Comics! Red Hood and the Outlaws #5

Red Hood and The Outlaws #5

Written by Scott Lobdell
Art by Kenneth Rocafort

The Comic
Fight!

Crux Vs. Arsenal, Red Hood vs. The Untitled, Minor Story Progression vs. the Need For Fight Scenes!

This issue is OK. We do get some fight scenes between the heroes that lead a little bit for some character development. We do get the moment when Arsenal gets a little bit of a bad ass in him and kicks Crux's butt with his quiver of trick arrows. The moment when Cruz is at looking up in disbelief wondering why a human wouldn't want to kick some alien tale is a pretty cool laugh moment.

We do get a flashback moment of Jason Todd in training. It basically gives the excuse of why he isn't going after Batman and Joker right away and is instead focusing his attention on going after the killers of those who trained him. But then the art brings in a moment of Jason jumping ten feet out of water, cutting himself in a way with some swords that should kill him. But why did he cut himself with the swords? Somehow it fed the swords power. Don't ask me how it works, the story didn't bother to tell me, but it did help Jason kill the Untitled thing.

Its funny, but issue #5 for DC seems to be at a weird point for me. For some stories, it has been part 5/6 of the opening art, for some books it is the beginning of the second arc. This comic is weird, because it doesn't really fit into either of those categories, but this issue still feels a bit like it was the set up for something. Seeing how the next issue is called "How It All Began," it makes me wonder if it will be some type of origin story explaining how Jason and Starfire met up. I don't really see why we have to go to the past in this sense, I already feel like I know enough about the characters to the point that I just want to see what happens next, not what happened before.

The art kinda returned to being on my nerves again. Weird panel layouts, awkward body positions for the characters, and a weird sense of angles is just jarring things up for me. The art in this issue once again felt like an amateur was allowed to run wild while whatever idea he wanted to.

The Cover
Crux looks like a cross between Killer Croc and Man-Bats on this cover. Starfire's hair just seems to never end, sorta in the same way that some cover artists will take Batman's cape and make it seem like it is 20 feet long. The background just looks bad, like a bunch of sketchy pencil marks. Maybe that is what Rocafort could use: an inker.

Grades
Words: 6/10
Pictures: 6/10
Recommend: If I could appreciate the art more, I would recommend seeing it for the pictures, as the info presented in this comic will surely be brought up again in later issues. But it is passable. Definitely not one I would recommend to give to someone who is on the fence about the comic.
Buy Next Issue: I will be, it is still exciting to read it and see what is happening to Jason.

Previous Issues
Red Hood and the Outlaws #4
Three Issue Trial