Father, it's not time to make a change: Graeme looks at super-sons from 8/1.

Time for a very quick review at the end of a very long day, which also comes at the end of a very long week...

OUTSIDERS: FIVE OF A KIND - NIGHTWING/BOOMERANG #1: Or, as the cover has it, "Nightwing and Captain Boomerang Jr." When you put it like that, don't you feel sorry for poor Boomerang? I mean, it's not like "Captain Boomerang" isn't a pretty embarrassing name to begin with, but adding "Jr." to it? Seriously, DC Logo Designer, that's just cold. Even "Kid Boomerang" would've sounded better. "Boomerang Boy." "Boomerang Lad." "Private Boomerang." Any of those are better than Captain Boomerang Jr., people.

You'll be happy to know that the comic itself doesn't live up to the promise of that title; you don't have the two characters hanging out in a bar, drinking and dealing with their father issues or anything like that (To be fair, it comes close. Poor Boomerang, Jr. keeps wondering if Batman hates him for that whole "My dad killed your sidekick's dad" thing, and yet somehow even that isn't interesting. You know, the more I think about it, the more Captain Boomerang Jr. sucks); instead, we have a generic team-up adventure set-up by Batman in the most contrived fashion ever: "I want to build a team, but in order to decide who I love most, you will compete for my affections!" It all goes down pretty much as you'd expect, and with the lack of surprise comes a lack of interest and attachment. In fact, the most interesting thing about the comic comes in the two-page back-up where Tony Bedard, writer of the upcoming Batman and The Outsiders book but not writer of the main story of this issue, more or less throws away everything that comes before in order to have the line-up he wants after all. It's a fun and unsettling moment when you really get the feeling that you've wasted part of your life reading everything that came before. I believe the official way we put it here is Crap, indeed.

Tomorrow: Something I liked a lot.