The nature of comics, particularly multigenerational, collaborative comics like those found under the DC banner, is that no two people’s idea of who a character is will be exactly alike. That’s the very thing that makes them special. What it also means is that many characters, especially those whose stories are told across generations, can frequently be misunderstood. And if we’re talking about the Bat-Family, characters don’t come more misunderstood than Jason Todd.
Is he the “angry Robin?” The “failure?” The villain? The mercenary? The punisher? It’s true that he’s been depicted a lot of these ways and more. But there’s another Jason you may miss at a cursory glance. One who feels Gotham City in his soul, and whose rage is always driven by love. When he claims he does the things Batman can’t, it doesn’t just mean firing a gun. To protect his city and the people who resemble the child of the streets he once was, Red Hood does all the things Batman feels he glides above.
We’ve got a new Red Hood #1 out this week. Do you want to get to know the real Jason Todd before you dive in? Then here’s what you’ve got to read.
BATMAN: SECOND CHANCES
The character of Jason Todd technically predates this early post-Crisis Batman story, but this is where the one we know was really born. Max Allan Collins presents a new origin for Jason here growing up as an orphan in Gotham’s back alleys, stealing the tires off the Batmobile as Batman commemorates the anniversary of his parents’ murder.
Batman: Second Chances establishes what may be the most important element of Jason Todd: that unlike anyone else in the Bat-Family, Jason is a character who is deeply affected by the broken system of Gotham City. In rescuing him from Crime Alley, Batman reflects upon Jason as a symbol of the very mission to save the people that the city has failed. No distant manor or traveling circus is Jason Todd’s home. Gotham is his wretched inheritance, and he takes up the red, green and yellow to save it from within.
BATMAN: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
There’s no getting around it. Batman: A Death in the Family is a classic storyline for one reason, and that’s the sheer impact it had on Batman history. You probably already know the story. Jason Todd, the controversial new Robin was put on the chopping block by the Joker. DC editorial put out two phone numbers that readers could call to either spare him or let the Joker get away with it. “Let him die” won by a slim margin of 72 votes. Some, resenting change, missed Dick Grayson in the role. In many cases, voters just went in to see if DC would do it. But the effect it had on Batman was profound, darkening the tone of the series with the death of a child in a way that the series has never truly escaped to this day.
Though many forget this element of the story, it’s important to note that it wasn’t Joker’s crowbar that killed Jason. In the end, Jason had the opportunity to escape. What killed Jason Todd wasn’t Joker’s cruelty, but his own kindness—going back for the mother he never really knew in a warehouse rigged to explode, even after she had betrayed him. And even though no one ever stays dead in comics, A Death in the Family has informed every Jason story told since as the source of his greatest trauma. Imagine Crime Alley, but if the death Bruce couldn't stop reliving was his own. That's Jason Todd.
BATMAN ANNUAL #13, “Faces”
If you’re looking for the best stories set during Jason’s actual tenure as Robin, we would kindly direct you to the work of Max Allan Collins and Mike W. Barr. But the best story about that period was told post-facto, in a Christopher Priest-written Annual set within the depths of Batman’s mourning. A Two-Face encounter told, appropriately, over two different time periods, one in the throes of Jason’s apprenticeship, and one after his passing, “Faces” draws a stark contrast in everything Jason meant to Batman by highlighting his absence. (It can be read on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE as a part of this collection.)
BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD
We’re going to say something a little controversial here. If you really want to experience the one essential Red Hood story, don’t read the comic—watch the movie. The screenplay is by the original writer, and it cleans up a lot of rough edges around the original. The heart is the same, though.
With his unlikely (at least, from Batman’s point of view) return from the dead, Under the Red Hood is the defining statement on Jason Todd’s character: one who understands that crime is a part of Gotham City and waging a war against it is always a losing one. But if you speak to the city and deal with it on its own terms, you can make it into something better than it ever was before. The Red Hood kills, yes, but those kills are always in service of a greater goal—one that clears the (in his eyes) irredeemable tyrants of the underworld from the deck to build something kinder that can coexist with Gotham’s citizens. Is it the correct way to save Gotham? We’re not saying that. But what we are saying is that Red Hood, at his most interesting, presents an alternate approach to the problems that Batman has never solved.
RED HOOD: THE LOST DAYS
Red Hood: The Lost Days is a 2010 companion piece to Under the Red Hood that fills in a little bit of the missing gaps. If Jason was secretly resurrected shortly after A Death in the Family, then what was he doing in the interim?
The answer feels a little bit like Arrow, ahead of its time, as we follow a resurrected Jason under the training of Talia al Ghul, acquiring the skills and experience to operate as an independent agent. In the process, Jason develops a morality and ethos all his own and the will to do what Batman won’t. These are the fires by which Jason Todd was forged into the Red Hood.
BATMAN: URBAN LEGENDS #1-6, “Cheer”
If Red Hood isn’t necessarily a villain, then what does his relationship with Batman look like? “Cheer,” from the first six issues of the Batman: Urban Legends anthology title, is the best answer to that question we’ve had to date.
Directly engaging with the evolution of Jason’s character from his early childhood to his independence as a vigilante, this story where Batman and the Red Hood mutually chase down the source of a dangerous new drug highlights just how the two might coexist, even when they don’t see eye-to-eye. That balance of love, tension and an opposition of ideals is all too common in a modern family dynamic, and Batman works best as it heightens that drama.
TASK FORCE Z
One thing a lot of people miss about Jason? He’s supposed to be fun. This is a kid whose sheer audacity made Batman bust up laughing the first time they met. With his involvement in this ersatz zombie Suicide Squad, Task Force Z didn’t skip that memo. It’s a book with humor, action, drama and a deeply cathartic story following Tom King’s run on Batman, where Bane—now an undead member of Jason’s team—killed Alfred Pennyworth, the only member of his family who Jason was open with. “Do you know why I’m doing this?” still sends chills up our spine.
And if you like this one, do yourself a favor and follow Jason on to The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing. Even for the Joker-skeptical, there’s plenty of good Hood.
BATMAN: WAYNE FAMILY ADVENTURES
Here’s a question often fantasized about by Jason Todd fans: what would Jason be like if he were allowed to heal? Given the space to process his trauma and be welcomed by his family, could he overcome everything he’s been through and come to an understanding with his foster father and siblings?
Wayne Family Adventures, the smash hit series on WEBTOON and DC GO!, provides a possible answer, with Jason as arguably the strongest emotional driver in the series. In WFA, Jason gets to be the rebel, the middle child and even the prankster. But he’s also given something we rarely find elsewhere: a support system in which to feel his feelings. Perhaps this Jason isn’t one we can ever truly know in the “main” continuity, but it does provide an enlightening, hopeful window to what one day might be. You know, if everything could just stop blowing up for five minutes.
Red Hood #1 by Gretchen Felker-Martin and Jeff Spokes is in stores this week.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
