The first few volumes of this held promise. There's definitely a story in here somewhere, but lately, it's seemed to simply devolve into a lot of scenes in abandoned buildings, the release of a possessed person, and a lot of cursing by a minister. Oh, and punching and kicking.

A lot of punching and kicking.

I'm sure Kirkman's taking it somewhere, but I just don't care enough about the destination anymore to keep reading. ( )

A whole lot of characters I don't care about move around for page after page doing nothing I care about. I really should give up on this, huh? ( )

It’s been awhile since I picked up the “Outcast” series. Almost exactly a year, as a matter of fact, and though it was awhile from the past volume I had high hopes that I would easily fall back into it. Especially since I had overall really quite enjoyed the previous collections, and like the variety and creativity that Kirkman has brought to what could have been a typical possession story. So after reminding myself where we left off in the last volume, I came back to Kyle, Anderson, and Sidney ready for more. But unfortunately, the bloom has kind of come off the rose for me when it comes to “Outcast”.

I am fully willing to admit that perhaps I let too much time pass between readings. A year is a very long time to leave a storyline hanging, especially one that moves at a slow and meticulous pace such as this one. But as I was reading through with the promise of ‘answers given’ and ‘secrets revealed’, I felt like I was once again just kind of waiting for an explanation that didn’t really come to fruition. One of the biggest complaints that people seem to have with this comic is the steadily parsed out pace that it takes, and up until now that hadn’t really bothered me. But I think that when it does move slow like this, you really do need to start giving people more to keep coming back for, be it answers, or explanations. We’re getting a lot more questions thrown at us instead. And implications of a conspiracy that seems to be far more in depth than we as readers could have ever imagined, but I was more frustrated by this revelation than compelled by it.

I will say that I did enjoy getting background on Sidney, our resident ‘demon’ and main antagonist. By getting this background, we did get a little insight into who these possessions can affect their hosts, sometimes in more positive ways than we may think. Sidney is by no means a good person, but we find out that before he started housing his ‘companion’ he was leading a very violent and destructive life. Once he was ‘possessed’ (if one can even call it that. We’re definitely moving away from Biblical thoughts of demonic possession), some of those more violent urges were, according to him, quelled. It definitely twists the thought that demonic possessions can only make a person worse; and it definitely makes the readers start to wonder just what is going on, and what kind of role ‘outcasts’ play in this world. There is a particular scene between him and Anderson that might be a hint as to what exactly Kyle is dealing with here, but it’s still wrapped in vagueness and secrecy.

The other significant storyline in this was that now Amber, Kyle’s daughter, may be in some sort of danger from the group that Sidney has formed. Now that we are past the ‘Kyle tried to kill her’ storyline, as Allison knows the truth of all that, I’m hoping that we’ll get a bit more from Kyle’s daughter, and that perhaps there are some shared abilities between him and her. I still contend that this series needs to give the women a bit more to do, so if we could give Amber and Allison more than just be held on a pedestal for Kyle to worry about, that would be great.

Also, not enough Megan and Mark. I wanted more than just a few pages of them, as I sitll find them to be some of the more compelling characters in this series.

My plan for “Outcast” going forward is to pick up the next volume ASAP and see if it can jumpstart my interest. As of now, I could see myself letting it fall to the wayside again because of how slow it continues to move, but my hope is that given where some things ended up in this volume, the next one will have some major moments in it. ( )