Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Red Hood: Outlaw #49 Review




Dimensional Bends And Losing Friends


Written By: Scott Lobdell
Art By: Paolo Pantalena, Arif Prianto, Troy Peteri
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 29, 2020


We're at a strange place in this issue for me personally because on one hand I usually hate when we have to interrupt a story to go over to a tie-in that usually doesn't matter overall with the character at hand and it usually just throws the whole groove of the previous story out of whack. That being said, I haven't been enjoying this Chamber of All/Trigon story and found the last issue to be such a relief because not only did we remove ourselves from something that I wasn't a fan of, but we were given something so kickass that I didn't want it to end.......... Well apparently Red Hood only gets one tie-in issue to the Joker War and now we're right back to where we were previously, with Bizarro taking on Trigon, while the rest of the Outlaws, including Jason Todd, Starfire and Arsenal from the past try to close the doorway to Trigon's dimension. Let's jump into this issue and see what happens to our Outlaws and if this story picks up any. Let's check it out.


For this issue we're still trying to close the door to Trigon's domain, while Jason gives strange looks at Roy Harper, you know, since he's dead and all and while I found this issue underwhelming all around, I think it was this aspect that disappointed me the most. Yeah, it would be hokey or maybe weird if we had a Back To The Future moment, where Red Hood wrote a letter or something to Roy i.e. "On the day of such and such, you'll be at the worst superhero hospital of all time and Wally West will kill you accidentally so please..... don't be there." While this might be a hokey and or weird idea like I pointed out, you feel as a fan of not only Roy Harper and this series that Jason should have done something here to try and save his friend from his ultimate fate because......... well, because it sucks and it shouldn't have happened. This could just be me fanboying out here, but it just felt like there should have been more to this element of our story.




Beyond Roy Harper though, we lose Bizarro as he chooses to stay behind, which feels really weird, especially if we're able to close the door to not only Trigon's domain but to the Chamber of All as well and besides actually dealing with these aspects to the story that feels like they would make sense to come to some sort of conclusion, we instead try to catch the characters up with what's been going on in the story, like Isabel being possessed by Essence, S'aru being upset that the Chamber of All is being destroyed but these reveals do nothing here and ultimately we just end this with Bizarro gone and the Outlaws from the past going back to when they came from. Lackluster all around.




All in all, I enjoyed the art in this issue for the most part and think that some of the ideas that were used for Bizarro's sacrifice were fun here..... Hell, even the idea of Bizarro killing Trigon is fun, but as for the sacrifice, from what we got here, it just didn't need to happen and feels more forced than anything to just simply write him out of the book. Along those same lines, having the Outlaws from the past show up does nothing unless something more pays off from it in future issues, which I'm optimistic for but seriously doubt. This whole arc felt weird and forced to try and cram in as many ideas as Scott Lobdell could for his final arc and ultimately it hurt this series overall.


Bits and Pieces:


While I'd like to think that fans of Jason Todd and Roy Harper's friendship will enjoy this, but I'm a fan of that and I didn't get enough out of that here. On top of that, I didn't get enough out of anything in this issue and felt pretty disappointed all around. Yeah, the art is good and you'll get a ton of characters thrown at you and some fun concepts and ideas, but none of them seem to be utilized here or thought out.


5/10

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