Review: Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 6- Lost and Found

Quick Summary

Pros: Starfire’s storyline in this book is great and shows how complex of a character she truly is. The Christmas issue in this book is both fun and funny.

Cons: The story’s opening is generic to the point of boredom. Jason and Roy’s plotline in this book doesn’t really offer anything to the story at all.

Overall: This book is split right down the middle in terms of quality. The half of the story focused on Starfire is thoughtful, enjoyable, and provides some nice character development. However, the half focused on Roy and Jason is boring and almost completely pointless. Readers will have to decide if they are interested in a book where only half the pages are actually worth reading.

Story

Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 6: Lost and Found is a very short collection that mostly just tells one Starfire centric storyline. Readers get to see more of her history with slavery and how that affects her actions in the present. This makes for an enjoyable story that fans of Starfire’s character will really appreciate. However, this story is severely hampered by the fact that Jason and Roy have a storyline running parallel to it. Unlike Starfire’s emotional and complex story, this one is pointless and simple. Without it, this would have been a very short but enjoyable story arc. With it, this is a story arc where you simply have to take the good with the bad.

(spoilers start here)

The story starts out with a generic mission as the Outlaws attempt to stop some villains from bombing Washington, D.C. Here Lobdell is clearly reintroducing the characters to everyone, which could be something new readers will appreciate. However, for long time readers of this series, it feels like something we’ve seen before and thus ends up being pretty boring.

From this point, Starfire’s storyline actually improves dramatically. We get another scene showing her tortured past as a slave and how committed she is to put an end to slavery in any form. Though this information is not exactly new, it does help to provide a more detailed and robust view of Starfire’s past and shows how far she is willing to go in order to uphold her principles.

This view of her past as a slave is wonderfully contrasted with what is happening in the present. A crashed alien spaceship alerts Kori to the presence of alien slavers on Earth. She hunts their leader down and calmly and clearly explains to him that she is going to kill him now. What’s strange is that he does not even fight this fate, his time on Earth has made him realize the horrors of what he has done, and he believes that he deserves what is coming to him. This is what makes the story so complex, Kori isn’t hunting down some deranged killer, she is executing a reformed villain in cold blood. Seeing her confront this truth is very emotional and ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger that will be interesting to see continue.

Outside of Starfire’s storyline, scenes involving Jason and Roy are as boring as this book’s beginning. They have no depth and the action in them feels forced. Even when their story intersects with Kori’s, it doesn’t make sense. They plead with her not to kill the man she wants to kill, despite killing for revenge being one of Jason’s biggest character traits. Maybe these scenes are appealing to some, but to me they mostly just serve to drag down an otherwise great Starfire story.

Besides the main story of this collection, there is also a Christmas issue involving a completely separate plotline. This issue is completely unexpected, yet surprisingly fun. It features child versions of the Outlaws on a mission to save Santa on Christmas night, with the twist being that they are still as brutal as ever. It is a neat contrast that allows for a ton of pretty solid comedy in this extremely untraditional take on a holiday story.

(spoilers end here)

Art

Taken at face value, R.B. Silva’s art in this collection looks pretty good. The art is alright on the whole and there are not major problems. It is not the most detailed artwork out there and makes a few mistakes in terms of dialogue bubbles lining up, but it still looks nice and does not feel lacking.

The problem comes when you look at this artwork in context of the collection. This is a dark book about killing, slavery, and addiction, yet this book is filled with cartoonish looking moments and bright colors. It fails to convey the emotion that should be present here, and thus hurts the book as a whole. The art may look alright but it does not fit the story that is being told.

Continuity

Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 6: Lost and Found continues the story from Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 5: The Big Picture (Review).

The story here continues in Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 7: Last Call (Review).

This volume also references the stories from other comic books, all of which are detailed below:

• Helspont makes an appearance in this book. He was last featured in Superman Vol. 2: Secrets and Lies (Review).
• Though not a comic reference, screens on the wall of the Bat-cave reference the TV series Teen Titans Go!