Review: Red Hood Outlaw #44

"The Unchosen One"

Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Paolo Pantalena
Color Artist: Arif Prianto
Letterer: ALW’s Troy Peteri

Review by Fay Clark

Here we are again, after the last disaster of a team mission seemed to have found some sort of balance. Trying to get back  into the groove of being an awesome team while saving the world in Red Hood Outlaw #44. You know, a normal Tuesday for the Outlaws. The Untitled are starting to become trouble, can the team stop them by going in undercover? Or will Red Hood be the hot head, know-it-all we love and mess up the mission?

A new day job? Don’t give up just yet!

I adore Scott Lobdell’s writing. At this point I know that I sound like a broken record. Do I care? No. Is Lobdell awesome? Yes. The way he manages to recap what has happened recently but still keep you involved in the story and what is about to happen is great. The pure writing chops of this man never fails to astound me. Scott Lobdell is in charge of several different characters, he writes their inner monologues and all the dialogue too. Then goes on to write everything for all of the side characters too.

We see some great undercover work from our rag-tag team of outlaws. Jason and Bizarro seem to have a bright future in the food service industry. With Artemis going as far as changing her appearance… ish. Lobdell has the team working to the best of their abilities to take down the Untitled. We even get to see a little bit more into Jason’s background in Red Hood Outlaw #44, and, as always Scott Lobdell leaves me wanting more than the 22 pages we get from him.

Black is the new Red

We see the awesome artistic skill of Paolo Pantalena again in Red Hood Outlaw #44. The talent is evident in every single panel of this issue. I think what really blows my mind with his work is the full splash pages. There are a few in this issue and every time I came across one it was at least 5 minutes before I could move on. Having so much detail in the artwork, and just the sheer skill of it, I didn’t want to look away.
More beauty is of course only added to by the color artist Arif Prianto. The background colors in this issue are impressive, the use of shadows and light to make it feel like we’re outside with a crowd of people was beautiful. Plus, the dodgy alleyway was made every more creepy by the expert use of shading and highlights.

Conclusion

To date I think Red Hood Outlaw might be my favourite comic book. There’s such awesome plot and character writing from Scott Lobdell and it’s always bought to life by the amazing artists that come and work on the comic. I’m really enjoying the team being back together and slowly finding their groove again. The plot seems like it is going somewhere interesting and I can’t wait to see what happens to my disaster kids next.

Images Courtesy of DC Entertainment