Adios Outlaws
It's an end of an era, where Scott Lobdell walks away from the character that he's pretty much defined for the better part of this decade. With that in mind, he has a lot of things to wrap up and clean up for our next creative team jumping on this book when it drops the "Outlaw" title and just becomes "Red Hood". Bizarro's already out of the way, now that he's the King of Trigon's hell dimension so that just leaves us with Artemis, Pup-Pup, Generation Outlaw and whatever became of Joker's Daughter. Let's jump into this issue and see if we can put all these toys nicely away in the toybox for whoever wants to play with them next or if they're thrown across the room and broken. Let's jump into this issue and check it out.
There are a few things that it feels like Scott Lobdell wanted to check off before he walked away from this character and two of those things seem to really be making sure that we all know that Artemis and Jason started hooking up and maybe almost loved each other....... and that Jason was never going to stop trying to help Duela Dent with her Joker's Daughter persona. These seem to be the real main focus of this issue because Generation Outlaw....... Well, Jason pretty much just walks out on them and told Ma Gunn that they're her problem now (Poor Doomed).
Yeah, this is pretty much a redemption issue for Joker's Daughter, which feels odd for a finale of a writer moving on, but Scott Lobdell has continuously put Duela Dent with Jason Todd so I guess it makes a bit of sense, but the problem is, you don't really get a good feel for Duela here if you didn't read her origins in the New 52 or even how her mind works when she tells a story and ultimately, she just seems like anyone here with a mask on and never really comes off as defined, especially when out of nowhere at the end of the books he has her "epiphany"....... it just doesn't really work all that well for me and it's a shame because when she was brought into Red Hood/Arsenal I thought that she would have made a decent Outlaw and fun member of the group, but it didn't work there and it comes off as a forced conclusion here. In the end, nothing in this is wrapped up satisfyingly and we just move on with Jason Todd being solo and moving back to Gotham.
All in all, while there are some nice moments between our characters here, a lot of it feels forced and out of nowhere to give you those feels and I wish that wasn't the case because I would have liked a solid conclusion to Scott Lobdell's run instead of just forcing a way for our hero to be alone again, while also just dumping the remaining plot threads unceremoniously. It's all kind of underwhelming, even with the fun interactions and sadly, I'm still not a fan of the art style, but I will say that it did its job in telling this story, I just didn't care for the way it looked. Hopefully, with this iteration of the Outlaws done, we can move on to bigger and better things as Jason Todd moves back home and starts up his solo act as this series continues.
Bits and Pieces:
While I wanted to love Scott Lobdell's conclusion to his Red Hood run, there were just too many things left on the table for him to clean up satisfyingly and while I love the inclusion of the Joker's Daughter here, there wasn't enough time to really do her any justice and ultimately, she felt like a strange choice to focus as much time on here as we do. There are some nice moments overall, but they feel out of nowhere here and the art just isn't something that I was a fan of overall.
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