Working on “Red Hood and the Outlaws” is a special experience for Soy as it pairs him with writer Scott Lobdell.

“I hardly buy comics,” he shockingly says in the vernacular for someone in his profession. “We don’t have comic book shops in Pangasinan so I had to make do with what there was… hand-me-downs, second hand copies.”

“And that first comic I got was Uncanny X-Men that featured the art of Joe Madureira who is such a big influence on me (along with Humberto Ramos),” said Soy. Madureira drew the then popular comic for three years before opting to do his own creator work, “Battle Chasers” for the Cliffhanger imprint of Wildstorm Studios in Image Comics. “The writer of those X-Men stories that Joe drew was Scott Lobdell.”

The two got to work together on a couple of issues of Red Hood/Arsenal for DC last year and when both learned they’d be working together at least for six issues of the new title, it was a welcome development. “So working on the character of Red Hood isn’t difficult because I previously worked on him. The challenge for both of us is elevating the character to a bigger platform.”

The character of Red Hood was a petty thief who incidentally was initially the Joker before he became deranged and psychotic. The persona was later adopted by Jason Todd, the former Robin who was controversially “killed off” in the now classic “Death in the Family” story that ran in “Batman” #426-429 in 1988-89. The story was controversial because DC Comics gave readers a chance to have a say in the fate of the character through a special phone-in 1-900 number that cost 50 cents. The finally tally of 5,343 versus 5,271 saw a thumbs down for the character. The “comics death” received a lot of media attention especially from the mainstream press.

“Hopefully, we can tell some really good stories,” underscored Soy about Todd.