace provides them with scientific support when Prince Brion becomes a founding member.
Membership: 31-year-old Bruce Wayne, 31-year-old Rex Mason, 37-year-old Jefferson Pierce, 24-year-old Brion Markov, 27-year-old Tatsu Yamashiro, 16-year-old Violet

7 years ago - Bruce Wayne is nearly destroyed when 39-year-old Jonathan Crane uses his newest fear toxin. He is only saved by the timely arrival of the Outsiders. Takeo Yamashiro uses the Helleater Odachi to summon the spirits of those trapped inside the Soultaker, including Maseo Yamashiro, forcing them to fight the Outsiders. When Bruce becomes the new leader of the Justice League he leaves the Outsiders. leaving their leadership to Brion Markov.
Membership: 32-year-old Rex Mason, 38-year-old Jefferson Pierce, 25-year-old Brion Markov, 28-year-old Tatsu Yamashiro, 17-year-old Violet

6 years ago - The Outsiders discover that 45-year-old Helga Jace has been harvesting metahuman DNA for her experiments. While trying to stop her, she triggers her hypnotic control of 26-year-old Brion Markov through his artificially enhanced Metagene. He fights the Outsiders to a standstill before 18-year-old Violet is able to fully disable his powers, freeing him from Jace's control. Jace is finally killed by 29-year-old Tatsu Yamashiro, & the Outsiders are disbanded.

3 years ago -When the Titans break up after Donna Troy's death, 22-year-old Roy Harper & 23-year-old Dick Grayson build a new Outsiders team. They stop 43-year-old Bito Wladon from leading a coup to take the throne of Modora. They stop the Fearsome Five from using stolen nukes.
Membership: 22-year-old Roy Harper, 23-year-old Dick Grayson, 36-year-old Rex Mason, 23-year-old Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, 23-year-old Grace Choi, Indigo

2 years ago - 23-year-old Koriand'r tries to follow 24-year-old Dick Grayson to the new Outsiders, but realizes that he has moved on, and departs back to Tamaran. Roy Harper becomes the team's new leader when Dick Grayson leaves to become a cop. Anissa Pierce & Jason Rusch join.
Membership: 23-year-old Roy Harper, 37-year-old Rex Mason, 24-year-old Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, 24-year-old Grace Choi, Indigo, 20-year-old Anissa Pierce & 17-year-old Jason Rusch

1 year ago - 18-year-old Jason Rusch leaves the Outsiders to join the Justice League, while Jason Blood is recruited by Roy Harper. The Outsiders join the battle against Mageddon.
Membership: 24-year-old Roy Harper, 38-year-old Rex Mason, 25-year-old Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, 25-year-old Grace Choi, Indigo, 21-year-old Anissa Pierce & Jason Blood

now - Indigo's original programming revolts against her & she attacks the Outsiders. She begs them to kill her but 39-year-old Rex Mason stops them, allowing her to rewrite her own programming, creating protocols to use in case she relapses.
Membership: 25-year-old Roy Harper, 39-year-old Rex Mason, 26-year-old Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, 26-year-old Grace Choi, Indigo, 22-year-old Anissa Pierce & Jason Blood

Noteworthy Teams

Original Team

Halo	Metamorpho

Other Members

Nightwing

FIrestorm

Modern Team

Jade

The Outsiders have always had an unfair uphill struggle to really find their place in the DC landscape. They're often defined as being the weirdos, the alternative to the big name heroes... but that's not really their niche. No, what the Outsiders really are is the journeyman team. The Justice League might be the real marquee players, the Titans are a family, the Doom Patrol are the ACTUALY weirdo outsiders.... the Outsiders are the folks that actually make the franchise happen, the folks that here to do the work. This creates a really interesting space for certain characters to thrive, because this means a good Outsiders story gets mixxed up in just what that work IS, and what it means to differnet people.

The Outsiders Comic History

Batman and the Outsiders debuted 1983, and was clearly part of a larger effort to expand the larger DC brand. Lots of work was being done in different corners of DC to mimic the runaway success of the New Teen Titans, and the name of the game was clearly team books. Batman is, of course, a whole cottage industry unto himself, so he was an obvious candidate to lead the team. He was joined by the two characters that had actually declined Justice League membership, Black Lightning and Metamorpho, as well as a small cadre of new characters. It fell to team creator Mike Barr to take what was clearly a team built from an editorial mandate and give it it's own voice and narrative identity.

Barr really outdid himself, because with a very bare bones concept, he created a cool book that managed to focus less on the trappings of the concept and more on the characters themselves, as they all worked as a team with seemingly nothing tying them together other than their desire to do some good.

After a few years, with DC undergoing massive changes in it's continuity throught the Crisis, Batman left the team, and they continued as just the Outsiders for some time. The series continued for a few years, ending in 1988... it was replaced by a new take on the Outsiders in 1993, again by Mike Barr. This is a cool series to read, featuring some new characters like Sebastian Faust, but it ultimately was also cancelled by 1995.

The concept of the Outsiders was hugely innovated in 2003, in the aftermath of the end of the Titans & Young Justice series and the formation of the Geoff John's Teen Titans, as writer Judd Winick took his own spin on a whole new lineup of characters creating an entirely new version of the Outsiders. A team built deliberately, using corporate backing, by Roy Harper, it managed to tap some of the ideas of the original team while giving it all an incredibly modern spin. Often dipping it's toes into some fairly sensational topics (it was the early 2000s, afterall), The book is by far the longest running Outsiders series. By it's end, Batman returned to the team and slowly reforged it back into the shape of the original lineup, and would later be followed by other verisons of the Outsiders that would continue to essentially be re-shuffling the original team in one format or another.

Our Outsiders Story

In the end, what we have is is two very clearly distinct versions of the Outsiders that exist almost completely seperate of each other; the original lineup, which is a team Batman obviously put together in a time when he seemed desperate to redefine himself even if he himself didn't really know what he was doing, and the new, modern team.

The Original Outsiders came about in a strange time in DC's evolution but they are nontheless a major pary of the canonical evolution of both Batman and of DC in general, but for our timeline we leaned very heavily into Winick's Outsiders team. I am a HUGE fan of Judd Winick; I think that he is a wildly under-appreciated creator with a deft talent for building compelling, original comic stories, and I really love the group he put together and what he was able to do with it.

In the comic, over time we learn that the private corporate interests that helped fund the team were in fact put together by Batman. We really prefer the idea that this whole thing was Roy's baby start to finish; that he goes out and gets private funding, that he seeks out the big underground bomb-shelter complex as their base, that he recruits the members (who get paychecks). The idea that he actually did the legwork and has the wherewithal to make it happen really speaks to just how capable a hero he's become.

The Future of The Outsiders

Just like in the comics, Our version of the Outsiders have seen a few changes in their membership. Starfire joined them briefly, but she quickly leaves when it's clear that her relationship with Dick has changed. Nightwing himself soon moves on as well, both to focus on his own new career as an actual cop in Bludhaven, and also as an endorsement to Roy, letting him know that he has it covered.

We've also added a few new members to their lineup that are unique to our story, both of them ironically with the same first name. Jason Rusch joins them as he is first learning how to be Firestorm, before he goes on to focus on the Justice League... and more recently, Roy recruits Jason Blood. The intention here is that this is meant to be a long-serving team that will continue to evolve... although we just happen to REALLY love them just as they are right now.

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