A Hill Of Beans
Let's head back to Gotham, to a little neighborhood called The Hill, where a group of concerned citizens got together during the Joker War and decided to take justice into their own hands and try the vigilante route. If that wasn't enough of a story, we also have a war going on within a gang in this neighborhood that has one aspiring shoe mogul in the gang going outside his comfort zone and bringing in Killer Croc to be his muscle. If you think it's weird that all fo this is going on and I haven't mentioned Red Hood once....... well, I find it pretty weird too but like we saw in the previous issue, there wasn't a lot of Red Hood to be found as we spent the majority of this new arc setting up a neighborhood that hasn't been talked about in comics for twenty years and throwing Jason Todd into it with little thought. Let's jump into this issue and see if things can turn around and we can start caring about.... and have an easier time following Jason Todd's foray back in Gotham. Let's check it out.
Wrapping up this "Hill" story with what may be the final issue of Red Hood since it isn't solicited in March after Future State wraps up, we see the continuation of the wannabe shoe mogul, Tommy Maxx blowing up his father's store, being pissed off that he's not being taken seriously by the press, Denise Harlowe, who just happens to be the sister of our main character of "The Hill" Dana Harlowe, who on top of being an old friend to Jason Todd is our neighborhood vigilante known as Strike.
Mostly, this issue tries to stress in telling us how important family is, but like the last issue, you don't even get this idea has anything to do with Jason Todd and he and his title are just along for the ride as Dana tries to clean up her neighborhood and in this pursuit, we find out that there were twists and turns and a conspiracy to set up Tommy Maxx for everything but in the end, you don't really care because you didn't really get to see any of it and you never really cared or understood any of the characters that were presented here........ but it's all about family and what you would do for family and ultimately, that's the only thing you can take out of this arc.
All in all, while last issue I thought I enjoyed the style the art has in this arc, here I realized that style isn't everything because I found myself being confused about what I was looking at and couldn't really follow a lot of the progression of the action that was presented and sadly that's not the worst part. The story just really didn't want to do anything with Jason Todd and he was only here because he had to be. The drama of the neighborhood gang in this, the involvement of Killer Croc...... it all just kind of goes on in a muddled mess that is kind of incomprehensible because you didn't know enough about this neighborhood, these people, or their motivations. If this is the end of the Red Hood title, it's a terrible way to go out.
Bits and Pieces:
Everything about this issue is pretty underwhelming and while I complained that you didn't get enough Red Hood in the previous issue, you do get him here, but it doesn't matter and it won't help you understand the story any better. Everything is about family here and you'll know what because people will say it over and over again, it's just too bad that the main plot wasn't said over and over again because maybe I could have walked away from this book with a better understanding about what I just read.
This is a fairly new character, I rarely see this character in the Marvel comics. badland
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