This past week, DC rolled out quite a few of their new “team” books as part of the 52 relaunch, and the groups cover a span of the familiar and the new, all designed to keep old readers and intrigue new ones with different groups paired with the traditional.For example, this week’s offering of the new Red Hood and the Outlaws with the familiar Green Lantern Corps.Let us not forget Legion of Super-Heroes alongside a newly designed and led Birds of Prey. The results are pretty mixed, and so far, few of the team books have been all that great.My favorite so far has pretty much been Justice League International. Even in Justice League of America #1, the team wasn’t even fully formed yet, so we really can’t count that one at this time.With a trail of mixed results so far, the four team books covered here run quite the gamut of effectiveness.Red Hood and the Outlaws is up first, and this title gets off on some awkward footing.The three characters we see the most of in this issue, Red Hood, Speedy (Roy Harper) and Starfire, seem to have varying degrees of one-dimensionality, but Starfire takes the cake.It’s amazing how a character with as long and as rich a history as this alien from the planet Tamaran has been reduced to little more here than a powerful “pair of 38s” as Jason Todd calls her. It’s a bit of a groaner of a joke that doesn’t redeem the value of the series any, as Starfire’s “38s” are well on display.The overly simple sexuality felt off-putting, and I would have thought the same thing had the brainless “sex character” been a male. There’s a lot of action to the series, and the opening sequence involving Harper getting busted out of prison is kinda cool, but overall this issue felt very vague and flat for an opening issue of what could be a very powerful super-team.There’s no thought to Starfire, Jason Todd mumbles about some shadowy and vague villains that we have no clue about, and the whole thing just reads as the opening credits of an action show.Kenneth Rocafort’s art is great, but otherwise, nothing feels too bold and new so far.Grade: D+
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