No sooner has Batman's former sidekick, Jason Todd, put his past as the Red Hood behind him than he finds himself cornered by a pair of modern day outlaws: Green Arrow's rejected sidekick Arsenal, the damaged soldier of fortune, and the alien Starfire, a former prisoner of intergalactic war who won't be chained again. As a loner, Jason has absolutely no interest in this motley crew of outlaws. So what's he going to do when they choose the Red Hood as their leader?
Released August 1, 2012, from DC Comics, this volume collects Red Hood and the Outlaws 1-7.
My run through the New 52 volumes of Teen Titans had a crossover issue with this title. So, I decided to check it out.
Scott Lobdell writes this one with the same kind of rollercoaster energy as he did with the other book. Here, though, the cast is very tightly contained, and we're given a lot more background hints to the three leads. Again, we have familiar faces with Jason, Roy and Kory, with most of their past histories fairly in tact. There are a few tweaks to them with this new continuity, but they are mostly the characters we knew before just thrown together in a new scenario. And this scenario is what I would call "Dude Bro High Adventure".
What really helps to sell the whole thing is Kenneth Rocafort's artwork. Again, we have a book that looks like it would be right at home with other late 90's comics. But he also has done a great job grounding it. Plus, he has a knack of drawing young beautiful people really well.
Some criticize this run as being very sexists and appealing to some male fantasy trip. There are certainly elements here that would support both those claims. I suspect this title was meant to appeal to a certain comic buying demographic at the time which was predominantly male. Still, I am definitely willing to continue reading the run to see where it goes. It has potential to rise above that lowest denominator into something a lot more.
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