Batman Urban Legends #1

So this series is supposed to start a new direction for Red Hood. Can't say I'm excited since there have already been so many broken promises and false starts. But I'd be lying if I said wasn't a little excited about this series.

SPOILERS AHEAD

From least interesting to most.

Outsiders The Caretaker

This is the story that I kept forgetting about. It's not bad but I feel like I missed out on too much of the plot. Maybe that will be fixed in the next chapters? I know enough about the characters to understand things like their powers but I don't think newcomers will.

Harley Quinn New Roots

Harley has been overused to the point she annoys me and I'm indifferent to her romance with Ivy. It's better than her relationship with Joker but it's hard for me to be invested when I don't care for Harley. This story is written well enough and seems to be setting up the new status quo for the characters. I'm not a fan of either becoming heroes or anti heroes though, especially not Harley. In different media she's tormented and tortured Robins so it's hard for me to buy a redemption arc much less her being besties with the family. It also makes the bats look bad for letting her work with them like it's no big deal when they treat Jason like crap when he does nothing wrong.

So if you like the character, romance and the new direction you'll like this story. If not you can skip it.

The Long Con

I enjoyed this story, Grifter/Cole was a fun lead to follow. While I'm sure it will be explained later on I'm a little confused by two bits of the plot. 

1) Cole is someone that's good at lying and being a con artist right? I haven't read the character before but I think that should be a given because of his codename. Yet he never fools Batman with his lies and he can never come up with a good lie for Lucius Fox. He apparently does no research to learn who even works in HR and jumps in before learning who Lucius is working with and who their body guards are.

2) Are Batman and Lucius trying to con him? We know they work together and both know who he is. I can't see Batman going after him and Lucius just shrugging it off.

Red Hood and Batman Cheer

I'm conflicted with this story because there's definitely some nuances that you don't see in a lot of Jason Todd appearances. There's the direct parallels between Jason's childhood and Tyler. Alfred trying to talk some sense into Bruce (though I don't think his wording was always great) and make him realize Jason needs his father not Batman treating him like another criminal. It's great to see Jason being good with kids and being empathetic.

I did like how the cops disliking how kids were wasting their childhood being taught to target practice with guns transitions into Robin Jason being told to target practice with the batarangs. Jason isn't excited about it, he feels like he'll never be perfect like Dick is (something that's also shown in present day when he says he was never the best.) He also seems to want to have an identity of his own as well as his own weapon to use. 

Bruce calls guns a cowards weapon which leads to another transition of him calling Jason in the past to a cop trying to talk a man off a ledge in the present. The man is high on the drug and his happy hallucination is spending time with his dad. It seems like too good a set up to miss between Bruce and Jason later on if one of them gets drugged.

At the same time it's odd to see Bruce back to his "Red Hood is just a killer" mind frame since that sounds more like something he'd say in UTH. I thought they were on okay terms and while I'd be fine with them having problems I'd wish they'd address Bruce's wrongs more than Jason's. Bruce also doesn't seem to mind working with killers like Harley so it's just him giving Jason a hard time for apparently no reason. Plus I'm not sure why Bruce is acting like this when Jason states the compromise for working in Gotham in using rubber bullets. What's the problem then? 

Also why does Jason have a loaded gun when he makes a point of using rubber bullets? According to my online search people can die from rubber bullets but there's a 3% chance. Why does Andy decide to over share his hatred of his family with the Red Hood? It's like that scene in Mandalorian where the Imperial thinks it's a good idea to brag about his people killing everything the person leveling a gun on him loved. Why would you do that? Is there a new trend with writers thinking Jason will just shoot someone who's unarmed? Yeah he might be triggered but I never got the impression Jason was as affected here as he is with his PSTD from Joker. I mean I could see if they struggled for the gun or something. 

I did wonder if he breathed in the uncompleted drug since he gave the muzzle part of his mask to Tyler and drugs are thrown about when he enters the building. I also wasn't a fan of him dragging Tyler with him then leaving him in an alleyway hoping Oracle will save him in time if something goes wrong. It's still early but a lot doesn't make sense right now.