Has Anyone Read Red Hood And The Outlaws?

Haha, Ed Brubaker is kind of an expert on dead gun loving sidekicks, I wouldn’t mind seeing his take on Jason.
And if you ever do become a DC writer by some miraculous chance of fate or hard work. Im sure you’d have many faithful happy readers, definitely including me and HubCity.

Variety is very important. After all that’s how Batman, Superman, and many others have been around and (mostly) popular for so long. I wonder why Lobdell has had RHATO for so long, I’m sure plenty of people would be willing to write Jason. Especially since he is such a popular character. A new writer doesn’t even have to re write everything. I’m sure a good writer could salvage something from Rebirth, while still making a new story. Maybe only change a few of the major hiccups.

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You’re sweet <3

And I think it’s a combination of a few factors:

  1. Jason’s popular among fans, but a lot of the writers at DC just don’t really know what to do with him. (This led to some… issues… before the reboot.) I think we’re seeing some more people showing they could nail it, but I don’t know how much understanding there is of the matter in editorial, nor whether some of the writers who could do it are making RHATO pitches.
  2. Lobdell is friends with Jim Lee, so if he doesn’t wanna leave the book then no one’s gonna make him.

(We’re on topic, but I worry we’re dominating the conversation… other people are welcome to join in! We don’t bite!)

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Ah yes very true, with the whole other writer issue. That was quite a painful time. It’s also probably pretty daunting to take on such a popular character and a single authored series.

(And yes me too, don’t be shy anybody that has opinions, thoughts, or rambles about RHATO. We’d love to see them.)

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If Bendis were to take over RHATO that would be where I drop the book. I gave the guy a decent go on Superman but I reached a point were his stylistic ticks, out of character antics and his tendency to have major plot points happen off panel threw me out of the story every time. Sorry but I’m not a fan of his work.

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Haven’t read anything else of Bendis I’ve only heard very good and very bad things about him haha. Maybe I’ll check out that Superman run to see just how bad it is.

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I find Bendis is hit or miss. I liked his Jason. He’s done some good Superman and some not good Superman. His above and beyond biggest flaw as a writer is giving almost every character the same very casual, borderline internet slang speaking style, which is very much not one size fits all. (His Talia, for example, sucks.) His plots can also kind of meander. But I really liked his Jason in Event Leviathan… best part of the book, IMO.

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Personally I thought it was terrible and I dropped it after a point. He does get Superman’s voice right but at the expense of all else (plot, other characters ect)in my opinion and I need more than that to stay engaged.

Other people think he’s the best thing to happen to the character and that he can do no wrong by the character.

@mysterious_pumpkin I found Event Leviathan to be meh because of the flaws in Bendis’s writing you mention and frankly if he were to take over RHATO I would be concerned he’d pull another Superman wherein all of his writing flaws would run rampant. I would not pay $3.99 a pop to read that nonsense again.

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That’s fair. I definitely see flaws in his writing, but I’d be willing to give him a shot. He wouldn’t be my first pick for a RHATO writer, though.

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Fair enough. He wouldn’t be my millionth choice. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I read all of the rebirth version and love it

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I need to get caught up with it. I got behind a few months back.

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What are some other good storylines he wrote though?

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I agree that RHATO Rebirth was a lot more developed. I’ll be honest, I only read the trade paperbacks of RHATO New 52. I liked the more modern iteration of how Jason and Batman met. I mean, stealing tires off the batmobile? It’s one of the most advanced cars of all time. I also have read RHATO Rebirth through Trade Paperback. I kind of like the All Caste and would like to see that world more developed.

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Batman’s got a ton of Batmobiles. There’s gotta be a few with boostable tires, especially in those comparatively early days in his condensed timeline.

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If there were other writers I would like for Jason Todd, I would probably like to see James Tynion IV. He wrote a bit where Jason appeared with the rest of the Batfamily in Detective Comics, and he really nailed the character.

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It just feels so 80’s the crime. I feel that someone who is not a comic book fan would ask “how could a kid steal the tires off of the batmobile?” I like everything about RHATO Rebirth apart from that. I feel that Batman would have thought about his tires being boosted in the 21st century. But @HubCityQuestion, you may be right.

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I frankly just don’t see it as that big a leap. This is the first time I’m hearing someone skeptical of that particular element.

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My thoughts on the tire theft:

  1. It is very '80s, but the Circus origin for Dick is very '40s. I’m willing to stretch a bit.
  2. If we need to update it, I find it believable that Jason could have been deliberately going for something he thought would fetch a good price among collectors of Bat stuff. He doesn’t need to get very far; after all, he does get caught.

But for me, the exact tire theft isn’t as important to me as the following elements:

  1. It needs to be something comparatively petty, not some Juvenile Delinquency stuff. The original tire theft origin was about Jason not wanting to be a crook, just boosting what it takes to survive.
  2. And yet it also needs to be something audacious. In the original, it wasn’t just that Jason stole tires; it was that he boosted the tires off the Batmobile, in Crime Alley, on the day that everyone else in Crime Alley knew better than to start anything because they knew Batman always came there for some reason (that reason, unbeknownst to them, being that it was the anniversary of the Waynes’ murders). This is because –
  3. It should be something that makes Batman laugh, or at least smile. That, for me, is the real charm of the origin. It’s not about Bruce going “I must stop this delinquent child from going down a dark path,” but about him being reluctantly amused and impressed, on the anniversary of his parents’ deaths, and from there seeing the circumstances that drove a 12-year-old to this type of life and going “I want to give him a better one.”

Sorry, I could just go on for day about how many writers have completely misunderstood the point of Jason’s original post-Crisis origin and how RHATO Rebirth is the first time I’ve seen a writer “modernize” it without losing its heart.

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That’s interesting. I never thought about it that way.

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I just had a thought. Since we get to see Red Hood in Young Justice season 3, what if they made a spin-off of RHATO complete with Jensen Ackles voicing Jason Todd?

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