Top 10 Shocking Red Hood Facts
Jason Todd has NOT had it easy.
He’s had a troubled childhood.
He was murdered by the Joker.
He was thrown in Arkham Asylum.
Yet despite all the violence, his intentions were to always put an end to evil.
And while these days he’s on the anti-hero track and seemingly doing a bit better, it’s
hard to not take a look at his past and cringe at the fact that this character has gotten
quite the rough treatment from DC.
So today, we’re exploring some of that with the top 10 shocking red hood facts.
We’ll be talking about facts that have to do with Jason Todd in general, from his earlier
days as Robin to his later days as Red Hood.
So with that in mind, let’s jump in!
10 His Creation Let’s start this list off with a little
bit of publication history context.
When editor Len Wein started at DC in 1982, Batman sales were at a record low.
Realizing that this was because of Dick Grayson’s departure to the Teen Titans, it was decided
that a replacement Robin should be created.
Introducing Jason Todd, who just so happened to be a clone of Grayson, from appearance
to origin story.
He was initially popular until revamped after Crisis on Infinite Earths - fans started to
hate him.
Which is what led to then Batman editor Denis O’Neil suggesting the audience having more
influence on the creative process of Batman’s story in 1988’s A Death in the Family arc
that led to Jason’s death.
But more on that later.
9 Strawberry Blonde Moving on to a more superficial fact, did
you know that upon his introduction, Jason Todd was a strawberry blonde?
He would later dye his hair black after being presented with a Robin costume of his own,
but prior to this, the blonde hair was the only thing that really distinguished him physically
from Dick Grayson, since they were otherwise identical.
8 His Parents Were Killed By Killer Croc When we first met Jason in 1983, he was the
son of circus acrobats who were killed by Killer Croc.
This was later changed to Jason having grown up in Crime Alley, with his mother having
died of a drug overdose causing him to live on the streets, while his father had disappeared
after becoming a hired muscle for Two Face.
7 The Red Hood Mantle Jason isn’t the first hero to adopt the
Red Hood alias.
The first Red Hood, according to the original continuity in which the character initially
appeared, was a lab worker trying to pull off a heist, but it cornered, so he dove into
a vat of chemicals to get away.
While the Red Hood helmet saved his life, the chemicals still had their way with him,
permanently disfiguring him into the man we now know as the Joker.
This was later retconned with Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, with the man who would become
the Joker helping the Red Hood gang for some much needed cash by guiding them through the
chemical plant he worked at, but they are thwarted by Batman, but the joker to be still
jumps into the chemical vat, disfigures himself and goes insane because of it.
6 Stealing Batman’s tires Post Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jason Todd’s
origin story changed, becoming much different than Dick Grayson’s.
But more on why that happened later.
Anyway, this time around he’s introduced as a kid living on the streets, who Batman
first meets when he catches him trying to steal his tires of the Batmobile in Crime
Alley.
5 Watch Jason Todd’s Death You can watch Jason’s death in Batman Arkham
Knight with the Batman Arkham VR.
Yep, that’s dark.
4 Redefined Editors at DC felt that Jason and Dick Grayson
were too similar, so when DC was reboot some of it’s titles after Crisis on Infinite
Earths, Jason underwent some character adjustments in order to better define him as an individual
separate from his Robin predecessor, including the origin story with Batman’s tires we
mentioned earlier.
This included making him edgier, and giving him a bit of a mean streak, and gone was the
natural athleticism and acrobatic skills, now replaced by ‘channeling his rage’
to fight crime - which, lucky for us, translated well into his Red Hood days, and helped make
him the complex, interesting and sometimes disturbed character he is today, especially
when it comes down to his tumultuous relationship with Batman.
But at the time, fans didn’t like this version of Robin, and thus began his unpopular streak.
3 Felipe Speaking of that mean streak, here’s a prime
example of that.
Felipe Garzonas was a serial rapist who had gotten away with his crimes due to his father’s
connections.
Jason wasn’t cool with this.
He hunted him down, and by the time Batman arrived on the scene, Felipe was already dropping
from the top of a building.
While Jason said he slipped and fell, I think his body language in the panel says otherwise,
and Bats always assumed Jason was lying about what really happened on that balcony.
2 He’s a sketchy murderer, too Alright, so perhaps Jason didn’t kill Felipe.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
But fret not!
Because he’s still homicidal, and still super sketchy about it.
It’s one thing to kill your foes in a fight, it’s another to Olena Tyrell them.
When it was revealed that Jason was alive, part of his training to prepare him to kill
Batman led him to be mentored by a german man named Egon, who turned out to be running
a child sex slave ring on the side.
Jason is like nope and kills him, but does it by poisoning him.
Turns out he digs poison, because when he ends up in Arkham Asylum after the events
of Flamingo, he poisons the cafeteria food, causing 82 inmates to die.
1 Why He Died Jumping back to Dennis O’Neil’s audience
influence suggestion here.
In 1988 O’Neil had convinced DC President Jenette Khan that using a telephone poll via
a 1-900 number to help influence a major decision in the Batman series was a good idea, and
not wanting to waste it on a small even, O’Neil settled on using it to let fans decide what
Jason Todd’s fate would be.
He said, I quote “The logical candidate was Jason because we had reason to believe
that he wasn’t that popular anyway.”
And in the A Death in the Family story arc, fans got to choose whether or not to let Jason
live or die after he was beaten up by the Joker and left to die via a bomb.
5271 people voted to keep him alive, and 5343 voted to kill him - a 72 vote difference.
O’Neil would later admit that they had discovered one caller had programmed a computer to call
the line, accounting for approximately 320 of the death votes.
Frank Miller commented on the event by calling it “the ugliest thing I’ve seen in comics,
and the most cynical.”
There we have it friends!
How do you guys feel about Jason Todd?
Love him, hate him, don’t really care?
Well, let us know your thoughts in those comments below.
But for now I’ve been Kelly Paoli for top 10 nerd, and I’ll catch you all in the next
one.