Red Hood and the Outlaws #18 Review and *SPOILERS*

Always Let Your Pup Pup Be Your Guide

Written By: Scott Lobdell

Art By: Sergio Sandoval, Juan Albarran, Michael Atiyeh, Taylor Esposito

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 10, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

I'm really hoping that this issue of our Smarty-Pants Bizarro arc picks things up because each issue we get just seems to be the next in a line of one off adventures that seems to be some sort of master plan of Bizarro's, but I just can't see all of the connective tissue that's supposed to be there to get from point A to point B.  I mean, we had the Gotham Knights kidnap Bizarro and then kick the shit out of the Outlaws so that they would get sent to Belle Reve and then the Outlaws teaming up with the Suicide Squad to save the world from a deteriorating power source in an old NOWHERE facility, which looks like Bizarro was able to grab himself some more Kryptonite to keep himself smart........ but at the end of the day, I just don't know why Bizarro just didn't go and grab this shit on his own.  Maybe we'll get that here, but really, I just want a story that gets back to the heart that this series had, even if that means Smarty-Pants Bizarro not being on the up and up.  Let's jump into this issue and see what our Outlaws are up to this month.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Red Hood taking on HIVE Queen because our hero recently stole money from Penguin that was supposed to go to her and after Jason quickly dispatches all of her security detail, Bizarro comes rushing in to take the villain out because she was just about to spill the beans about something that was buried in Red Hood's subconscious that Bizarro isn't ready for Jason to know.  Once that's said and done though............ and really, a bit during, we see the idea that Bizarro is losing his intelligence and even the idea that his mind is becoming altered, when his Superman doll (Pup-Pup) is acting like a Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, striving for Bizarro to tell his friends the truth about what's going on with him, but ultimately, Pup Pup's words fall on deaf ears.

During this time we see Jason go and visit Ma Gunn, only to see that she's supposedly away on family business....... leaving me to wonder who's taking care of the invalid Black Mask, but things really come to a head in my mind when out of nowhere Jack Ryder, The Creeper is in the Outlaws base and looking to even a score against Artemis.  Yeah, nothing comes of this though, besides for more about Bizarro overstepping his bounds, which is a shame, but in the end, we see that in the previous issue Bizarro picked himself up some synthetic Kryptonite, which he's been bathing in to keep his intelligence and as our issue closes, it looks like he's shrunk Ma Gunn down into a house inside of a bottle, which just adds to the idea that this synth K is damaging our hero's mind.

That's it for this issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws and while I love a lot of this book, I feel that it could have done more, especially since it just threw proper Creeper in out of nowhere and then didn't do anything with him.......... it's just really disappointing, but it's probably just to seed future stories.  With that though, there is still a lot to love with the deteriorating mind of Bizarro and the lengths that he'll go to keep his wits about him.  While I'm disappointed that we didn't have our regular art team on this issue, I feel that this team did a hell of a job to keep the quality that we've come to expect from this book top notch and for the most part I loved everything that we got from the art here.  All in all, this Smarty-Pants Bizarro arc has gone on a little longer than I would have liked, since we haven't done much with a lot of it, but I'm confident that it's going to be coming to a head soon and this issue was just what I needed to get me back on the trolley and caring about Bizarro again.

Bits and Pieces:

While you have a lot of cool characters thrown at you in this issue, the majority of the book is all about Bizarro's mental capacities and what he'll do to maintain them and within that concept there's a lot of heart and humor there that I really enjoyed........ not to mention that we got some awesome art from a fill-in art team.  This is just what I needed to get back on the Outlaw trolley.

7.5/10