3 out of 5

Another indie book I’m gonna give up hope on getting a follow-up… since #1 came out in 2012.  It’s an intriguing beginning, with a rather mystery-heavy setting for the kind of day-in-the-life-of style in which Johnson draws, though discerning what’s happening feels slightly different from what you read versus some of the summary blurbs on the back cover.  The book is split into two halves, mostly discerned by a color shift – green wash over the first half, blue over the second – with the divide being the before and after of a strange event.  The event involves a monster, and a speechless boy named Tsu, and a car crash.  Beforehand Tsu draws the ire of schoolmate Jespers; afterward he draws the attention of a creepy monkey and his creepy servant Chuba.  This plotting weirdness is combined with a fluid, loose inking and lettering style and an interest in not wandering off the story path, which again makes the book sort of a nice balance between the occasionally forced “this means something” weirdness of indie books and the somewhat more straight entertainment fare you’d find in slightly less indie stuff like from Image or Dark Horse.  But at one issue that doesn’t explain all that much in a story that clearly needed more explanation, it’s hard to bump up the rating.  Still, we know how indie creators can be, so maybe five years from now Outliers #2 will come out and I can update this review.