By Zack Quaintance — Outlawed #1 is billed by publisher Marvel Comics as “an event one-shot.” It’s a big comic, one that sets up a shared storyline slated to run in April through two of Marvel’s existing teen comics — The Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales Spider-Man — while setting up the launch of two more — New Warriors, and Power Pack … both of which are five issues mini-series — and the re-launch of Champions. 

While there are some twists in the execution, the presence and purpose of this story was long ago made clear by Might Marvel Marketing Machine — the new status quo for the teen heroes is that the U.S. government has created and passed a new law that outlaws them. It, effectively, makes a declaration that the teen heroes should not be active in (or perhaps even actively concerned with) the direction, safety, and general fate of the world. Upon learning of this storyline, I supposed it was all to be played very much as a commentary for current events, in the wake of many politicians (generally on the right) mocking, demeaning, dismissing, denigrating teen activism, from the Parkland survivors to Greta Thunberg. 

And this comic is definitely that. Which is great. Marvel has effectively been using its new generation of teen heroes as more direct filters through which to tell stories about the state of the world, more direct than established heroes anyway. And it’s a smart move. There was a point in the 2010s, right after writer Jonathan Hickman ended the Marvel Universe (sort of...but not really...it was a whole thing), that the publisher could have swapped some of its older heroes out for the next generation, specifically thinking here of having Miles Morales replace Peter Parker as the Spider-Man...but it looked right at that, blinked, and turned away. This sort of left the young heroes with less to do, clear as it was that many of them (indeed, the most popular among them) would always be in someone’s shadow. The reorienting to a team that could take on the currentest of all current events was a smart move, and I was reminded of that while reading Outlawed.

Meaning, I like this new idea, this pitting of the young heroes against staid government structures that don’t trust them to have a credible understanding of the world, much less anything of substance to contribute. It works, and I’m looking forward to reading the titles it will soon inform.

That said, this comic as an independent entity was a little over-blown, a little bloated, and a little stilted. It had a lot of narrative objectives to achieve, a lot of places to put into place to enable the new Outlawed status quo that is its entire reason for existing. It’s never great when you can so clearly feel the needs of wider editorial, and this kind of takes away from the drama of the individual one-shot, making it closer to watching something get setup than any kind of satisfying narrative on its own. The closest the script comes to doing this is putting Viv Vision in grave danger, but blowing the superhero robot up is a trick we’ve seen so many times that it’s become an in-joke with Red Tornado over at DC. 

That said, it’s very effective at enticing readers to continue on with the young hero books they were already reading and to maybe even add a few new ones to the pile. I’ll definitely be reading Champions (so blown away was I by writer Eve Ewing’s work on Ironheart last year), and continuing with Kamala and Miles in their respective titles. 

Overall: This comic does a really effective job at setting up a new status quo for Marvel’s teen superheroes, but at the same time it suffers a bit because so many pieces are getting forced into place. Well worth a read, however, if you’re interested in any of Marvel’s teen books. 6.5/10

Outlawed #1
Writer: Eve L. Ewing
Artist: Kim Jacinto
Colorist: Espen Grundetjern
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99
Solicit: EXPLODING FROM THE PAGES OF INCOMING!
In the wake of a devastating tragedy, the United States passes a law that will shake the Marvel Universe to its core. The world has had enough of teen heroes. The crackdown has begun. And the lives of Marvel's next generation will never be the same again. EVE L. EWING and KIM JACINTO launch a new era in this game-changing event one-shot that will send shockwaves across the Marvel Universe! You won't want to miss this one!

Read more great comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.