Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Outsiders

H-A-! I am JIGSAW, and MAN am I ever DIS-TUR-BING! I was one of Harvey's attempts to cash in on the super-hero craze that followed the Batman TV show, and Good Lord, was that a weird group. There was me - the man whose limbs were barely attached - and Bee-Man and his giant bees, and Magicman who would stop fighting crime in the middle of a battle to teach magic tricks ... there were more, but kids your age probably wouldn't know them. Every now and again, you can catch them hanging out at Boat Shows, still trying to buddy up to Adam West or peek down Elvira's cleavage It's sad. Personally, I'm glad I was able to break into gay porn.

Alright, let's check out this month's Gone & Forgotten...

Nope, not the one with Batman and Metamorpho and Black Lightning and everybody ... neither is it Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. Hell, it's not even Matt Dillon or that weird, white, bumpy thing Alfred Pennyworth changed into for those coupla issues of Batman back in the Fifties. Nooo, it's ... something else altogether.

First Issue Special was DC's 1970's answer to Showcase, the rotating feature book of the Sixties which introduced Green Lantern and Flash and a passel of other DC staples. I don't think ANY First Issue Special alumni made it past their feature appearance, least of all this messy group.

Outsiders comes from the same folks who brought you Prez, Joe Simon and Jerry Grandetti, though what they were trying to accomplish in the way of social commentary - if anything - is vague at best.

The cover of the book may be my favorite part, as it was apparently handed to Ernie Colon WITHOUT giving him any reference to the characters appearing inside the book. Besides Doctor Goodie's hair going cropped and platinum blonde, the silhouettes for the Outsiders represent five figures we don't even come CLOSE to seeing inside the book.

The story itself is told recursively -- it begins at the denouement, then proceeds to the climax and resolution, THEN goes back and gives us a prelude (complete with expositionary flashback) and catches right back up with the denouement. This is handy, inasmuch as since the story loops itself, it's a closed system and implies that IT'LL NEVER BE CONTINUED IN ANY FASHION ANYWHERE EVER! YAY!

The premise goes something like this: Doctor Goodie, the world's greatest ... doctor. Doctor of what, I dunno. Anyway, he's asked to accompany an astronaut on an important trip into deep space, to identify the source of myterious lasers which can cure cancer. I don't write this stuff, folks.

Anyway, the space vessel crashes, the aliens save Doctor Goodie and perform reconstructive surgery on him ... but since they've never seen a human being, monitored the plentiful television broadcasts bouncing around space, caught Voyager's act or have advanced enough technology to do what reconstructive anatomists do every day on good, old, primitive backwards Earth ... they make him look like a guy from that one Twilight Zone episode where the pretty
lady goes through plastic surgery to look like a frog person. You remember that one, right? Right.

So, to get over his terrible disfigurement, Goodie wears a plastic mask and performs amazing surgery by day (with the aid of the
alien-implanted cybernetic nervous system), and by night, removes his mask and joins his adopted menagerie of a family as ... Doctor Scary.

It's somewhere between the X-Men and Big Daddy Roth.

We're introduced to the gang by a "theme song" in the splash panel, "Hang in there Billy, it's us, it's us...we're the Outsiders!Lizard Johnny, the Amazing Ronnie, Hairy Larry, Ol' Doc Scary & Mighty Mary" Plus Harry Carey and Cheri O'Teri.

Billy, by the way, is an orphaned freak with a tremendously tough and huge head. I would be too, but Mom and Dad are alive and kicking to this day.

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One of the great injustices of the early days of Gone&Forgotten was that the Fast Willie Jackson article - one of the favorites, according to the survey results so far - was posted without any graphics In order to better illustrate this fine document, we bring you ... The Fast Willie Jackson Chronicles:

• Jamar and Jo-Jo trade the infamous banter regarding the existence of a mythical currency that white men call "A five-dollar bill."

• "The fat on your head." that sounds grotesque.

• It's just lately that I found out black is beautiful.

• Jabar in a full-page strip - "The One and Only." What exactly is the message of this book again?

• Can you dig it, disembodied head of the white kid who doesn't appear in the book?