In this session, the Renegade Robins Club looks at the second half of Judd Winick’s Under the Hood arc. Jason has already been stirring things up, but once he captures the Joker, he will prove once and for all that he is not clowning around! And along the way, we’ll take a quick peek into Titans Tower! Tell us what you think of this tense finale below!
In two weeks, the @RenegadeRobinsClub will look at Jason’s Nightwing adventures One Year Later! Next week, Damian Wayne joins Tim Drake in the Red Hood story Collision!
The Joker was right; everyone did lose (except him.)
I came off as pretty harsh on the first half of this story, and it still gets bogged down by some of those crossover elements I complained about last time (having the final battle get interrupted by the bombing of Blüdhaven, the resurrection explanation), but this really feels to me like Winick finally got down to the heart of the story he wanted to tell, and reminds me why I fell so much in love with Jason Todd in the first place. Jason here is wonderful to read… sarcastic, quippy and just entertaining to watch, particularly when he’s relentlessly tormenting Black Mask.
But the final confrontation is, to me, the best part of it. It’s emotionally wrenching, and I found myself feeling for both Bruce and Jason without completely agreeing with either of them. The final scene always makes me tear up, and I love it in both the comic and the movie. That having been said, while the art in this series is overall stellar, I have to fess up that the art in the final scene always had a bit of a glaring issue to me…
Jason: All you’ve got is a head shot!
Art: *shows the arm that’s holding the gun clearly exposed to a Batarang to the elbow.*
But still, a small complaint about a strong finish.
That one is the most random tie-in of all. You can almost feel the editor hovering over Winick and saying, “I don’t care if it will kill the tension of the climactic battle you’ve been building up to throughout this run. Find a way to make it fit.”
Speaking of tie-ins, how does everyone feel about the Teen Titans issue?
It’s weird, because on a meta level, it’s a little bit satisfying. I love Tim, but it irks me how many writers felt the need to put Jason down to prop up Tim, so it’s a little bit cathartic to have Jason be like “screw that noise.” I highly doubt that Johns intended that, though, and also on an in-universe level, it’s absolutely not okay. I love Jason but Red Hood Jason is a flawed, complicated character.
I always kind of liked how, despite going there for violent personal reasons, Jason took care to dispatch Raven gently, though. The duality is fascinating.
I think Johns was definitely intending to voice that frustration, but still gave Tim the last word in not breaking down from Jason’s words and fists. He didn’t give Jason an out or say that anything he said was right.
In retrospect it is kind of bad that Jason never got his own statue, but that’s really not the best way to address it. Maybe in a nicely worded letter?
I agree that how he handled Raven was interesting. I think there’s a bit of him observing Raven, how she’s at odds with and yet still feels for her demonic father and sees some of himself in that with his relationship to Bruce. That said…one should also consider the fact that the big reason he did it in the first place was that if she got into the fight, Jason would lose almost instantly. So it’s not all good feelings, there’s some strategy there.
Little off topic, but one thing that confused me when reading this: was there another Elasti-Girl other than Rita Farr? Beast Boy talks about her in a way that doesn’t feel like he would about his adoptive step-mom.
Superboy-Prime. It’s always Superboy-Prime. When he punched reality, he rebooted the Doom Patrol continuity (with a little help from John Byrne). At this point, the characters had no memories of their former continuity or relationships (though they would regain them again by the end of Infinite Crisis, thanks once more to Superboy-Prime).
Very true, but his line about her having good dreams for once (I’m remembering that right, right? I’ll be honest, I’ve read most of this so many times that I can just go off of memory, but this issue is one I haven’t read in a while) implies some level of fond feelings. Makes for an interesting contrast, I think.
Yeah that was terribly random. That said I sort of felt that for a split second Jason had an emotional reaction to the thought that Dick might have been killed. There was something in his expression.
I think that goes back to Jason’s concern for woman among other things. I do find that duality interesting too. On a purely psychological level I’ve always wondered if this duality has to do with his death and resurrection. The Jason who died is not exactly the same person who came back. Maybe this duality is representative of pre and post resurrection Jason.
Oh yeah, Jason’s attitude towards women has always fascinated me. I never read it as a chivalrous thing per se so much as identification and connection… Jason always seemed to connect better with women, and to identify with women who were victims of gendered violence, etc. I think it’s a mix of the stuff with his mother (which, while Lobdell has explored it more than any other writer, was canon from his first post-Crisis appearance) and of his having had similar experiences of being written off and mistreated which made him empathize. I think it’s one of the reasons that Jason’s managed to attract so many female fans, myself included, and it’s something I’d love to see explored more. All that is post-Crisis, though, so while it explains it now, I’m not quite sure what the originally intended explanation pre-Crisis was, or if it was even an intentional thing or just something that happened to arise.
I’m not so sure that it’s so much the bolded as it is a correlation between the surrounding events and his emotional response to those events when women are involved.
In the “Diplomat’s Son” Jason was at first angered at Gloria’s situation and at the callous disregard Felipe Garzonas had for his crimes against women, including Gloria. As angry as he was I’m not 100% sure he would have killed Garzonas at that point since he believed justice would be done. (I do suppose an arguement could be made that since Jay lived on the streets and likely would have seen this type of crime bushed aside he realistically wouldn’t have believed that but maybe he thought Batman’s involvement would somehow make this one stick.) He only became enraged when it became clear Garzonas was going to walk and when he threatened Gloria in front of him. The tipping point was her suicide though. That shot his rage to an even higher level.
I think Jason feels emotions very deeply maybe moreso than the rest of the Robins. So that may also have something to do with all this and with his reactions to being replaced by Tim, Joker still being alive and to Bruce’s “antiquated moral code”.
Definitely. He was unable to save his mother from drugs in the past continuity, which may have had something to do with his attempting to save his bio mom later on even though she had betrayed him.
That’s true. Makes you wonder what he saw on the streets or maybe in his own home prior to Bruce taking him in. I’ve known people who lived for a time on the streets and the things they’ve seen ain’t pretty.
I could see that, and I think that’s something he has in common with Bruce. People often confuse his diciplined, stoic nature for not having any emotions, but I think it’s more accurate to say he feels all of it, but he learned how to control and harness it longer than Jason had.
That’s part of the tragedy of the story. The two are more alike than not.
Oh, Bruce definitely has emotions buried deeply under his stoic exterior and they are a lot a like. I think Bruce also feels things deeply. I think that’s one of the reasons he feels he wouldn’t come back from killing Joker and why he holds on so tightly to his “no kill” rule.
I also have to add that because Jason has always feels emotions so deeply a dip in the Lazarus Pit probably didn’t help when it came to learning about Tim and everything else. He had every right to be angry but I think the Pit amplified it.
