Red Hood Outlaw #40 Review

Words: Scott Lobdell

Art: David Messina

Colors: Rex Lokus

Letters: ALW’s Troy Peteri

Published by: DC

It isn’t easy being the new teacher to a bunch of would be supervillains, but someone has got to do it. And that someone, continues to be the Red Hood. After the last few issues that saw the introduction of Red Hood’s new students and their first adventure, this new issue sees Red Hood and the team race to try and save Dr. Veritas from what? Well, that isn’t really said as of yet. 

Lobdell takes the opportunity this issue to try and give the team and its members a little more personality, something that wasn’t necessarily lacking in previous issues, but it was definitely not something that was at the forefront of the storytelling. 

In this issue, once the team makes it to Dr. Veritas’ lab, Red Hood’s desire to do things alone, as he perceives that the coming threat may be too much for his new recruits to handle, drives a slight wedge among everyone present. This leads to the team splitting off in different groupings as they make their way through this facility. 

This part of the issue was my favorite as, like I said, it allowed Lobdell to inject and explore some of the personalities within the group as they either they interacted together, if paired off, or we got to see some “inner-monologuing” for those who went it alone. My favorite of all of these was definitely the scenes with Babe in Arms as she is one of the more intriguing students (being a hyper-intelligent baby held in her zombie mother’s arms will do that). 

The art team of Messina and Lokus did a really good job this issue, especially considering that it was mostly walking and talking that was happening with a lot less fight scenes as usual. Messina’s art reminds me a lot of Paco Medina’s run on Deadpool about a decade ago. It’s very clean and detailed, but not too detailed. It’s only enhanced by Lokus’ colors as he adds a certain polish to everything on the page.