posted
I do not like Jason Todd, I've admitted this before. I don't like him because I still see no value in him being alive currently. Jeph Loeb was the one who brought him back, not Judd Winnick, but Winnick was the one who confirmed that it was indeed Jason and not Clayface who screwed with Bruce in "Hush". All Jason seems to function as is the wound that did not heal in Batman's life, and every time he pops up it's like pouring lemon juice and vinegar in the wound.
I wanted to say all this because the OCD freak in me would still like to get a couple of sketches of Jason in his very first circus outfit, and his Flashpoint outfit, so I wanted to voice my views on him and expand, rather than say "I hate him" and look like a hypocrite.
Jason Todd, from my point of view, kills not just because he believes it gets results, but because choosing not to kill is a form of self-control, and he's tired of self-control. He's still the same angry Robin who is lashing out at the world, and he thinks it's for a good cause since he's ridding the world of "evil".
Jason does not actually want to be close to people because it hurts him too much. He found his birth mother and it led to his death. She betrayed him to the Joker and he got savagely beaten with a crowbar. But what people keep forgetting, is that the Joker's beating didn't kill Jason. The bomb did. And still, he tried to save his mom after the Joker left and he died for his troubles. Simply put, being "good" did not pan out for Jason.
And then he came back and, okay, his mental state may have been slightly corrupted because he was in the Lazarus Pit at the same time as Ra's al Ghul. But then he learns his surrogate father figure still hasn't killed the Joker, and he sees this as a form of betrayal. It's not that Bruce failed to save him, but that he's had multiple chances to get rid of the Joker and he's chosen not to.
Jason flip-flops from your standard 90s anti-hero to a villain in denial. He believes his way gets results and he wants to usurp his former father figure because he can't stand the idea that he's wrong and nothing he does as the Red Hood is actually making a difference in the world. Because, if Jason is indeed wrong, it means that he's a failure just as he was as Robin right up to the end.
One of the few stable connections Jason ever formed was with the Challengers of the Beyond (or whatever that team was called) and Scarlet. Of course DC chooses to believe Countdown never happened because it was a clusterfudge of confused writing. With Scarlet, well, he seemed to have formed a genuine emotional connection with her and didn't deny it. Tony Daniel said Jason crossed the line in Battle of the Cowl, but Morrison's writing was contrary to that belief. Winnick also presented something similar, but I think he's invested too much in Jason at that point to stop presenting him as redeemable. In Scarlet Jason saw himself as Robin, and even though he aimed her towards his style of crime fighting, he tried to be supportive to her and protective.
Then Flashpoint happened.
In this Flashpoint world, Jason fell into the wrong crowd and his life was generally a mess up until he briefly died and came back. I take this as Jason saying he was clinically dead but saved by medics. Jason managed to turn his life around after that. He found religion and became a priest in Gotham, and seemed to be a better person for the experience. Jason did not have Bruce in this world because Bruce was killed as a child. This seems to say that the only thing holding Jason back from being a truly good human being is either his surrogate father figure or the feeling of resentment and anger he has towards him.
Then the Reboot happened.
Scott Lobdell said that they're trying to move Jason away from Bruce and Gotham, despite the fact that he is WEARING A BIG RED BAT on his chest, and is associating himself with one of Dick Grayon's former teammates and ex-girlfriend, whom he his implied to have slept with. I'm not going to discuss this whole "All Caste" thing because quite frankly that feels like Lobdell's attempt at making Jason more interesting by ramming some mystical secret society into his post-death backstory, so the fans can overlook that he came back because Superboy-Prime punched a wall.
I see Jason in this new continuity as forming a team with Roy and Starfire because given the fact that Starfire (okay possibly) has some memory problem and doesn't exactly have a clear sense on human beings, and to him Roy's a complete idiot with horrible self esteem, he has a team that he's able to form a connection to that's not actually emotional, but more a sense of control because he's got a grasp on them. This makes him more of a hypocrite because he doesn't believe in control, and sort of reminds me of Deathstroke.
Lobdell doesn't seem to realize that Jason is still emulating Bruce and his family but wearing the bat symbol and associating himself with Dick's former friends. He's undermining his, or his editors, own efforts at establishing Jason away from Gotham by placing the title under the "Bat" heading anyway. Lobdell's digging his own grave.
I believe Jason actually does still blame Bruce for his death but admitting it would make him more of a spoiled brat then he lets on. He believes that Bruce's methods have failed because they allow people like the Joker to live. But in a way, if Bruce had decided to kill the Joker at any earlier point in time, Jason and his mother would not have been killed. The same said for all the other people who've suffered thanks to the Joker, such as, well, pretty much anyone associated with the Bat.
He gave away his most cherished memory of Bruce at the end of Red Hood #3. He doesn't want to admit that part of him still cares because it hurts too much. Caring got him killed. He's not a gleefully murdering psychopath, well not all the time, but he doesn't care about killing people to achieve a means to an end. He does have the capacity to care, whether consciously or unconsciously, but for the most part he'll ignore it.
Jason is still just an angry child lashing out at his father figure. He had another chance at life and he's wasting it. Jason is just willingly chipping away at his emotional well being and his soul and he's not going to stop until there's nothing but a bat-shaped void left.
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
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