I don’t know where I got it into my head that Red Hood: The Hill, even if a sequel to the previous works by writer Christopher Priest and artist Shawn Martinbrough, took place specifically in the aftermath of Jason Todd’s key role in Batman/Catwoman: The Gotham War. It doesn’t, as a matter of fact, and I’m not even turning up DC publicity materials that say so, so I guess that’s just my mistake.

DC’s mistake, in collecting now-writer Martinbrough’s two issues of the Red Hood series (formerly Red Hood and the Outlaws and Red Hood: Outlaw) before its cancellation in 2021 and then the six-issue Red Hood: The Hill miniseries in 2024, was not also including Priest and Martinbrough’s Batman: The Hill special from 2000. Because then, if Red Hood: The Hill is outside the present moment (if not outside continuity entirely) and also barely a Red Hood story, at least it would be a full recounting of Priest and Martinbrough’s decades-long “Hill” project. Without Batman: The Hill (which has never been collected), Red Hood: The Hill lacks its first chapter and most of its context, and that’s an additional drag on a book that has other problems of its own.