Scott Lobdell

"Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, by special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family."

Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 1: Dark Trinity (Rebirth)

emily allen

Let me just start with this: I LOVE Jason Todd. He is hands down my favorite (DC) superhero (or antihero, but please). I love pretty much all of the Robins, but Jason will always be my personal favorite. Dick Grayson is great, but a little too perfect; Tim Drake is...well, Tim Drake; Damian Wayne is a complete prick (I love him, but seriously, whY). Jason Todd is witty, flawed, well-rounded, and a complete IDIOT. What else could you want in a character?

Before reading this, naturally, I read the original RHATO series. Honestly, it was better than everyone said it was. I loved Arsenal, the writing was decent, and it had fairly unique storylines. Starfire was wayyy too over-sexualized, but when you're reading comics penciled by two middle-aged men, it's, unfortunately, to be expected. 

I was expecting pretty much a similar story for RHATO rebirth, but I couldn't have been more wrong. This comic series blew me away. The writing was fantastic, the characters were just unreal, and the art? Holy crap! 

I'd never heard of Dexter Soy prior to reading this. Now I know he worked on Captain Marvel (which is also great!), but coming into this, I didn't have high hopes. Not that I thought he would be bad; I was pretty neutral about him. But I was blown away. He pencils in a traditional comic sense, but he captures the characters to a T. And the shading? The coloring? 

Insane. 

And now for my favorite part of this entire series: the characters. Artemis (the reject Wonder Woman), Jason Todd (ex-Boy Wonder), and Bizarro (genetically Superman?? I guess??). 

I'll start with Artemis: she was AMAZING. The last RHATO's token female redhead was Starfire, who was fairly awesome in her own right, but just didn't really do it for me. She seemed so different than Starfire in the past (especially from the Teen Titans comics) and I was just a little disappointed that she seemed like a completely different character than she had been before. Artemis, though? Wow. Where do I even start?

She's a tough female fighter, which we see a lot in superhero comics, but she actually has FLAWS. She's 3-dimensional. She knows what she wants and she'll do anything to get there, regardless of the cost - which leads to her eventual astounding character development as she grows into her team. She's a completely unique example of LGBT rep, and it wasn't her main character facet - we learn to love her and THEN learn that she's bisexual (although not until the later volumes). And don't even get me started on her costume. I came fresh off of the original series where Starfire seems to believe that two strips cloth covering her nipples provide adequate support for battle. It wasn't just this that bugged me - it was the fact that she was drawn so incredibly unrealistically. No one looks like her, period, and it's not just because she's an alien. But Artemis' character design was PERFECT. She's got curves, but they're a heck of a lot more realistic, and her costume actually looks like something a battle-ready superhero would wear. It covers her full body, in case she gets, I don't know, IMPALED, and has armor and support for when she needs to kill somebody. Like one does.

On to Jason Todd: I think I've already made my opinions pretty clear, but Jason is the BEST. And this comic does so much for him. We get to see a kind, sensitive side of him as he cares for Bizarro, and we get to see him grow more into his role as a hero. Gone are the days of stuffing heads into bags and calling it justice; now we get to see him  caring.  

It's a Red Hood comic book, so of course we get some flashbacks to his crowbar-induced death, but Lobdell treated it differently in this one. Instead of this being repeated endlessly and just forcing Jason to endure more pain, his death is used to show how he's grown. His death is the point that propels him forwards, instead of dragging him down. And it was fantastic.

Finally, Bizarro. Honestly, what is there to say? He's precious and adorable. Really, he's used as a character to launch the character development of both Artemis and Jason (which I love, getting to see them as older siblings was unreal) and really make them a team. The Flowers for Algernon bit in later volumes was a little weird, but in terms of volume 1, Bizarro was perfect. 

The idea of a "Dark Trinity" felt a little cliché, to be honest. But Lobdell did this SO WELL. Artemis is an Amazonian that wants nothing to do with Wonder Woman's shadow. Jason is the most dangerous in a long line of Robins. And Bizarro is a screwed up Superman clone. But what made this comic so amazing was the fact that they weren't trying to live up to the three main heroes of the Justice League. They're outlaws, and that's all they need to be. The dark trinity is perfect by no one's standards, and they're okay with that - they just want to help people. Not to be the best, not to be the worst. Just heroes in their own completely-bizarre sort of way. 

5/5, Scott Lobdell. This comic is amazing.

Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 1: Dark Trinity (Rebirth)

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