red hood: the lost days

red hood: the lost days
judd winick, pablo raimondi & jeremy haun
graphics/crime
dc comics
published 2010

The Joker killed Robin and unleashed a new plague upon the world.  After a Death in the Family, Batman almost gave up.  Robin did not.  Somehow Jason Todd dug his way back up from the dead to become the brutal vigilante, the Red Hood.

Seeing a golden opportunity when she finds the reborn Jason wandering the streets catatonic, Talia al Ghul restores his vitality in a Lazarus Pit, then hones his vengeful wrath into a righteous anger with anyone who harms the innocent.

Target: the Joker.  For countless reasons, including killing Jason to begin with, he must also die.  Also in their sights: Batman.  For his refusal to put the mad clown down permanently, countless murders stain the Dark Knight's hands.  Batman must die as well.

Jason Todd is one character in the Batman world that has always sort of fascinated me.  He wasn't the first Robin, and he wasn't the last.  Somehow he was beaten to a pulp and died - buried and everything - and then he came back to life reborn as the Red Hood.  This tells the story of how he got to the Red Hood, but it doesn't tell what happened between the time the Joker bashed his head in to how he got to Talia.  That's in Under the Red Hood, I believe.

Anyway, I really did like this book.  I was really into getting into Jason's head.  I've read some Red Hood & the Outlaws issues from the New 52 and while there is still that rebellious side it is nowhere near the type of rage we see here.  I've got to get my hands on the in between stuff.

That being said, there was some stuff I was kind of bored with or seemed out of place, but other than that it kept me intrigued and I found myself wanting to start reading more of Red Hood.  Having not read too much of Jason as Red Hood or Robin this was a good introduction.