lol guys i know we all ALREADY KNOW that everything trump and his reps say is garbage nonsense from the pits of Lie Dirt but just in case you are hearing this particular falsity: there has been nowidespread misrepresentation of the numbers at the Inauguration, and PARTICULARLY no exaggeration of the paucity of those numbers as opposed to those at the protest. Ask literally anyone who was physically in this city this weekend. Literally anyone!!!! You could ask a dogwhich day was the Fun Day With All the People and the dog would be like “Raturday, Raggy!” You could ask a five year old DC child “what day was the big day, Friday or Saturday?” and that child would be like “oh Saturday for sure, that was wild, did something happen on Friday?” And you could be like “yes, a neo-Nazi got punched in the face on live TV” and the child would be like “hooray!”
* A pointless rambling of the relationship and parallels between Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd.
Picture this opening scene: There are two boys in a dark alley.
One is dressed in an expensive suit with a tie his dead father helped him with only earlier that evening. His hands are stained red with the same blood now puddled on the grimy cement. His face is in shock.
The second boy is dressed in tattered jeans and hoodie. His hands are stained with tires grease and are clutching a tire iron. His face is in shock.
Decades later, there are two more scenes to consider.
A seriously injured man sits slumped over in his father’s study. Without warning, a bat crashes through the window, and everything falls into place. He now knows what he needs to do.
Elsewhere, an emotionally distraught teenager is curled up into a fetal position on a hotel room floor. Heart wrenching cries can be heard from him. But it is only momentary. He now knows what he needs to do.
These two individuals are Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd. While they are both broken and determined men, Batman is a hero. The Red Hood is not. He is the anti-Batman and this is why.
Two Boys in an Alleyway
Despite similarities in their stories’ early themes and elements, Bruce and Jason came to walk down very different paths. One of justice, and the other vengeance. Batman is determined to protect the innocent and Jason more so on punishing the guilty. Both their ideologies have intrinsic flaws, of course, and will naturally clash often. But this wasn’t always the case.
Before they became a father and son perpetually in mourning for who they once were and what could have been, Bruce and Jason were remarkably similar. The two are cut from the same cloth and Bruce knows this better than anyone else.
In the Dumpster Slasher three-part story line, (Batman #414, #421, #422) Bruce becomes emotional. Violent. He sits in the batcave alone that night and contemplates his emotions.
“Nearly blew it. I let it get too personal. Lost my detachment…nearly lost control. Almost beat Cutter to death. Wouldn’t have been any big loss.”
Only one issue later, at the end of this story arc, Robin is out on the streets and becomes angry when he happens upon a pimp is threatening a prostitute with a knife. Now, I want you to compare his line here to Bruce’s and note what Jim Gordon said to him as well.
Batman: “I think he’s had enough, Robin. What were you trying to do, kill him?” Robin (Jason): “Would it’ve been that big of a loss if I had?”
It is important to note here that Batman is not worried or upset just because Jason roughs up a pimp. That would be hypocritical considering his own earlier actions. If anything, it’s because one of the main reasons Batman even takes in these kids, these ‘robins,’ is because he doesn’t want them to be like him.
And Jason was acting just like him.
Jason can and has screwed up and failed due to his own actions, but it was never the reason Batman became upset with him. His reactions in the comics when Jason does things like running ahead and ‘jumping the gun,’ are more like this:
He either makes a teaching moment out of it or is attempts to understand Jason’s reasons in doing any such thing. When Bruce does become harsh in his discipline, it’s either when he feels as though Jason has endangered his own life or as I said, he acts too much like him.
While there are quite a few more similarities between Bruce and Jason that makes them alike, such as both being introverted and interested in obtaining all sorts of knowledge that they might not even feel is relevant, they are both, at the core of their characters, deeply caring and compassionate people.
The differences only start to show with how they acton it.
The Not-So Dynamic Duo?
“What happened to you as a child, the terror, the pain, the horrors (…) you were broken, and I thought I could put the pieces back together. I thought I could do for you what could never be done for me. Make you whole.”
Hot take. Jason Todd is a villain and is best written as a villain.
Not in that campy way like he’s written during Dick and Damian’s Batman and Robin run while wearing that stupid pill-headed hood, (although, I grant he has a few lines that are enjoyable to read) but in all his serious, vengeful and downright brutal motives.
The Red Hood is the perfect Batman villain because he’s so different from what the widely perceived perfect foil to the controlled and disciplined Bat is…the Joker.
The Red Hood was vengeance at its purest. It is justice without being tempered by mercy. It is the rage of victims who were forgotten to become statistics. While other vigilantes wait for a cure, hope for rehabilitation, and pretend their system works, the Red Hood is a man of no such faith.
And this makes him a villain. And a damn good one.
During the Red Hood’s time as a crime lord in Gotham, he goes around blowing up buildings. He throws grenades into trucks. He mows down his competition with gunfire. Batman comes upon the bloodied hanged corpse of a man he was finished interrogating.
But what is so compelling about this all is that before all the murder, all the guns and explosions, Jason Todd was a very different little boy. And all the great and memorable villains start that way.
The Joker is not someone you’re meant to sympathize with or even understand. In fact, I find him more terrifying because he’s unknown. He has no backstory (unless you want to believe the one he gave in Killing Joke, but the clown has a new story for every face he meets) and seemingly does what he does for a laugh of all things.
Jason Todd is in pain. He’s traumatized. Betrayed. Buried. Replaced. He is no one’s son because his father abandoned him.
Once upon a time, Jason Todd was a boy who saved himself. One of the biggest lies that Batman himself perpetuates is that hesaved Jason from a life of crime. He tells Alfred that Jason was always dangerous. Bruce simply took him off the streets before he could be any worse.
But I don’t believe that’s true.
Jason grew up surrounded by crime, poverty, substance abuse and yet this amazing kid saved himself everyday by making a conscious choice to be kind and care about school, care about keeping his mother alive for over a year when he was just a child himself. That amazing kid was magic.
Jason Todd as Robin was magic.
“Jason smiles. A bright smile. The kind Robin, the Boy Wonder should have.”
A good portion of his character’s assassination was in order to push the Tim is the perfect Robin idea. It was editorial decisions. The same ‘suits’ who insisted that Tim Drake be the Robin in the New Adventures cartoon despite having Jason’s backstory and personality. But I digress on that.
Jason Todd was an introverted, studious, and emphatic person. He wanted to make friends with other kids his age even though he was a loner at heart. He joined the school baseball team and was a class officer, even if his training kept him from most social interactions.
He was also very much in tune with non-verbal cues and small changes in the environment around him. He was a thoughtful person who could be found admiring the stars or passing by scenery. When he teams up with the New Teen Titans, we get to see these aspects of his personality:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful before. We’re actually riding above the clouds.”
“Every so often, I notice you become awfully agitated…like something was going on you didn’t want to be part of. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
It didn’t take Bruce long to fall in love with this boy and ask to legally adopt him. He found him to be smart, thoughtful, quick at learning and funny as hell. Their first meeting opens with Batman laughing in the very same alley his heart was ripped out decades earlier.
Even in the Rebirth canon, (RHATO #48) we see that Bruce is already set on taking in Jason while he’s still with Ma Gunn’s school. He likes this kid. A lot.
“Butler, actually. You’ll meet him someday, I’m sure.”
Jason Todd was happy. Mostof the time. Unfortunately, he still wrestled with depression and would sleep all day on occasion and could be found crying hidden away on his own, withdrawn from the concerned Bruce and Alfred.
In A Death in the Family, Alfred and Bruce sit down and discuss Jason’s worsening mental health, particularly after the Diplomat’s Son where Jason becomes witness to sexual assault, suicide and the failings of both Batman and the GCPD to protect innocent people. Barbara, his tutor, someone he cared about and got along with, is also shot a few months earlier.
Bruce thinks Jason has become suicidal. Alfred does not disagree with this theory and supplements it with things he’s observed himself about the ‘lad.’
“I’ve come upon him, several times, looking at that battered old photograph of his mother and father, crying. When he’s seen me, he’s hidden the picture and left the room, refusing to talk.”
It is then that Jason discovers the truth about his mother at the worst possible time, when he’s not even thinking straight, and thus leads way to the tragedy that will be his murder at the hand’s of the Joker.
The Curse of Jason Todd
“Do you have any idea what you have done?! Do you? You have no inkling of what you’ve created – what you have unleashed! You have set free a curse upon this world!”
Red Hood: Lost Days, which depicts Jason’s dark post-resurrection origin, opens with Ra’s al Ghul bellowing this line, the steam from the Lazarus Pit still rising off of him.
I’m not going to analyze this line, I’m just using it to supplement a point of mine I hope I’m getting through well enough. The Red Hood is a compelling, tragic villain. He is similar to Batman in ways that Bruce always knew and may have even feared because of how intimately he knows his own deepest, darkest thoughts. Jason is the perfect foil as an antagonist for him because of what he represents to Bruce.
And it’s not his anger, or his rage, or even his brutality.
It’s his compassion. His caring. His emotions. And how they can open up the worst parts of themselves.
Both are motivated by preventing whatever trauma happened to them from ever happening to anyone else. They both trained for years with this motivation. And they’ve both acted out on the very person who inflicted their trauma onto them.
Here’s where their paths start to differ, however, and what separates them with a line of morality.
They both get angry. They both care so damn much. About Gotham, about innocents, about each other. They both get too emotionally invested and deal with consequences related to that. To manage with that, Bruce shuts down. He creates all these choices, rules and symbols. He uses every ounce of his self control to keep them.
Bruce Wayne is not a good person. He forces himself to be with discipline and will. He chooses to be a good man and constantly pushes himself to live up to that. Because it’d be too damn easyto be just like the Red Hood.
Jason doesn’t understand that. Because no matter what Bruce had done or will do, he doesn’t hate him. He can’t. Despite his denial of the fact to different people, he still thinks of Bruce as his father. This great figure that so many others revere and are even intimidated by.
He’s not the only bat-kid to think of Bruce in this light despite the fact that the man is not. It took Dick years to overcome that perception. Tim only just started to begin understanding this true nature after his own father was murdered.
But even if he did understand his (once)father, he still became the complete opposite of him despite so many early parallels. He doesn’t hold back his words and emotions, he doesn’t go into a state of controlled dissociation or emotional disengagement.
Jason Todd—the Red Hood—is Batman without all his rules and control. In a way, he’s what the darkest part of Batman himself wants to be. Jason does what Batman can’t do when it’s needed.
Because in Batman’s book, life beats out justice. Even if he could take down abusers and murderers, he won’t. He will choose saving and protecting lives over the apprehension of killers…he always does.
Batman is justice. Red Hood is vengeance.
Jason is a victim’s fantasy. He punishes and kills the guilty. Something Batman won’t do.
Ready to teach human progeny about they/them pronouns and something a littlemore sinister?
Wendell the Wendigo launches December 2017! Sneak a preview here; subscribe for a notification here; and prepare yourselves for dinner! Thanks for your support! Signal boosts always appreciated!
I am finally, FINALLY, picking up the pan on this one. I use these tumblrs interchangeably, feel free to message me on either one!
After a long road trip, Robotnik and Stone arrive in California at last. Time to give their shoddy mini-golf place a changing of the guard… followed by a MAKEOVERRR! Look at you… Read the next chapter of Ad Astra, Per Aspera here!
i’m such a huge fucking fan of having and using magic requiring effort. whether mental, physical, or both. i’m so fond of magic systems that make you sweat, bleed, cry and get your hands dirty when you use them. i love it when powers are earned, not inherent, through years of study and/or exercizing them like a muscle. and i love it when a seemingly effortless display of power is terrifyingbecause of this.
YES!!!!! MAGIC THAT REQUIRES MAINTENANCE! MAGIC THAT DRAINS! MAGIC THAT CORRUPTS BODY AND SOUL!
One of my favorite tropes is character with a nasty toxic personality who tries very hard to do the right thing anyway
I like my protagonists sad, tired, bitter, fully convinced they will never get the recognition they deserve, but they still gotta get up in the morning and be a good person
