Review: Red Hood: Lost Days, collected edition (DC)

Red Hood: Lost Days. Written by Judd Winick; art by Jeremy Haun, Cliff Richards, and Pablo Raimondi. Published 2011; collects Red Hood: Lost Days #1-6. Find it on Amazon.



Let’s talk about the first comic that I ever read.

Well, okay, that isn’t true. The first comic that I ever read was a beaten-up old copy of Archie, which I pilfered from my older brother when I was nine. I finished it, put it carefully back under his hamper (he was a kid with an almost obsessive need to not be neat), and forgot about it until I picked a comic book up again nearly twenty years later.

That was then, and this is now. The first comic that I read with the intention of actually being "into comics" was Red Hood: Lost Days, the collected edition. There are a few reasons for this: one, I already knew the basics of the story from rolling around the internet in various places, trying to decide if I wanted to do the comics thing or not; two, I like the idea of the anti-hero; and three, I figured that something that’s an origin story of sorts would be a good place to get my feet wet, since they’d be explaining a lot of things along the way.

(Side note, before we begin: I read probably 85% of my comics on my computer. I’m visually impaired, and reading comics with my magnifying glass is tedious and leads to me missing things, so often I don’t bother, though there are exceptions to this. I do own a decent number of physical comics and trades, and I like paging through those after I’ve read them on my computer. You can get digital copies of the Red Hood comics and a ton more on Comixology, if you prefer reading them like I do for whatever reason.)

I curled up with a mug of tea and pulled the files up on my computer. To quickly recap the story, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it: it stars Jason Todd, who was the second kid to fill the Robin panties. He was killed off in the late eighties, and due to comic magic, brought back to life when Superboy-Prime punched the universe in the gut. Jason comes back without his memories, and pretty much zombies it up around Gotham until he’s rescued by Talia al Ghul, daughter of mega-bad-guy Ra’s al Ghul, and on-again off-again girlfriend of Batman himself. She helps him get better, for varying definitions of better, and Jason decides to train in the lethal things that Batman never taught him, so he can be more effective than Batman is (again, varying definitions apply here). He spends a lot of time angry, hating Batman for not avenging him and - in his view - letting the Joker get away with murdering him. He nearly kills both Batman and the Joker, but walks away from both encounters, eventually deciding that he needs to involve all three of them in whatever showdown he plans. (There’s a much better summary on Comic Vine, if you want more details. Go ahead. I’ll still be here when you’re done.)

Comics, woo.

I’m glad that this was my first modern comic. I was right in my pre-reading thinking; choosing a story that’s a sort-of-kind-of origin story is an excellent place to start. It gives you a lot of the backdrop that you need; yes, I had to look some things up, but I think it’s a lot less than I would have had to research if I had picked, say, a Teen Titans book. The story is contained really well; it’s six issues and bam, done. It doesn’t do the frustrating thing where you’ll be reading something and suddenly realise that you should be reading four other tie-in comics so you’re getting the whole story. It is, in short, a great place to start.

it’s also a wonderful read with a lot of emotional pieces, which are like candy to me. One of the early scenes has Talia talking to a Jason who still doesn’t have his memories back. She knows that there’s something that’s still Jason about him - he still has his muscle memory, and can kick some major ninja ass, but refused to hit Talia in a fight. She knows that there’s a part of him that recognises her, even if he doesn’t speak or acknowledge it. She takes him outside and sits with him, talking about Bruce and how he clearly misses Jason, and then we get this:


(from Red Hood: Lost Days #1)

This is the first point at which I put my hand to my chest and went "awwwww!" (Yes, that is a thing that I occasionally do in real life.) It’s also the first time that I thought "oh, God, what have I gotten myself into?"

It was not the last time for either of those things.

Here’s the thing about Jason: I adore him. I love him to pieces and back again, and then a little more. I like the idea of him, the ex-Robin who takes the step that Batman won’t, the guy who dances that line between good guy and bad guy but ultimately ends up on the positive side of things, if only just. I also love the actualisation, the snarky, flippant man who wonders if he should kill his father-figure and the psychopath who killed him years ago while he is literally running around London trying to stop a bombing from killing innocent people.

Speaking of snark:


(from Red Hood: Lost Days #5)

He’s disarming a bomb from a terrorist plot at the moment and doesn’t want to waste time explaining what’s going on. He ends up tossing it over the side of a bridge shortly after this, but in the meantime, we get one of my favorite lines in comics: "Hush up, Constable. Daddy’s busy."


(from Red Hood: Lost Days #5)

Calm, cool, collected, and very, very intimidating. Run out of ammo in a firefight? No big. He’s still good.

Another thing that really struck me in this arc is how it’s clearly a story about Jason finding his place in a world that has moved on without him. He gets close to Batman, close enough that he could have killed him, but he doesn’t; he had the Joker set up to die, but couldn’t go through with it for reasons that sound more like justification than conviction while he’s thinking them. He kills people in the comics, but they’re all clearly bad people - one of the guys training him was selling kids into slavery, so after Jason learned from him, he killed the guy and freed the kids. He’s got a plan, but it’s shaky. He’s got training that he barely remembers to back him up when he gets into rough spots. He’s a smartass, but a lot of it covers up hurt and confusion and nearly palpable emotion.

Looking back on this, I realise that it’s entirely possible that I imprinted on Jason. He’s a character that ticks off a lot of things on the mental checklist of things I enjoy, and he was my first real brush with comics. I am a duckling. Who knew?

The story is well-timed, and the artists really do a lot of stunning work. I don’t love every panel - that would be really difficult for six full issues by three different artists - but I do enjoy a great deal of it, and like a lot of the choices they make.

For instance, this is the last page in the final issue:


(from Red Hood: Lost Days #6)

It's a full page of Jason, looking up at the hood that will become his namesake, and it’s an image that has stayed with me since I saw it the first time.

It’s definitely a beginning. It’s not all roses from here on out, but wow, is it a beginning to remember - and a character to love.


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