Red Hood and the Outlaws #8

Home comings are always strange. Take me for instance, I came home from University full of knowledge and drink only to find out that my parents had thrown away my bed, filled my room with crap (not my crap, just to let you know but other assorted crap) and pretty much left me as a nomad in my own home. Now to be fair that’s peanuts compared to what Jason Todd has to go through in this issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws, but at least (as far as we know) he has a bed. So lets dive right on into Red Hood and the Outlaws #8

The issue opens in a flashback, with Jason narrating to the others how right after he left Ducra and the All-Cast he headed to Hong Kong to build up his funds so that he could get his revenge on Joker and Batman (for more details on this read “Batman: Under the Red Hood”) which brought him into conflict with the Familia De Flores and Suzie Su (the big redhead in issue #3) which has now come to a critical mass as, now recovered from her bullet wounds received in issue #3, Suzie Su has taken an entire hospital wing hostage (a children’s wing none the less) and plans on killing everyone in it unless Jason Todd turns up within 2 hours. Not quite the homecoming you’d expect eh? But the questions that have to be asked are will Jason and his team come to the rescue to helpless children? And why isn’t Gothams’ Dark Knight on the case? Pick up Red Hood and the Outlaws #8 to find out.

Man do I love this series. I still cant believe that people wrote it off after the first issue because what we have here is pure comic awsum. Those years between “death in the family” and “Under the red hood” have always been partially clouded and other writers have tried to fill in the gaps in stories such as “Red Hood: the lost days”, but it’s just such a huge gap in his character history which is great for stories (though hopefully won’t be used too much.) and background on who Jason is. Jasons’ character is becoming more than the one tone character that previous batman writer tried to make him (or countdown writers… and the less said about him in nightwing the better) by having him come back to Gotham and instead of going down the “ok, back home. Lets tourture the family” route we actually see him saving the day. Geez, its almost like he’s a hero or something… you know, if heroes killed. What deffinatly tops this all off is the ending, showing how the black sheep of the bat-family is still connected to them, and how an olive branch has been reached out and taken (and seriously the message sent to him in the space ship, fun-moment). Now to be fair Roy and Starfire are played down in this issue, and played more as a little comic relief, though seriously who doesn’t understand the galactic handsignal for “drop your weapons”? and we get a little question asked between the two, which is kinda sweet, though could have been excecuted better. Rocaforts art is great as always and the colours by Blond only add to that.

Overall I’ve just got to give Red Hood and the outlaws #8 a 4.5/5. Had Kori and Roy been played up a bit more it could have been a whole 5, but I’m not complaining. This is one of the best series to come out of the 52, and has definally broken out of the trend of other bat related books. Jason and his outlaws are their own entity, they’re only in the bat-books because their doing it ironically (lol). So to repeat myself once again, Red Hood and the Outlawys #8:-

4.5/5

And on one final not, a certain characters Waffles have been made fun of. I would like to go on record and say that i’ve tried said characters waffles and they are to die for… Jason and “other persons” just don’t know what their talking about (or are to obsessed with BREAD!) :P