Creative Staff:
Story: Duane Swierczynski
Art: Michael Gaydos
What They Say:
The Black Hood is supposed to be dead. Shot, de-masked, autopsied, buried. So who’s running around town in a ratty black hood, declaring war on the underworld? The City of Philadelphia is electrified by the fleeting glimpses they see on social media — but both the cops and the drug gangs want him stopped at all costs. However, the new Black Hood may not have to be stopped. He’s coming unglued all on his own…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The journey that Greg Hettinger is on in the Black Hood has been a curious one to be sure with what it does, as it’s going for real world gritty in a pretty grim but engaging way. Standing on its own, there’s been a lot to like because of its oppressive tone as you really feel like you can understand Hettinger with what he’s doing, why he’s doing it and exactly how he feels. The opening page of this issue has this striking visual of him laying in bed with the vision of the mask on the wall behind him, done in such a rough form with beautiful dark colors that it’s the kind of piece that almost swallows you up in seeing how it’s put together. And that highlights Hettinger’s position at this point as he’s becoming more and more consumed by the Black Hood, though he’s starting to use it in better, smarter ways.
This installment has to deal with what we were left with, which was Hettinger getting busted for all the drugs that he had on him. It’s one of those setup situations where you know that an out was designed for it, but you get curious as to which out. This one makes a lot of sense as his union rep lawyer makes it clear that he was set up by some drug dealer that he likely busted at some point and it doesn’t take more than a few hours to get him released. Of course, that gets him desk duty and we see the kind of strain it is to be in that position, going from hero cop to zero cop in the eyes of others – many corrupt themselves – and how even in a big city his name means nothing now after what had been done before. It’s a crushing sequence overall that’s really driven home with how it impacts him as he withdraws. But, we also see it giving him purpose.
And that’s to go after whoever it was that framed him, but doing so as the Black Hood since he can go deeper and harder than others, especially since he can’t do anything as a cop anymore. There’s a lot of gritty material here as he focuses on this, but it pays off in other ways as we see him getting off the pills for the most part, working his speech therapy and getting back in physical shape so that he can really excel as the Black Hood. His focus is singular at first in dealing with the framing, but along the way the cop side of his nudges out more and more and we see him dealing with a host of criminal activity as well. This earns him some positive vibes from some quarters, as vigilante are oft to do, but we also see that those in power are questioning whether the real Black Hood died, and if he did, who this is. That sets more in motion for Hettinger to deal with later, but just seeing the positives of his being like a man possessed here is thoroughly engaging.
In Summary:
Black Hood continues to be a tough read in a good way because you become so in the mindset of the title character that it can be quite dominating. Hettinger’s story here works through some familiar things as he hits bottom and starts to crawl out, but it’s a crawling out that has him crawling into the hood instead to find out who this new version of him will be. As time goes on, it’ll be easy to see that Hettinger becomes the mask while the Black Hood is the real him, and since he gets to deal with the things he never could as a cop in a primal kind of justice way, following that path is going to be very enticing considering the results that he gets. This installment puts us further on that path and it’s very, very well done across the board as a solid piece of crime fiction with vigilante aspects.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Circle Comics
Release Date: April 22nd, 2015
MSRP: $3.99