JayToddz for the masses

What happened when Superboy Prime punched a reality “wall”?

Well, lots of stuff happened. One of those being the controversial return of Jason from the dead! Now some fans aren’t …fans of this particular return and gripe about it on various message boards, but one thing we have to remember is that these are comics: Superman can fly, Batman has a zebra suit and is currently travelling through time and Wonder Woman has an invisible plane. The “realness” or “grounded-ness” or “organic” construction of a story is all based on relativity.

Having said that, check out this interview Judd Winick did with Comic Book Resources in 2009.

Choice bits:

Winick: Collectively, meaning editorial, way back when we were hatching up Infinite Crisis — this is me and Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio and Eddie Berganza in a room on the Warner lot — and I’m going to write “Batman,” and the thing that we had discussed many times, and one of the reasons why I jumped on Batman, was because I wanted to bring back Jason Todd. And it had been decided pretty simply, right from the jump, that it would be tied to Crisis. And one of things decided in the room was that Earth-Two Superboy was going to be trapped and imprisoned. And by smashing the walls of his prison, he was going to undo a lot of continuity. And we had a laundry list of things that were going to happen – a lot. One of them was Jason Todd.

Now, what we wound up doing was less than we actually did. It was just a handful of things. That was at inception. It was just one of things that we were going to do. This was a good nine or 10 months before a single Jason Todd issue was even coming out.

And then over the course of doing the title, people are liking the story and it’s going very well and people gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out at the same time but the general reaction is that pretty much, people are digging the story, which is good. At this point, I go to Dan and say, I think they are going to string me up by my toes if we go for the Crisis answer, which is Superboy. Because we have told this story that is so terra firma. It’s so Batman. It’s so visceral, on the ground, blood on the asphalt, broken bones and teeth. There’s nothing spacebound, metaphysical, out-there, inter-dimensional about this. It’s really bound right here on the Earth. So I think if we do this, they’re going to kill us. And Dan agreed. And for a couple of days, it was just what we were doing. Then Dan comes back to me that he’s been to about four conventions in a row and he said, “We’ve put it out there that he’s coming back. And I’ve met the fans, we’ve talked about it. I didn’t bring up Jason Todd. They brought up Jason Todd. One, everybody loves Jason Todd coming back as the Red Hood. It’s working. Two, we told them that it’s tied to Crisis and that’s what they want to see.”

At the time, in the moment, those weeks around making that decision, everything on planet Earth for DC Comics and the readership was Crisis. It was hard and it was fast and it was working and it was exciting and it was raging and it was all great and Crisis was very, very successful. And we were very much a part of it and delightfully caught up in the thick of it. So after coming back from those cons and everyone is just so amped up about Crisis and this Jason Todd story is crescendoing, yeah, I agreed. Let’s tie it to Crisis.* So the terra firma solution, which I had, I tossed out and we went back to Superboy.

That being said, that shit ripens on the vine. I don’t think it holds up nearly as well as it did at the time. At the time, I think it really kicked butt. Looking back, when we’re not in the thick of Crisis and not every single issue is tied to it and we’re not all swirling in it and Geoff is writing these massive fights and Earth One Superman is dying and all this super stuff is happening and all this great shit, without that, it becomes a little rough. And I think it sullies the story looking back. That is my opinion on that.

I love the “Under the Hood” story. It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done in mainstream comics. And I love Jason Todd and I love what he represents. I love that he’s a bad guy just from the jump. I remember when I was talking about Geoff Johns about it, when he wanted to bring him into “Teen Titans” with Robin, I said, “It’s all fine and good, but don’t forget, he’s bad [laughs]. They can come to some sort of understanding or what not but at the end of the day, he’s a bad guy.” Maybe bad guy with a little “b,” not just a villain but he’s doing the wrong things.

So yeah, I dig Jason Todd. I think he works. And I don’t think Jason Todd is going away any time soon.