I don't have a wide range of critical observations to make about
Red Hood and the Outlaws, Vol. 2: The Starfire
, but I will say this, and encourage you to check it out: this book distinguishes itself from the other Bat-books as it is the only doesn't take itself too seriously. Or seriously at all--it would get in the way of the fun.
The Starfire picks up where Redemption left off, with these miscreants who only marginally trust each other traveling around on a suborbital spacecraft and getting into trouble. Jason is dealing with the aftermath of his trigger-happiness, Kori and Roy are awkwardly dating, or something, and bad people are doing bad things. The plot of this collection arcs through a series of conflicts, smoothly connects with the
Night of the Owls
event, does its own thing in outer space, and then dumps Red Hood off in Gotham City for his own
Death of the Family
horrors and sends Roy and Kori on to something else (perhaps a guest appearance in
Superman: H'el on Earth
?). The story is nothing remarkable for comics or for science fiction, looks a lot like Sinestro's arc in Green Lantern regarding the salvation of Korugar, but is considerably more fun than most. Any complaints that I could levy against the story are mitigated by the amount of enjoyment that I took from reading it.
And perhaps that's what makes Red Hood and the Outlaws worth reading, to me; first, it's legitimately funny, and though Scott Lobdell hasn't been the most consistent writer comics has ever seen, he seems to know these characters and how to make them work together--something that almost always creates a story that ends up being more than the sum of its parts. Secondly, it looks great, with Kenneth Rocafort's art and its level of detail standing out as one of the two or three finest among New 52 pencillers at this point. The book has gotten some buzz on this score, with the sexual representation of Starfire (and in this volume, the addition of Isabel) raising some critical eyebrows, but while the princess from Tamaran hasn't historically enjoyed robust layers of clothing, this volume responds to the criticisms of the first volume with a heavily-armored character model in command of a starship on which her command is beyond question. Sexual politics and posturing aside, this book is Starfire's show, and her strength comes as a result of both her decision to rise above her trauma-laden past and her ability to value Red Hood and Arsenal as teammates and individuals. Her sexual identity has no bearing on what this book communicates, as female agency as a theme is assumed in its premise rather than defended in its narration; we see this in Isabel, too, to a lesser extent.
A friend of mine described Red Hood and the Outlaws as the
"Firefly"
of DC's New 52: it's a fun book that runs concurrent to the big, serious business of the
Justice League
, but there are mythic stories embedded here that make it worth picking up. After the certain trauma of Red Hood's reintroduction to the Joker, it will be interesting to see what the new creative team will do with the characters and story--we still have the small matter of the Untitled running around, and we still have yet to see what an Arsenal-centered story might look like for the Outlaws.