MYTHCOMICS: DARK TRINITY (RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1-6, 2017-18)

When I picked up this compilation of the first six issues of the "Rebirth" version of DC's RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS, a lot of things mitigated against my finding anything beyond basic formula entertainment (if that). As I stated in these reviews, I've devoted only slight attention to the creation of the Red Hood, a.k.a. reborn former Robin Jason Todd. I didn't care that much about any of the early iterations of Jason, and hadn't followed the 2011 OUTLAWS title, though I remember being pleasing that it had ticked off various moral guardians with its sexploitation elements. The new version of the "Outlaws" teamed up Jason-Hood with a brand-new version of Bizarro and some Rebirth iteration of Artemis, a would-be Wonder Woman, with whom I was never particularly impressed. The title of the compilation told me that this tortured trio were meant to parody the "Trinity" of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, but I've found a number of Trinity-projects tedious. Frankly, the main reason I selected this TRINITY was because I'd found writer Scott Lobdell had a talent for humor, so even if it was formula, it might be funny.

Like a lot of Lobdell stories, TRINITY is full of cute one-liners, some good, some overkill. What I didn't expect to find was a really thoughtful dramatization of the perils of being a DC "legacy character" of one kind or another. Bizarro was conceived to be Superman's "imperfect duplicate," while both Red Hood and Artemis tried and failed to take over previously established identities. Artemis's relationship with Wonder Woman was entirely acrimonious, while Jason Todd was at least chosen to be the second Robin by the Big Bat himself. But Lobdell extends the notion of the "legacy character"-- often no more than a feeble reprise of some original character-- into a metaphor for the struggles between child and parent. For Red Hood, the struggle is about gaining respect from his Bat-dad and forging his own identity. Artemis's conflict has less to do with Wonder Woman than with the separate Amazon culture in which she was raised. This version of Bizarro has no previous history with anyone, but he is raised knowing that he was designed to be a knock-off, which doesn't do a lot for his ego.

Lobdell also cranks up the parental metaphor by choosing Black Mask as the villain of TRINITY. Though the character was conceived as something of a small-potatoes schemer, subsequent treatments, including that of Judd Winick in the RED HOOD stories, made the character into a ruthless gang-boss constantly seeking not only to kill Batman and his allies but also to eliminate all criminal competition. Without contradicting anything in the origin of the Doug Moench character, this Black Mask is given a Batman-like obsession with Gotham City. In his newest scheme to become the city's new lord and master, he reaches out to Red Hood, whose relationship to Batman many consider ambivalent. The Hood hopes to get into the villain's good graces in order to build a case against him, and so agrees to help Black Mask rip off a shipment of arcane weapons. Artemis, looking for one of those weapons, crosses swords (in a purely metaphorical way) with Red Hood. Despite lots of trash-talk, both are horrified to learn that the weapon Black Mask most desires is a clone of Superman. 

The whole "allies of convenience" is nothing special, but both Red Hood and Artemis are placed in a sticky situation in attempting to liberate a mentally-impaired Superman-clone from the control of a vicious crime-lord. Red Hood, having been reborn under circumstances not unlike Bizarro's genesis, forges a particular bond with the artificial super-being, as illustrated above. This is one of the few times that Kryptonian super-hearing is utilized in order to make the hearer relate to the chaos of the city he inhabits, as well as giving perspective on the relationship of both characters within the overall matrix of common humanity.

But Black Mask, despite his having sometimes appealed to Red Hood to become his new heir (and surrogate son), has been fully aware of the hero's hero-ness the whole time, and uses a techno-organic virus to take control of Bizarro. (Said virus is seen in the first chapter, and then ignored until the writer works it into the main plot. Wow, an actual PLOT-DEVELOPMENT in a modern comic!) Artemis, despite having no real reason to involve herself in Red Hood's battle, does the right thing and delays Bizarro until the Hood can manage to destroy the Mask's control. This includes an inventive sequence, possibly a reprise of a Grant Morrison conceit, in which the villain experiences the enhanced sight of a Kryptonian.

So Black Mask is defeated and almost left to die by Red Hood, though a joke coda gives the villain a fate worse than death, again invoking parental metaphors. For every overkill-joke, there are probably three good ones, and for a modern comic that's a pretty good average. And to top it all off is this cover, in which artist Dexter Soy riffs on the Max Allan Collins version of Jason Todd, first seen stealing the tires off the Batmobile.

 I don't imagine the regular series, which in one form or another ended in 2020, kept up this level of mythic engagement. Still, there are so many lame treatments of DC legacy characters that this arc gives me hope that the company hasn't been entirely ruined by constant reboots and political correctness.

NEAR MYTHS: UNDER THE RED HOOD (2005), RED HOOD THE LOST DAYS (2010)

Jason Todd, the second Robin, never did anything noteworthy in the first phase of his career until he died-- and even then, his death didn't take on any real resonance until he arose from the world of the dead.

Or rather, the IDEA of his resurrection began to take on said resonance before DC Comics finally decided to bring Todd back for the first time since he was murdered by the Joker in BATMAN #357 (1983). After his overblown termination, Jason was left in dead-guy limbo for the next twenty years, until there was the SUGGESTION that he had been resusciated in the 2003 series HUSH. The HUSH storyline teased Jason's return, only to back off and say that the "Jason" who appeared was a clone-like entity constructed from living matter taken from the metamorphic villain Clayface.

I'm going to guess that "Phony Jason's Return" grabbed regular readers enough that writer Judd Winick successfully pitched a BATMAN continuity in which Jason was miraculously returned to life, only using a new identity. The former Robin now called himself The Red Hood, a name taken from an early identity of the villain who callously murdered Jason with a crowbar. As if imitating the coarse, un-Joker-like method of Jason's execution, the former hero's new modus operandi is to callously murder as many of Gotham's hardcore criminals as possible. Jason does so specifically to twist Bruce Wayne's tail; to reject Batman's credo of extending mercy to even the worst felon. 

This 2005 continuity rambles quite a bit, as Winnick works in over a half dozen familiar faces from DC history, most of whom are extraneous to the main story. (Amazo? Captain Nazi? In the same comic as down-and-dirty scuzzballs as Black Mask?) The core of the story ranges from Batman's initial disbelief regarding the apparent resurrection to his gradual acceptance that for reasons that are never too clear, Jason has indeed come back and is seeking to contravene Batman's ethos. Jason's motivation smacks of personal affront: he doesn't resent having been killed, but he's angry that Batman didn't decide to end the Joker's life after the villain committed such an enormity. The story would have been quite a bit better cut in half and focused only on the Bat-family.

UNDER THE RED HOOD blames Jason's resurrection on the arcane phenomenon known as "Hypertime." As for the question as to what happened to Jason following his resurrection, Winick rings in familiar Batman-luminaries Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia. The two villains stumble across Jason, initially believing him to be a hoax, possibly perpetrated by Batman. Eventually, Ra's loses interest in the undead Jason, but Talia-- who presumably has not yet conceived her own child by Bruce Wayne-- becomes a surrogate mother to the memory-stricken young man. She betrays her father by giving Jason access to a Lazarus Pit, which brings back Jason's lost memories, and thus causes him to lust for vengeance against his surrogate father. 

But before sending the future Red Hood forth to become Batman's new bane, Talia takes a curious action: initiating a quickie romance with Jason. Winick doesn't give the reader access to the thoughts of either participant. However, earlier in the continuity Ra's has lectured his daughter, telling her "the detective" will never truly love her. In the scene above, Talia encourages Jason to "punish" Batman for having brought about the (temporary) demise of Talia's father. But it would be fair to suspect that she might really want to punish the hero for not fully returning her love, by making love to his surrogate son. I don't know if this quasi-incestuous encounter was utilized in later stories, but I find it interesting in that it showed Winick's willingness to take risks with the Talia character. I confess I have no idea how well this version of the DC character dovetails with Grant Morrison's version, who unsurprisingly gets killed at the end of his opus but is resuscitated by some other raconteur. I also have not tried to follow what has happened with Red Hood since these two series, but I have the impression that his massive slaughter of Gotham gangsters was pretty much forgotten so that he could become a regular ally to the Bat-family.