It’s dumb. Let’s keep going!

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Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Scott Lobdell
“Cherish Is the Word I Use – To Destroy You!”

Cover art. Jason Todd puts on his Robin suit and starts fighting as Robin? K.

SOMEWHERE IN THE HIMALAYAS IN THE CHAMBER OF ALL. There’s a really gross, small, bald, half-naked baby-faced man sitting with resplendent decadence on some very fluffy pillows and surrounded by hookahs. He looks like he has a harem of 400 women who hate having to fuck this weird 4’ tall man-child adorned in jewelry. I hate how he looks. He looks like he smells bad.

“The little guy here is called S’aru the Proctor,” Todd narrates for us, the captive audience, “Don’t be fooled by his boyish demeanor. S’aru is over four millennia old. Thereabouts.”

Sounds like an awful existence. I’d want to die by the age of 200.

Jason is lucky he was allowed to get within ten feet of this guy. Especially since he has a very big gun, too. Typically, the All-Caste keeps everything and everyone away. Up until a half hour ago, that is. The All-Caste were slain by the Untitled. I still don’t know what either of those things are, so I’m unaffected. Let’s get back to jailbait over here.

“He’s so gonna shoot this kid – you watch,” Roy whispers to Starfire. She tells him to zip it.

Jason Todd narrates and introduction of the three of them again like it’s Issue #1. It ain’t Issue #1. Here’s Issue #1. Don’t bother clicking that.

He’s not here for revenge, at least not yet. What he’s here for is figuring out what the Untitled want so badly as to eliminate the All-Caste in one fell swoop. Also, since Jason was trained by the All-Caste, he feels like… well, revenge is such a strong word ain’t it? I guess you were right.

“Fine,” says Sa’ru as he lifts a finger and produces some blue whispiness, “but I’m responsible for holding onto your most cherished memories as collateral. You can have them back – if you return.”

And, lo’, S’aru takes their most cherished memories. Jason Todd getting reamed by Batman. Koriand’r winning her 7th grade spelling bee. Roy Harper eating a huge pile of McDonald’s hamburgers. “Behind that door,” S’aru points to a door, “everything awaits.” He says this about the door. The door he points to. They have to go through the door now.

“Take a deep breath and hold it,” Todd says about his companions that also went through the door after he went through the door. “The Chamber of All can be a little overwhelming at times.”

Yeah, that’s a fucking understatment. The room looks like a M.C. Escher Clown Circus. “This is your old stomping ground, huh?” Roy asks, looking around in every direction. “No wonder you’re so screwed in the head.”

Yes, yes, ha ha. Jason explains that this place has twisty paths that can lead you anywhere and any time in history that you want to go to. The problem is that he has no idea where or when he’s supposed to go to. Per the Ducra, just start walking somewhere. Good advice. The other two are less than reassured.

Back outside the nexus, as the nightmare room is called, S’aru lazily juggles the three memories in his hand and becomes quite curious at its contents. You mean after four millennia these three blowjobs are interesting enough to breach some rules. Go suck a lemon.

Hmm, well, he’ll just look into Koriand’r’s. She’s an alien so it’s not really against the rules. Maybe there’s some sex stuff in hers, that’s always fun. It takes a while to penetrate the orb, but he eventually succeeds and sees a poor little sad slave girl in shackles trudging through some mud. The most cherished of memories!

A PRISON RUN BY THE CITADEL, CONQUERORS OF THE PLANET TAMARAN. We’re going to see a young Starfire really fuck some shit up, I think. Hoo boy! Buckle up!

A giant blue beast with a giant orange gun tells her to get up after she falls like a damsel in distress. “I was a pod your age once,” he says, likely feigning sympathy. “You should be running free, young princess. I am sorry on behalf of all my people.”

Sounds good, I’m all muddy and sore, but thank you for your sympathy. That and a quarter will buy me a horsey ride at Target. “DROP DEAD YOU SANCTIMONIOUS PUSS,” Koriand’r shouts while shoving her fist in his chest. A bright, magenta light emanates from his chest. His eyes shoot bright beams like headlights. He looks like he’s screaming, but you can’t hear comic books you silly goose! Come on, now.

A few similar beasts step forward and warn her to keep still else ya get a face full of gun bullets.

The end! The memory fades away and S’aru is left with his own thoughts. And it looks like he’s not used to that. “Urp. That was… disturbing. That was her most cherished memory?” he asks with an expression of uneasiness. “Just how screwed up is this trio?”

Ha! Me likey. Back in the chamber, they come across what Todd was looking for. Presumably. The three of them enter a cavern with a lavish walkway. At the end is a pedestal with a glowing artifact. Just like a video game. Scott Lobdell’s inspirations are paper thin.

“How do you know that is what the Untitled who slayed your friends left here, or even why?” Starfire asks, and she’s dumb if she expects a real answer.
“They’re taunting me – leaving bread crumbs I’m sure I’m meant to follow.”

See?

Starfire has a bad feeling about this and urges her companions to get the hell out of here. This is a setup. Roy Harper disagrees, and although he doesn’t want S’aru tonguing his memories invasively, he thinks Starfire is overreacting.

I should start calling Roy by his “superhero” name (and I use the term loosely) so that I can try to start remembering it for reasons that aren’t actually clear to me right now. It’s Arsenal. Jason Todd is Red Hood, that one should be easy to remember! And they’re all Outlaws! Now we’re all on the same page.

Anyway… sure enough, with a SPL-TANG, dozens of jagged, razor-sharp spikes pop up from the floor in a mess of crazy angles. Arsenal and Red Hood hang on, unharmed, to two particularly big ones. It’s up to Koriand’r to scope things out and figure out what’s going on. She’ll put those 7th grade spelling bee skills to good use, I’m sure.

The jagged spikes are actually on the head and back of an enormous, and gross, monster creature. It’s sickly green with green eyes, a head shaped like an Astro Boy Jabba the Hut, a twisty green tongue, and it has large fangs. It looks like MY WIFE, AHH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! gets handed divorce papers

They fight and make their various “witticisms” (and I use the term loosely).

“Untongue me, creature!” Starfire yells after it wraps its awful tongue around her. I think Arsenal heard the same thing the other day. Then it tries to eat here. And then I’m pretty sure it does.

We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming after this. S’aru continues to reek of boredom and decides to pry into Roy Harper’s toilet-jack-off memory. What’s the harm? He already broke one rule. What are they gonna do about it? Kick him out of the Chamber of All? Pfft.

Roy is in a fist fight with a big crocodile on two legs. It’s wearing slacks. They’re exchanging uppercuts and noogity noogs. Roy drops something red and it breaks, I don’t know what it is. The crocodile is wearing slacks.

“S’at all you got?” Roy slurs as he gets beaten up worse than the crocodile.
“Enough boy!” yells the lizard. “Why won’t you stay down?!”

And the answer to that is all “I’m Roy Harper”! And he’s bleeding profusely like a geek.

The crocodile stops. He realizes that Roy Harper wants to die, but he’s too much of a chickenshit to stick his head in the oven, or jump off a bridge, or put rocks in his pockets like Virginia Woolf and walk out into the river. Roy Harper calls it a genius move!

“No,” the crocodile (wearing slacks) responds as he tenderly holds Roy’s shoulders, “‘genius’ would be to pull your head out of your butt and figure out how to get on with your life, Harper.”

“Is this really how you want it all to end? Beaten to death on a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen?” Croc continues. I mean… fuck yeah? By a crocodile? Wearing slacks? That sounds pretty cool.

The reason for Harper’s suicide ideation is that he lost all his shares in Q-Core, and I don’t know what that is but he must have had quite a lot of shares. Enough to kill himself like it’s 1929 or some shit.

Anyway, what a touching moment. I wonder if S’aru is barfing up his 4000-year-old stomach.

After assuring Harper that would love to snap the guy in half at a moment’s notice, he tells Harper to do his own dirty work. “You want to kill yourself? Leave me out of it.”

He’s still holding onto Roy Harper in a nice, warm, cold-blooded embrace. “For a monster…” Roy says woozily, “…you’re not such a bad guy.”

“YOU WON’T THINK OF THAT NEXT TIME WE MEET.”

And…. scene.

I predict that Jason Todd’s precious memory is going to be when Batman tells him that’s proud of him. sniff Batman was always like the dad he never murdered.

Oh my god, S’aru isn’t puking. He actually finds this memory kind of sweet. He has this hazy, smiley look about him. Like 4,000 years of being alive hasn’t made him irrecoverably jaded for some reason.

But he still calls it pathetic. Because even skinny, baby-faced, shirtless, immortal beings gotta get their jabs in one way or another.

Meanwhile, Roy is miffed that this giant, spiky turd-shaped monster ate the hot one, so he’s going to try to save her. “She’ll be ok,” Red Hood assures his pathetic jack-off-memory friend, “Just keep aiming those arrows.”

While havoc continues being wreaked and the room around them continues being crazy and the large, fat monster continues glorping and glooping, Red Hood scales the stalactite-y remnant of a pillar where the pedestal with the glowing artifact sits. He’s almost there…. Almost… he’s gonna make it… just… a… few… more… feet… and…

A snowglobe! A St. Elsewhere snowglobe! Advertising Colorado? Why, that’s one of the most rectangular of the states! The United States!

Roy continues trying to bust Starfire out of the monster’s belly, but she doesn’t need him. She does it herself. “Those were unacceptable accommodations for a princess,” she says while the monster cries in pain from exploded stomach syndrome. And then they boogie on out of there. Roy discusses being emasculated by not being able to actually help, so this is the point where I finally make a decision that Roy sucks. I know, I know, should’ve been a long time ago.

The trio hath boogied. S’aru is quite surprised to see them back, I’m positive that he expected these three to get smeared across the floor like peanut butter on a cracker! And that sounds pretty good right now! So hand back over those sexy, sexy memories!

Before that happens, Red Hood has some questions that need answering! Namely “what the fuck is this snowglobe for, Baldy?” And S’aru does not know. And he hands back over the memories.

Red Hood is salty. He doesn’t want his memory back.

Hey, we end with a scene over at Wayne Manor! Looks like a flashback, perhaps a great memory, of Jason Todd’s stint as Robin. Alfred asks Bruce for some help; Robin has the flu and he looks sad. He’s all geared up and ready to go patrolling with Buddy Batman, but Alfred doesn’t find his involvement in the night’s festivities reasonable. Smack some sense into that kid, Brucey!

Pffft, FUCK you Alfred. Bruce Wayne says he’s coming along, flu or no flu. 105 degree temperature or no 105 degree temperature. Prolapsed anus or… you get the picture. Just kidding! Sit this one out. There will be many more days of clown hunting and penguin snatching and sewer diving. Promise.

“Yes, sir. Hmph.”

So Jason is holed up in the manor with a very red alcoholic’s nose. Oh wait, that’s right, he’s sick. Alfred comes into the room to comfort him, but he doesn’t wanna hear anything that THE BUTLER has to say!

Then a maskless Batman (it’s Bruce Wayne, spoiler alert) enters the room. “Taking a night off once in a while isn’t a crime, Jason,” Bruce says, cozying up next to the 10-year-old on the couch. “So, what are we watching?” he says as they both settle down for an evening of Shasta McNasty on UPN! Look it up.

Jason rests his head on his hero’s shoulder.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, those new Chuck E. Cheese memories are a good replacement! Jason made the right call.

The post Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Cherish Is the Word I Use – To Destroy You!” first appeared on Tom Writes About Stuff.