Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [May, 2012]
Written by: Scott Lobdell
“I Found That Essence Rare – And Deadly!”

“AT LAST! THE RETURN OF ESSENCE!”

Who the good golly goddamn is Essence? I bet she smells. Is that a tattoo on her head or did she have a really botched lobotomy

“It’s not like I don’t know the difference between right and wrong,” Jason narrates. “It’s just that sometimes wrong is easier.”

Amen, brother. Wrong is more fun sometimes, too! A prison doctor WHO LOOKS STRIKINGLY LIKE Jason Todd is approving the release of a very dangerous criminal, warning the signer of the release form that the patient needs to be heavily sedated at all times lest he be VIOLENT and ANGRY and INTERESTED IN WATCHING THE MASKED SINGER. This guy is supposed to be transferred to a new prison, but that ain’t happenin’. I’d bet my shitty, ragged copy of Red Hood and the Outlaws Issue #7. In fact, I’ll bet it right now!

Final Thoughts

Just kidding! Oh how I wish. Anyway, Jason explains a perfect example of doing wrong for easier reasons! “Breaking into Arkham Asylum to drop off a homicidal maniac with enough doctored paperwork to keep Crux sedated for the rest of his life.” Crux, as you may remember, wanted Kori dead because he injected himself with alien DNA and fucked himself all up to high heaven. Jason Todd didn’t take too kindly to that, since Kori is his orange bone buddy and everything. “Life sentence it is. Sucks to be Crux.”

After Jason drops the hapless loser off, he removes his doctor clothes and steals Crux’s spaceship. Perfect timing! Because *exposition dialogue*.

Jason is caught in a war between the Untitled and the All-Caste. Isn’t that interesting?!? What do you mean “absolutely not”? How dare you?

Final Thoughts

loool.

Kori is not happy with Jason and I don’t remember why! “Tread carefully, Fearless-Not-Leader,” chimes in Roy. “Turns out Tamaraneans have curse words for body parts I’ve never heard of.”

Oh, ok, Kori didn’t want to send Crux to a mental institution for the rest of his life and I don’t remember why! Oh, ok. Because Kori wanted him dead. Not alive! Clearly this is a horrible snub of justice.

“I’ll make you a promise–” Jason promises. “When he get to your planet you can kill anyone you want.”

Meh. Fine.

Roy’s piloting this spaceship, which isn’t actually going to get them into space. So that’s useless, but look on the bright side! This thing is cool as hell, man! “She’s got a cloaking device, omni-satellite detection and deflection tech, promethium self-replicating energy cells, and vertical take-off and landing.” Yeah, and it’ll suck your dick too if you pay it $45.

Red Hooded Jason wants to go find Crux’s laboratory. There’s probably a lot of cool stuff there, like robots and meth. Good thing there’s this cool button on the console that allows you to say words and it’ll find existing transmission recordings between any two locations in any part of Earth. There are even all the transmissions between Batman’s fancy Star Trek insignia and, like, everything he ever radioed with it. This would have been very useful in the past for Jason Todd to really fuck with Batman, but he’s really grown up in the last few days. He’s got better things to worry about, like fondling Kori’s various private parts and/or avenging Ducra’s death.

Essence appears in a “black cloud formation” right in front of their ship. I can’t believe I forgot who Essence was, but I suppose we haven’t seen her since way back in Issue #1. She’s the one that told Jason about all the evil things the Untitled have been up to. And – maybe I knew this already – she was kind of a buddy under Ducra’s wing at the same time.

Jason is the only one who can actually see this black cloud formation, which wafts into the ship and becomes the black Essense formation. Actually, never mind, she’s pretty white. And with an abundance of eye shadow. “Jason, I have spoken to the Shadow Wall. It has been written that you slayed the Untitled who was responsible for felling our teachers,” Essence smirks. Red Hood is like “yeah, bitch, that’s right.”

“Why is he talking to himself?” Kori whispers.
“It doesn’t matter. Focus on your boredom,” Roy responds.

More Jason Todd narration lets us know that he and Essence were also fuck buddies back in the day. Jason Todd sure gets around, doesn’t he? He gets more action than Bruce, it seems. “She was the first time I felt alive – felt anything real – in a very long time.”

“I’m sorry for not killing you a long time ago – when you first betrayed the All-Caste!” Jason spits at his old “friend”. “But you made me believe you were innocent.”

Yeah, well, you’re a danged fool. Jason unsheaths a very long orange sword and points it at Essence’s throat. Essence implores him to listen to her! She would never betray him! Not really! Jason means a lot to her! Watch! *cries a little*

No way, Jose. Jason Todd has been played like a fiddle. Ever since she showed up again, he has been used! She wanted him to start tracking down Untitled and killing them.

I personally fail to see why this might be a problem. “We both know that an All-Blade can only be drawn in the face of absolute evil, Essence,” he says, continuing to hold his long orange All-Blade. She begs him to lighten up. He will not lighten up! Not today! “Before I kill you… I want the truth. Someone betrayed the All-Caste, by walking the Untitled through the monastery’s defenses.” There are only two people who could’ve done this: Ronald Reagan, and Essence! And Ronald Reagan is fucking dead!

Roy and Kori continue looking at Jason — who is waving his sword in the air willy-nilly — with slight concern. Finally, Kori notices the wisps of black smoke.

It’s Essence’s turn to be petulant. This Jason Todd NOBODY was deemed special enough to be the only human taken in by the All-Caste in about 100 years, so obviously Ducra was losing her marbles thinking that he was capable of destroying the Untitled, let alone tie his own shoes.

Now Essence can be seen by the other two, who are a little bit freaked out at this wispy witchy woman. This wispy witchy woman who suddenly gets mad enough to break Jason’s All-Blade, which is supposed to be impossible. She conjures up more strong, smoky wisps. “You have no idea the sacrifices I have made in my own battle against the Untitled! Unlike you, I wasn’t able to walk away from my responsibilities after I was cast out of the All-Caste.”

“There are few things scarier than Essence when she loses her temper,” Jason thinks casually as he gets wrapped up in a giant, smoky fist. It was never about choice with Essence like it was with Jason. It was about legacy, or something equally stupid.

Essence begins telling a boring tale about the Untitled before they were the Untitled. They were a clan of stinky cavemen. A clan of stinky cavemen playing with a strange pool of wispy black smoke. The “churning waters of absolute evil”. They all look like they’re grunting at it bemusedly. The womenfolk are kind of sexy, as it turns out.

The oldest of the clan took it upon himself to bravely reach down deep into well of bubbling, black, pudding-like evil. He liked it! And he convinced his brothers and sisters to drink deep from the inky blackness. It tasted like licorice, which sounds good if that’s your thing. I like licorice!

“The darkest energy in the world emerged from the Earth as if from the very depths of the planet’s soul.” Yes, I get it. Black liquid = bad. “One by one, it entered all those who were there – starting with the weakest and building in ferocity with each of the nine souls it consumed!”

Guess who was there? That dead 9,000,000-year-old Ducra. She was defiant and refused to drink deep from the blackness, etc. Essence knows this because she was also there that day. Elder forced the wisps of smoke into Ducra’s body. She knows this because she is Ducra’s daughter. “I was there when my mother Ducra became forever linked to the Untitled.”

Jason cannot believe this horseshit!

Kori is getting so damn bored. She wants to kill things again, so she gets up and says she’s bored with Essence now and she wishes she wouldn’t threaten to harm Jason Todd. So she blasts Essence across the ship with a FWESH of violet light. “Your flames mean little to one who was once imprisoned in the black heart of Trigon!” Essence scoffs like a nerd. Trigon sounds like a Star Wars jail.

Roy tells Kori to, like, not blast fire in the ship anymore. “I’ll be lucky if we can stabilize before we crash!” he whines. “My mildest of apologizes,” Kori responds.

Kori mistakes the smoldering pile of embers as Essence, but she’s actually the smoke. I knew this, but Kori wasn’t paying attention to important shit like “this lady in black is trying to murder people”. Essence wisps herself up and kicks Kori in the back of the neck. “That is the problem with the lot of you – humans and aliens alike! You only see the world the way you believe it to be… and not the way it truly is! Is it any wonder the people of my race have often thought of you as little more than cattle?”

Moo!

Jason doesn’t want Essence to harm the orange one. Keep it between her and him, man. Essence says “no”. Jason pulls out guns and shoots his guns all over the place and says “yes”.

This Essence lady is starting to get a little bit ticked off now. Don’t these cattle know that she cannot be harmed by nothin’? Not any weapons made by men at least! Idiots! Small-minded nimrods! Reality TV fans! Well, Roy Harper’s flaming arrows weren’t made by men! They were made by elves and Martians. FWIP FWIP FWIP FWIP. No luck! Essence isn’t fleshy and corporeal enough for these flaming arrows to work, dimwit! Ha ha ha haaa!!

Roy may be stupid, but he ain’t dumb! Well, Roy is pretty fucking dumb, but at least he can aim his bow with the best of them. FWIP. “Stop, you are just embarrassing yourself,” Essence drawls. FWIP FWIP. She sends him crashing through some glass. Roy’s down for the count. Who cares, he’s useless.

Jason Todd’s brain gets an idea. “No weapon made by man…” he thinks, brain chugging along about fourteen minutes behind reality. Roy hangs on by a thread over the edge of the craft, ready to plummet about 100 feet. “Thank you, Roy,” Jason thinks. “You distracted her just long enough for me to try the mother of all Hail Marys.”

I’m glad we’ve established at the 11th hour that “the mother of all Hail Marys” will be needed to wrap up this wretched-ass storyline. “Crux was practically a hoarder when it came to otherworldly tech… there has got to be something in one of these crates to help us even the odds!”

If I were a betting man, I’d expect some sort of Space Dildo that he can bat her over the head with.

Roy distracted Essence, now Kori distracted Essence. Perfect, all is going according to this brand new plan that Jason has barely thought of! “Then she screams. A silent scream from the depths of a bottomless soul.”

Maybe he stuck the Space Dildo somewhere else?

Jason is shooting her with a gun that lights up fairly brightly. He has no idea what it does, but his inkling is that it disperses Essence’s molecules and warps them to billions of corners of the universe! That’ll do it! She’s gone! The mother of all Hail Marys!

Pretty fucked up. Doesn’t seem like a proportional response whatsoever.

All the “good” guys are in one piece though, except now Jason has to answer for having an ex who was the daughter of the woman who trained him. I guess that’s something he has to answer for for some reason. Plus, Ducra and Essence were kinda linked to the Untitled and all. Maybe you should stop being such a slut, Jason Todd.

Everyone lived happily ever after! Let’s wrap this up quickly! Jason remembers the flight attendant who gave him her number and pulls out the piece of paper. Booty call time? “I should have tossed it,” he thinks, staring vaguely at a scribble that looks like “Isabel Call Me 368-xnj-Ry1”. I just tried it and it didn’t work! That’s disappointing. “A guy like me has no business talking with a regular person like her. But I dial anyway.”

The wrong thing really is easier. But she doesn’t answer. Oh well.

We end in Gotham City. Suzie Su wakes from a coma, looking beat up and fat. “What did that raven-haired little snot do to me?” she yells into a mirror. She is assured by the doctor that she’ll be fine. “I know I will be,” she snarls, “it’s the rest of this town that is going to suffer if it it doesn’t cough up the Red Hood!”

Final Thoughts – Really This Time

What a cliffhanger! I can’t possibly care less about any of this. I hope someone drops an atomic bomb on all of these people.

Goodbye Red Hood forever. While I need to keep reading this a little bit in order to bump into the Night of the Owls New 52 event, I’ve decided that it can’t possibly be worth it! Perhaps in ten years when I have blissfully pushed all thoughts of how horrible this series is out of my mind, but I hope that its awfulness will be seared into my brain forever.

Easily the worst comic I’ve come across. Move over Mark Waid’s Captain America and New 52 Nightwing, we have a new reigning champion.

The post Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #7 – “I Found That Essence Rare – And Deadly!” first appeared on Tom Writes About Stuff.