Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Red Hood and the Outlaws #20 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

As much as I initially disliked the mindwipe, I have to say that Tynion really sells it here.

By having S'aru (the creepy baby guy) take Roy and Koriand'r on a tour of Jason's memories, he reminds us why Jason really would want to forget the "darkness."  From cradling his mother's body to dying at Joker's hands to feeling Batman's betrayal, Jason's life has been an unrelenting marathon through the darkness.  It makes sense that he'd want to take a water break.  I particularly liked Tynion summing up Jason's murderous period as a necessary part of his revenge against Joker and Batman, refusing to the read the words that Joker wrote for him (to use Joker's own words) by rejecting Bruce and his teachings.  It's an insightful approach to the character, because it feels emotionally accurate.  But, it also embraces the progress that Jason has made in the last few issues of moving past that phase.  If his rejection of Batman was motivated in part by his need for revenge against Joker, coming to terms with the damage that both Joker and Batman has done to him would lead him to this moment, where revenge was no longer enough.  He'd want the pain to be gone.  In that way, the mindwipe isn't obliterating the progress that we saw after "Death of the Family," but in a way enhancing it.

But, Tynion's no less effective in showing Roy's emotional response to the mindwipe, in part because it's not as simple as it appears.  It would be easy to dimiss it as selfish, a friendless boy trying to keep his only friend, but Roy's clearly onto something when he says that Jason hasn't stopped being a pawn but rather just changed chessboards.  The summit of Ducra, Essence, and S'aru seems to confirm that hunch.    Moreover, Tynion uses the opportunity to wipe away Lobdell's portrayal of Starfire as an emotionless sex fiend, restoring her to the empathetic (and enigmatic) character that she was before the reboot.

The result is an emotional issue that reminds us just how damaged these characters are and why Roy is so insistent that they need to band together.  I really wonder how they're going to get through this phase intact as a group, which means that Tynion has me a lot more invested in this series than I've possibly even been.

No comments:

Post a Comment