Art By: Geraldo Borges, Paul Neary
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014
Roy Has A Burning Sensation
It's funny, since we were horribly interrupted by September's Futures End event I had no idea where we left off in this story. I literally picked up this book and started reading, put it down and said to myself "What the hell is going on?" So after I went back and read my review, I'm currently on the trolley and will catch you guys up in case you completely forgot about what was going on in the world of Red Hood and The Outlaws as well. If you remember SHADE found a spaceship that was sending out a distress call to Starfire and when she looked inside she found a bunch of dead bodies. They were a bunch of freed slaves and after seeing their bodies, Starfire kind of lost it and tracked down a former slave master of hers, who'd been living on Earth and planned on killing him. Well Roy and Jason showed up and talked her out of the whole murder thing and after she took off we saw that the once slave master apparently hates what he did too and killed himself. In the end of the issue I was completely confused about what was going on because Starfire went back to the trio's island and grabbed a vile of orange liquid in a tube and looked like she killed herself out on the beach. Well I can assure you that isn't what happened, but what is going on isn't any less confusing for me. So let's get to it and see what's going on with our pseudo heroes. Explain It!:
Our story begins in a very dark place. It seems that at some point Roy was terribly burned all over his body and Jason watches over him in what could be his final moments. But what vigil would be complete without thinking about what led to these horrible events? A pretty bad vigil, that's what.
So we go back in time to where the slave master kills himself and after cleaning up the gore with a trick arrow....... That's right Roy had a DNA erasing arrow and now the body and all it's fluids are gone. Then it became a race to get back to the island before Starfire, or at least a race to catch up to her, but our heroes find her lying what appears to be dead on the beach, but when they run up to her in a hurried worry, they find that she's fine and even a little giddy.
Well since everything is okay, Roy goes back to proclaiming his love for the "Princess" and Jason goes back to investigating who the leader of the terrorist group is that tried to bomb Washington DC. You remember that? I almost completely forgot about that whole story that led to Starfire being on a slave master hunt and if it wasn't bad enough that we just get thrown that we also have a pretty pointless scene where Jason's talking to Man-Bat, who if you remember is now working for SHADE and he just wants to tell Jason that SHADE's done with them and that they no longer consider Kori a suspect in the deaths of the passengers of that star ship they found. So just a bunch of small things that come off as the story waving it's story hands and yelling "remember me?" Okay now that we remember it seems that Jason somehow found a lead and the team is off to somewhere outside of New Orleans.
As the story progresses through the flashback, we occasionally jump back to the present with crispy Roy and at one part Oliver Queen comes to pay his respects and I found it a little odd that Jason didn't seem to know that Oliver Queen is Green Arrow. I know that superheroes take their secret identities pretty seriously but with Jason being Roy's best friend, I figured he'd let it slip. Even though I found it odd that Jason referred to Ollie as Roy's old drinking buddy, I guess I can kind of go with the secrecy because I doubt that Jason would ever tell Roy that Bruce Wayne is Batman.
Back to New Orleans, the team is just walking around the swamp it seems when Starfire out of nowhere just flies ahead looking mighty pissed off and blasts open a hidden underground complex full of goons.
Now all I can tell you here is apparently "The Outlaws" were set up and now have to fight these guys. I have no idea who they are because it's never properly explained to me, but what I do know is that they have on injection gauntlets that give them some sort of super strength and or stamina and Jason gets his hands on one to even up the odds. It's funny I just recently watched an episode of Farscape with the exact same device and I'm not saying that the creators stole the look of these gauntlets or the episode's idea, all I'm saying is that we have some Sci Fi fans making Red Hood and The Outlaws.
In the end Roy runs out of the place looking for Kori after she freaked out and when he finds her, he sees that she's shooting up something. Now Roy having the problems he's had with substances in the past is really concerned about what's going on with the alien woman he loves, but when asking about why she's doing it, she simply says because she's weak and flies off setting Roy on fire in the process.
So that just happened. Now I don't really get this issue because Starfire makes it seem like she's been doing this for awhile, but none of them took notice? Is this a very special issue of Red Hood and The Outlaws, where they're trying to show us that just because we don't think someone has a problem, it doesn't mean that they don't and that we should take more notice of our loved ones? Because as far as I'm concerned all her using has just culminated into one big freak out out of nowhere and with this issues complete lack of conveying time I'm not sure if she started at the end of last issue or if she means she's been doing it while not showing any symptoms for a longer period. There's just no way to know from reading this.
That's it for this issue of Red Hood and The Outlaws and man was it a disappointment after taking a break from the story for Futures End, but it's really disappointing because I loved the Futures End Red Hood issue. I'm still hopeful here though because I loved Lobdell's original run of Red Hood and I think he really shines in this title. Oh well, see you next month when I can hopefully get behind the issue and enjoy myself.
Bits and Pieces:
I don't think this issue knew what it wanted to be this month. It was all over the place, throwing different ideas at you through a mysterious present and through flashbacks, but not really telling you how much time had passed during, taking away any real explanation I could personally come up with to justify why the events of this book were going down. On top of a story I couldn't get behind the art wasn't anything to really get excited over either. It had a strange way of going back and forth between being good and not so good and I really can't stand when Red Hood is drawn with pupils in his mask, which this issue decided to go back and forth with as well. Just a disappointing issue that I really can't recommend to anyone.
4/10
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