Red Hood and the Outlaws 1
Reviewed by Will Morgan 22-Sep-11
I was blindsided by this. Wonder Woman was the comic I fully expected to hate this week. But Red Hood I didn’t expect much of, and demanded less; I could handle Roy Harper being without a daughter as long as he had both arms and didn’t have the stupid and implausible relationship with the murderess, and this promised that, so I went in with low expectations.
“OH, MARGE… JUST BECAUSE I HATE IT, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT …”
I was blindsided by this. Wonder Woman was the comic I fully expected to hate this week. (For the record? WW‘s a bit boring, a bit brutal, a lot pretentious, but no, I didn’t hate it.) But Red Hood I didn’t expect much of, and demanded less; I could handle Roy Harper being without a daughter as long as he had both arms and didn’t have the stupid and implausible relationship with the murderess, and this promised that, so I went in with low expectations.
And it started out promisingly; Red Hood, Jason Todd, busts the imprisoned Harper out of a Quaraqi prison in fine caper-movie style, there’s wit, invention, amusement… and then the big reveal about a character I never even liked beforehand. Specifically, Starfire.
Starfire I’ve always regarded as a joke, an implausibly behootered one-note slab of hetboy wankfodder with a relentlessly perky facade and not much else. Yet Lobdell manages the astonishing feat of making her even shallower than before, which brings me to the Homeric paraphrase I use as the title of this review.
Because I understand his line of reasoning; I get how he got there. But it’s a ‘there’ that no sane editor should have allowed him to go to.
As a Card-Carrying member of the Tragic Fanboys League, I recall (as, clearly, does Mr. Lobdell) that Kory’s alien species, the Tamaraneans, for all their humanoid attributes, are feline-descended rather than primate-descended.
So… he’s made her into a cat. Not in the creepily anthropomorphic sense, but a humanoid female displaying the stereotypical traits of felines; short attention span, lack of memory, distinguishing people by scent rather than sight, driven by her hormones to be relentlessly on the prowl for carnal gratification.
We’re not yet up to speed on what we’re supposed to remember as having ‘happened’ in this ‘New 52’, but conversation between Roy and Jason confirms that Starfire was a member of a super-team, led by Nightwing, with whom she was in a romantic relationship.
Except she doesn’t remember any of this, because she’s a lobotomised whore living solely in the present, with no thoughts of the past or future, or, well, any thoughts at all really.
Actually, I take that back. She’s not even a whore, because they’re often savvy businesspeople who get paid; Starfire’s simply now a conveniently amnesiac slut. I didn’t have much respect for the character before; but by Christ, she deserved better than this.
After this palate-puckering disclosure, a mysterious woman who may be visible only to Jason Todd pops up to direct him to the Himalayas, where slaughter has ensued, and seems about to ensue again, but frankly I was so far beyond caring that the comic ended up flung with great force into the corner of the room, to be retreived by the dog for extra bedding.
I may, of course, be maligning Mr. Lobdell. He may have a master plan in which Starfire comes to full self-realisation and autonomy, and this initial gambit may be only the opening stage in her journey of self-discovery and enlightenment, and not, as it currently appears, woman-hating Neanderthal sewage.
Maybe. But I’m not betting any money on it. Not even the £2.35 for issue 2.
Tags: Awful, DC, Red Hood, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Starfire, The New 52
I havent picked this up yet (too much month at the end of the money and all that!) but from what the internet has shown me, I am fully prepared for a car crash of epic proportions.
This was one of the New 52 that I was going to give 3 issues to win me over, mainly because I have a soft spot for Jason since he came back (despite how awful he has been mostly written).
Kory has been portrayed as having physical relations without love way back in the Perez era, so this depiction doesnt bother me too much. Roy is a blank as far as I am concerned. I liked it when he became Red Arrow in the JLA but otherwise, he has never been one of my favourites.
I have a feeling that this may go the way of the awful Green Arrow and Mr Terrific titles that were cancelled off my pull list after issue 1. We shall see once I have read it.
The issue with the portrayal of Starfire, as best as I can judge it, is not so much that she has sex without ‘love’, but that she’s being portrayed as a male fantasy fucktoy.
Paul; The issue isn’t of ‘sex without love’ (hell, in younger and thinner days I’ve even done that myself), but of ‘sex without the ability to give informed consent’, which is a different kettle of flesh altogether. Given her level of mental impairment as described in the script, Starfire cannot consent to intercourse with full understanding of the potential consequences. Roy and Jason are depicted as knowingly, premeditatedly, fucking the brain-damaged. And while I’d expect no better from Jason, Roy, I had hoped, would know better.
My pal Jules Langley has opined elsewhere that Kory may in fact be faking her amnesia for reasons of her own, and Roy has sussed it out, so is testing her ‘lack of memory’. I think Jules is being optimistic – I don’t think the writer’s that clever – but if Mr. Lobdell has any sense, he should rapidly backtrack and *pretend* that that’s what he intended all along…
Well I finally got this and read it.
You know what I really enjoyed the comic as a whole. Still dont get the controversy over Kori’s depiction though. I have seen the Shortpacked cartoon and although I found it funny, I disagree with the meaning behind it. This being a reboot, the depiction of Kori is way different to what it was previously and what the DCaU portrayed her as. However that doesnt bother me.
The potentially niave part of me thinks that this will all play out in time and her actions in this issue will make sense. Jason doesnt seem bothered by the fact she slept with Roy, so there may be revelations down the line.
If this is as deep as her character gets, then I am in total agreement with the reviewer, she does deserve better than this. However I am happy to let the story play out to see what happens.
So from a title that I didnt think I would stick with, this first issue has bucked my preconceptions and that can only be a good thing. I hope I am not proved wrong in 6 months time.