BAT-MONTH CONTINUES - PARTNERS AND ALLIES DAY 2
Originally published at FORTRESS OF BAILEYTUDE. You can comment here or there.
Sorry about the lack of a post on Tuesday and Wednesday, folks. Life got in the way again. I’ll probably make up for it with a post on Saturday and Sunday. Until then the Partners and Allies series continues today with the second Robin, Jason Todd.
Both Jason Todds actually.
So if you have never read this entry before you are probably asking yourself, “Man, that sounds a lot like Dick Grayson’s origin. And it does. That doesn’t mean that Jason was a bad character. After a few issues I really didn’t mind that his origin was a carbon copy of Dick Grayson’s. I liked the dynamic between the new…well…Dynamic Duo. There are a lot of great stories in that run of Batman and Detective Comics before the Jason Todd revamp after Crisis on Infinite Earths and Batman: Year One.
After finally getting to read the whole Post-Crisis/Pre-Death Jason Todd run I found I really liked this take on Robin. This Jason was different and that led a more adversarial relationship between Batman and Robin which I found fascinating. Apparently a bunch of people felt differently and when DC gave the audience a choice whether Jason would live or die they chose to let him die. Part of me is curious what would have happened if the vote had been in Jason’s favor. Would he have been sidelined and returned to the role later? Would they have created Tim Drake anyway and have Jason take on another identity? We’ll never know the answers to those questions but it sure is fun speculating.
You haven’t asked this question but I am going to pretend that you did. “Mike,” you say, “What did you think of DC bringing Jason back?” I’ll be honest; the original story that Judd Winick wrote to bring the character back was damn good and I liked it quite a bit. Everything else done with the character after that was, as my friend Andrew Leyland would say, pants. Really and truly the character could have disappeared after that initial storyline and I would have been a happy reader. I did enjoyed the animated Batman: Under the Red Hood film that was released in 2010. The story was solid and the action was pretty good too. There were some wonky elements to the movie but the voice cast more than made up for that.
And thus my very brief look at Jason Todd comes to an end. Come back tomorrow as I cover my favorite of all the Robins…Tim Drake!
More to follow…