Red Hood And The Outlaws #2

[whitesycamore]

In my opinion? This issue was quite drastically better than the last one.





There was a lot of cheesy but fun-in-an-eighties-movie-way action, a lot of snark, and a lot of sexual banter - most of it at Jason and Roy's expense this time and some of it about Roy checking out Jason's ass, ha ha. Starfire was also much, much more self-actualised than she appeared last issue, which was good to see. She was still somewhat subdued, but her compassionate nature - and the fact that she doesn't take any shit - was evident. Her memory problem also doesn't seem to be as extreme as the last issue made it sound like it was - she doesn't have any trouble telling her team mates apart here, and she definitely remembers sleeping with Roy, although it doesn't look like she has any immediate plans for a repeat performance.

And this time the main plotline actually seemed, you know, main. The art was gorgeous, with both Roy and Jason drawn beautifully. Unfortunately, although Kory's fanservicey portrayal has been scaled back a lot, it still seems that Kenneth Rocafort draws men much more charmingly, gracefully and *naturally* then he does women.

There were lots of pages that I could name as my favourites, but for the sake of clarity I'll post the last three - which are also the three where the most genuine interactions between the Outlaws take place.


This page picks up where the last issue left off, with Jason finding the body of his former mentor, Ducra - who speaks to him in ghostly form before departing, telling him (fondly) that he''s learned nothing, because he's still all about the vengeance; yep, that's our boy all right.




I wonder if he can't shoot them because they were his friends, or because he feels empathy for anything that died brutally and was brought back damaged?




Interesting that for all he rips on Roy, he doesn't consider it 'his place' to tell him what to do. The person telling him to "see past your past" is part of a flashback to his training with Ducra, by the way.




Hmm. A past he forgot he ever had. Just a throwaway line for sentimentalities' sake, or a hint at the upcoming memory-themed plot in the next issue? And perhaps Kory's lost memories of her past have something to do with all this too.

Comments

[mrstatham]

I disagree and don't think Lobdell changed anything, personally. I think the revelation that there's something more going on is directly equivalent to that issue in Simone's second BOP run where she seemingly killed Savant and Creote off and everyone was up in arms screaming because she'd 'killed the gay characters'. People were even telling Gail how it was on here despite her protests, and then when it was revealed that more was going on and they weren't dead, not many apologised to her.

So frankly, I always thought fan-overreaction was the case when it came to that first issue.

[whitesycamore]

But Jason seemed to have a *completely* different attitude to women and sexuality in this issue - he even seemed embarrassed and annoyed by Roy's fratboyish comments.

That's not really so much revelation as revision, imo.

[autohobbs]

Totally agree. ^_^

Mod Note

[benicio127]

People have no obligation to apologise to Simone, not least because when she suggested on s_d that the apparent death [of the gay character/s] would be 'all OK if you'd just wait', MANY people expressed their dissatisfaction with that fake-out.

Equating people's worry over depiction of women and/or minorities with "fan overreaction" is dismissive because it suggests that their problem comes from a (juvenile/facile/selfish/stroppy) desire to see the DCU pander to their own personal headcanon!

Implying that people only speak up for equality in media to further other agendas is disingenuous and contrary to our ethos.

[freddylloyd]

I agree to the extent that, with today's multi-issue story arcs, comics scripters are planning plot and character revelations several issues out, so we readers aren't in a position to judge a storyline or a writer's conception of its characters until we see the whole arc. Superhero stories have always relied on reversals and revelations; now it takes more months to get through those.

However, by the same token the complaints that the first issue raised might turn out to be valid, even when we see all that Lobdell and DC had planned.