JayToddz for the masses

The red hair conundrum! Love it or hate it?

When more than 100,000 comic readers opened their copy of Batman and Robin #5 last year, they saw Jason pull off his Red Hood helmet.

And many fans were pretty baffled — why did Jason suddenly have red hair? What is he talking about he dyed his hair? And that Batman made him do so to look more like Dick Grayson?

And boy, was writer Grant Morrison’s change, or add, or restoration — whatever you want to call it — a talking point! On the CBR forums, there was a 38-page thread dedicated solely to Jason’s hair. An IGN reviewer, who obviously wasn’t a fan, said: “the only thing Morrison brings to the table in regards to Jason Todd’s characterization is a an explanation for why his hair color changed from red to black after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot.”

Remember how we talked about the two different Jason Todds? That’s right, there was the first one, who first appeared in Batman #357 and was a red head. This is called Jason’s “pre-Crisis” origin, or is lovingly referred to as “pre-Crisis ginger.”

And here he is in his first Robin costume. Does it look terrific or does it look terrific? I think you know the answer to that.

Now, this version of Jason actually dyed his hair! Maybe even using that can of Grayson!Black Batman had lying around.

Why did they change Jason’s hair to black in the first place? Well, there’s a lot of Robin merchandise out there. And it’s much easier to dye his hair in the comics continuity than change all of the Robin lunchboxes, pins, T-shirts, posters, etc. Merchandising! It just makes sense. And I’m sure you, too, might even be able to find a bottle of Robin!black hair dye at your local drug store eventually.

Now back to our hair-splitting story: then Crisis on Infinite Earths happened and this Jason Todd origin was re-booted to what is now called his “post-Crisis” origin, or the street kid/tire thief origin. And that origin had him always have black hair.

Confused yet? ~~We were too~~ So why, you might ask, did Morrison give Jason red hair when he had black hair all along and wasn’t dying it during Under the Hood arc, or when he crawled out of his grave, or when he went into Titans Tower to confront Tim Drake, or universe-hopped with Donna Troy and Kyle Rayner? Good question. Morrison is a fan of the “everything is continuity” idea. Basically, everything, every adventure and story that Batman and Robin (all the Robins!) were featured in: it all happened. There’s no such thing as a “re-booted” continuity or origins that were disposed.

Morrison can be a very polarizing writer: some love his work and will follow him to whatever title he writes; while others can’t stand it. Same thing goes for Jason with red hair: some fans love it, many more hate it. It does make things more confusing for new readers, but some are up for that challenge. And still, others find it extremely frustrating.

But wait — how can Jason have two separate origins — two different sets of parents, and two completely different lives — one as an acrobat and the other as a street urchin? Here’s where it gets even more confusing: it would seem that Morrison only added the red hair element to Jason, but not the rest of the pre-Crisis Jason origin, as we see from Batman #683, written by Morrison as well, where a flashback shows Batman catching Jason stealing the tires off the Batmobile.

Still with us? So why was the red hair element used? Well, to use the red-haired stepchild trope, for one: “The red-haired stepchildren would be seen as evil. Also, red hair would underscore that the child is not related to the stepparent, as seen by the physical difference.” Secondly, the hair colour sets him apart from his adoptive brothers. Thirdly, it’s weird, wacky and very Grant Morrison-like.

As Judd Winick, re-creator of Jason, said: ”I’ve always had a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards how other writers or creators take on characters that I’ve worked on for a while. To make a pretty lame music analogy, I kind of see them as songs. These are songs that we write, and different musicians have different takes on them.I see it as exciting as hell to have Grant Morrison take something that I came up with and run with it in his own direction, in a big, over the top, psychedelic Grant Morrison kind of a way. … I like to see Grant take him in the crazy costume, red-haired direction. It’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s awesome.”

Anyone get the feeling he’s comparing Jason to David Bowie? Just us?

And look! He kind of looks like another well-known anti-hero, Walter Kovacs, aka Rorsharch: