Red Hood #1: Jason Todd Goes Noir

Jason Todd is often well served operating outside the Bat-family, and that’s exactly where Red Hood #1 puts him–far outside the Bat-family and Gotham, in the city of New Agelique, a New Orleans stand-in right down to an analogue to the French Quarter. In doing so, Jason is able to expand beyond just another masked anti-hero.

Felker-Martin seeks to turn Jason into a protagonist straight out of a noir and hardboiled detective story in Red Hood #1. It’s important to keep in mind that these are separate concepts. Jason is particularly at home as a character in hardboiled fiction. The style emphasizes moral ambiguity, which is already built into Jason’s DNA. Such characters, primarily detectives, usually have an inherent toughness and lack of sentimentality. Red Hood #1 allows these qualities, which Jason already has, to shine.

New Angelique offers an ideal template for Red Hood #1’s noir qualities. Though not urban, this New Orleans stand-in is gritty, its weather stifling and oppressive. A dark, almost pessimistic subtext is woven into much of what Jason says about the city. New Angelique’s moral ambiguity marries well with Jason’s.

The internal monologue Felker-Martin writes for Jason is fully at home in this style of story. Hardboiled fiction almost requires a first person point of view to emphasize the protagonist’s attitudes within the story. Jason’s internal monologue sounds like it could have been lifted from any hardboiled detective story.

Contributing to New Angelique’s oppressive nature are the color choices Spokes makes for it. The sky is red much of the time, lightening merely to a faded gold during the day. Jason comments on the heat, and this coloring certainly reinforces that. This color scheme also distinguishes New Angelique as a distinct location.

Spokes draws Jason as a perpetually angry character. It’s not just that he never smiles. His face wears a scowl much of the time–that is, when he’s not shouting in fury. As with the coloring of New Angelique, this depiction of Jason plays into his overall cynicism and moral relativism. It seems that, despite leaving Gotham, in this place and this story, Jason will still find no happiness.

The Red Hood costume plays into this depiction of Jason. By slipping the black eye cover on or off, he can transform from Jason to Red Hood and back again. Jason and Red Hood come across as the same person, not divided into two personas. He can be a fighter and a detective at all times–ceaselessly on the job because he has nothing else.

Red Hood #1 isn’t text heavy per se, but the issue employs a lot of smaller panels, many of them thin and wide. Carey does a good job keeping caption boxes and dialogue bubbles out of the way of the action–not an easy feat at times. Her choices for sound effects are effective, especially the “BLAM’s” for gunshots. Carey gives each character’s gunshot its own color (and in Jason’s case, makes it merely a high contrast white outline). It’s an effective way to separate characters in the middle of a gunfighting scrum.