Red Hood and the Outlaws #1

Most of the "New 52" #1's so far have served as solid openers for their new series. While some succeed and give hope that the upcoming storylines are going to be awesome, some haven't been as inspiring, but even those who don't make me very interested in the series at least do a good job of introducing the characters and their major plot points.

In an odd twist, this comic does the absolute opposite of that. Scott Lobdell (known for his 90's Marvel work on X-Men titles) very, very briefly introduces us to the three characters. If I didn't have some background on them, honestly I would be a little confused about these characters.

Honestly, after reading this, I'm not sure what this comic is about, why Jason has teamed up with Starfire, or why he busted Roy Harper (Arsenal) out of jail. And then in the latter plot, I can't figure out what the hell the "All Caste" is, and whether it's completely new or if I'm going to have Wikipedia it to find out.
 There have been two big talking points about this book in recent weeks that I have noticed. One, why the hell have they retconned Starfire so much, and two, how potentially awesome this book could be if Scott Lobdell does a good job. The retcon on Starfire makes sense so she can be included in this book. Kind of. Instead of being a caring, emotional, sexually un-repressed, do-gooder, she's a violent, unfeeling, slut. Which would be fine, except that we have hundreds of issues telling us otherwise.

I understand that this is a different universe than before, and that Barry Allen was just putting back the timeline as best he could, so not everything is going to be exactly the same as before. But Starfire is not even close to what she once was, it's like Barry Allen was playing a dirty trick on us. While many have harped on the sexism in this comic, I think Starfire's portrayal made the biggest buzz because of the sexist nature of comics books.

Fact is, all three of the main characters in this book are sleazy, ruthless, and for the lack of a better word, douches. They could best be defined as sociopaths, and considering that Scott Lobdell says that Roy and Jason would be teaching Starfire about what it means to be human in this comic, that simply makes no sense.

But despite all this, I am still going to read issue #2, for several reasons. One, I think Scott Lobdell intentionally was trying to go over-the-top on this one. He wanted to get out the changes in these three characters from previous versions, good or bad, so that when people started to complain about them behaving differently he didn't have to backtrack. He can get all of those complaints out of the way right now. Nowhere to go but up with character development, he's created blank slates for himself. The second reason is that the book ends with the words "to be explained," which leads me to believe that Scott Lobdell is not an idiot, but has left everything in this issue intentionally ambiguous. Lastly, the secondary plot is quite interesting, and I'm curious as to where this story is leading.

This is not Roy from the 1980's, 1990's, or whatever the hell happened in the last year or so, and this is not Starfire from the 1980's Teen Titan's by Wolfman or Perez. And this is not Jason Todd of Morrison's Batman and Robin, Winnick's Under the Hood, or even Tony Daniel's Battle for the Cowl. We have no idea what his motives are for forming this team, or why they chose to go along with it. So people have to get those characters out of their minds right now.

What I liked: I haven't touched on the art yet, but it's fantastic. Kenneth Rocafort on pencils and Blond (don't ask me, that's what the color credit is) knocked the ball out of the park on this one. Easily my favorite art of all the new #1's thusfar.

What I didn't: I wish the characters more similarly resembled their former selves. If they continue to be sociopaths, I'm dropping this book.

Conclusion: Sticking with this book because I think this is a great concept and I love the characters. Not the best way to start off, but one more issue can't hurt, right? 7.3/10 (C-).