Red Hood and the Outlaws #34 Review

Cutting Ties

Written By: Scott Lobdell

Art By: Pete Woods, Rex Lokus, Troy Peteri

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 8, 2019

In case you've been living under a rock for awhile......... or just haven't been caught up on your Red Hood comics, Jason Todd is now the owner of the Iceberg Lounge, while Penguin is forced to watch behind sound proof-one way glass in his panic room, that Jason trapped him in.  While this is a brave new world for Jason Todd and what we've been seeing from these comics, this is also an opportunity for Scott Lobdell to dive back into everything he's written on the character and tie it all into what we're currently doing.  So if you didn't read Red Hood and the Outlaws in the New 52, maybe you want to go back and do a little reading because boy is this heavy in the continuity...........joy.

For this issue of Red Hood, we see our anti-hero spending his night in Paris with his one-time lady love, Isabel Ardila, but this is just fan flavor for people like me, even if it gets a little overblown with callbacks because of Jason and Roy's time here in the Redhood/Arsenal series.  This is just delicious padding though because the real reason that Jason is in Paris is to sever all connections that the Iceberg Lounge has with the biggest crime families in Europe....... or as they call themselves..... The Euro-Bloc.  

Yeah, there isn't too much to this plot but there is a some cool "who's more prepared than the other" scenario that I really enjoyed.  Besides that though, this issue doesn't do much to move the story forward because it's dealing a lot with Jason's past in Red Hood comics, while trying to reintroduce the All-Caste, which personally doesn't feel new reader friendly for what's going on.  All that and I'm just sitting wondering who the hell Wingman is and why he said that Jason had to come back to Gotham before because in his mind, Batman wasn't getting the job done.......... when we're now just doing Casino work.  It's weird, but I'm still enjoying what we're getting for the most part.

All in all, I continue to enjoy what Pete Woods gives us for the look of the characters involved, even though I'm still waiting for Jason to get his classic Red Hood costume back and I'm still invested in Scott Lobdell's story, I just wish that it was progressing a little more and telling us why this is all going on from what he's setup so far.  Besides that though, Lobdell continues to be the King of Continuity over at DC Comics and that just makes me happy as hell because that's what the company has been sorely missing lately.  

Bits and Pieces:

Callbacks O'Plenty going on in this issue of Red Hood: Outlaw and while I really enjoy what Lobdell is putting out there, I wish we'd focus more at the story at hand because I still have so many questions about Wingman and his obsession with getting Jason Todd back to Gotham.  This is still really fun, but I'm a little worried that with all the callbacks in this issue and how they're presented that this won't be new reader friendly.  Overall, I love the art and can't wait to see where all this goes in the long run.

7.5/10