Art By: RB Silva, Cory Smith
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 20, 2014
Thank You, But Our Princess Is ON A MURDER RAMPAGE!
Last issue of Red Hood and The Outlaws was a Starfire heavy issue, dealing with a bit of her back story, like how she apparently ran an intergalactic underground railroad, freeing slaves across the galaxy. Once we got out of flashback territory we jumped to Abu Dhabi, where we found out that apparently all the scum of the universe hang out in human disguises and Starfire is looking for blood. Luckily she came across one of her old torturers, so the whole blood thing might work out. Oh and Arsenal and Red Hod got their asses handed to them by Man-Bat, but that really didn't do anything for the story, except make me giggle. Let's check out where Starfire's rampages take her this month.
Explain It!:
Like I said in the recap, Starfire has come across her once torturer and before she kills him violently, she needs him to tell her where to find his once overlord. You know the slave master and all that. The little piggy squeals and Starfire is off to Malibu to seek her revenge. Really you think she would of done this a long time ago, with all the hurt it holds over it.
Now we'll jump to SHADE headquarters, "The Ant Farm", where all that happens is Arsenal shows us his tech skills by tracking where Starfire is and utter confusion for the first couple of times I read this page. Look at this.
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| SO YEAH, THIS IS JASON AND I'M GREAT WITH THAT |
But then we look at the next panel and we're supposed to realize that this is Jason Todd
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| I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT AT FIRST |
Well this colossal fuck up aside, Red Hood and Arsenal are going to talk Starfire down before she hurts anyone else.
Starfire finds her once slave master and he's an old man now that's settled on Earth and has a family and even a granddaughter. He realizes all the wrongs he's done in his life and only asks that Starfire not hurt his family because they never did anything wrong. Starfire agrees and the two step outside so that she can brutally kill him and with it free herself of her past. It was also around this time where I don't know what the penciler or letterer was thinking because we're given a caption box at the top left hand corner of the page, even though it was meant to follow dialogue that was at the bottom right hand corner of the page. Yeah this is some nit picky shit, but if I read a comic and can't understand it, then what's the point? I'll put the bitching on hold for a little while as I try to get through this story.
Before Starfire can kill her former captor, Red Hood and Arsenal show up and talk her down by saying things like "He's not worth it, don't let him control you now as he once controlled you, you're better than this, etc, etc." Starfire says she's let him live, but she'll probably never forgive Red Hood for it and she flies off. But even though Kori spared his life, the former slave master feels differently and grabs one of Arsenal's exploding arrows and blows his own head off.
In the end Starfire goes back to the Avery Coast (Outlaw HQ) and unlocks a safe and pulls out some sort of orange liquid and on the final page she's laying on the beach in a white dress and........... Yeah I really don't know what's going on here. Did Starfire just kill herself? Is this orange liquid something integral to the Outlaw's mythology, that I somehow completely forgot about? I just really don't know and for this month I simply give up. This issue is awful.
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| SHE COULD JUST BE DRUNK....... I DON'T KNOW!! |
Bits and Pieces:
There were so many mistakes in this issue that I found it very hard to figure out what was going on right off the bat. Either the wrong character in the wrong panel, wrong coloring to said character, bad caption placement and an ending I can't decipher. Just a really bad issue due to technical reasons and the story wasn't very strong on top of it. Hopefully some amazing things come from this issue in the future or it's just a complete waste.
3/10
Hi, I was wondering - since you have great experience on comics - how much time does this title has left while Lobdell is at the helm and why certain writers can't grasp the personalities of every character they write about.
ReplyDeleteOf course I wouldn't mind if Jason returned to his ginger color again that's how he was introduced pre-crisis and in Morrison's epic run.
I actually really enjoyed Lobdell's earlier run on this title and feel/hope that now it will get better. On the ginger front, I really hope that never happens because it just makes Batman look like a lunatic making Jason dye his hair and I always felt that that was just a way for Jason to try and get back at Bruce.
ReplyDeleteDunno tried Teen Titans and was dreadful wanted to gauge my eyes out. So many plotholes, inconsistencies and cheesy attitude. Now on Red Hood we got so much angst driven stories all for nothing. Staring at furious Starfire reminds me of Solstice turned murderer in the name of love. It saddens me and is illogical. Lobdell gives the run-around to the outlaws creating an angry trio of tossers with no goal.
ReplyDeleteAbout Batman, he has a fetish for black haired boys so Jason had somehow to cope with his perversion. Still believe there is some ginger factor on his scalp.
Your rating though speaks for the quality of the story and it's nohow entertaining nor it'll become. From the time DC decided to resurrect Todd he is made into a homunculus bouncing from title to title aimlessly without an identity or purpose.