Robin’s Requiem: The tale of Jason Todd

Some choice bits from this 20+ minute long documentary that’s only available on Blu-Ray. Really fascinating. Read on to see what the fan reaction was to Jason’s death, to his return and to who he is now. 

Denny O’Neil: Jason Todd came into existence because Dick Grayson was promoted to be Nightwing and people thought Batman needed a Robin. 

Judd Winick: When Jason Todd was introduced, he was kind of a carbon copy of Dick Grayson. He was also from the circus, he fought in a circus costume, he was very up and peppy. 

Dan Didio: Once we had the re-aligning of the DC Universe with the COIE, there was really a chance to make Jason Todd his own person, rather than being a carbon copy of Dick Grayson. 

JW: I think from the jump, a lot of people didn’t like him (Jason Todd’s new street kid origin)

Matthew Mahoney (Golden Apple Comics): I think when you’re changing the norm in any part of any medium, there’s always gonna be a fear of backlash. … It was definitely taking a chance. 

JW: It was one of the more interesting evolutions of a character that we’ve seen in comics. 

DN: Robin was suddenly not this virtuous guy, but he was difficult. If you’re doing difficult characters who are fulfilling the role of hero, it’s a tricky line to walk. You can’t make them so disagreeable that the audience doesn’t like them or doesn’t admire them on some level. And that, I don’t know if anybody planned for that to happen with Jason Todd, but it did. 

My impression is that he was not a very popular character. … And I thought he would become a snot. 

JW: I think Denny sort of had this crazy idea. Since people don’t seem to like him very much, since we do get a lot of good old fashioned hate mail … they got letters saying how much they didn’t like Jason Todd — he went into the offices and said, ‘how would they think about killing him off?’ It was debated and decided they would give that a try. And not only kill him off, but why don’t we leave it up to the fans who say they don’t like him so much? Let them put their money where their mouth is: if they really don’t like him this much, we’ll leave it up to them if they want to kill him off. And that, I think, is where the idea was borne to really make Jason unlikeable. 

DN: The phone company would not allow me to use the word ‘death’ (in the ads telling people what number to call to vote). 

Voting took place between Sept. 15, 1988 and Sept. 16, 1988. It was 50 cents to vote. 

DN: The great big stunt I thought was over … And then for about three days I spent my office time talking on the phone. There was enormous reaction. And I think a lot of the people reacting didn’t realise it was not the Robin that they grew up with. 

First of all, let me speak to the shock: we didn’t kill a real kid. This is paper and ink. This is a story, this is a fable. I was wearing instead of my hippie peace button, a Batman signal on my lapel in those days. In a deli on Fifth Ave., a guy asked why I had it. I told him who I was and he yelled, “Hey! This is the guy who killed Robin!”

Len Wein: I think we were all stunned. When the character was voted to die, we were all taken aback. 

DN: Our publicity person at the time decided not to put any of us on television. I questioned that at the time, but now I’m glad because I had to take the E-train home to Soho every night. And I wouldn’t have wanted this face to be recognized as ‘The Killer of Robin.’ And some of the fans were very upset. 

LW: I always thought it was a mistake. It was one of those — something got out of hand, we were all caught up in the momentum of this event and we let the wrong thing happen. In many ways, I don’t think we’ve ever fully recovered from it. 

Paul Levitz (writer and former president and publisher): We didn’t have a bias as to whether Jason would live or die, but I think a lot of the creative people weren’t disappointed that he got to get killed. 

DN: I heard it was a lawyer who was using a MacIntosh and lived in California — I obviously don’t have hard information on this, but I heard someone out there programmed his computer to dial it every couple of minutes, and since there was only about 65* votes that made the difference, if that story is true, that guy, that guy killed Jason Todd!

(***It was actually 72 votes***)

The immediate effect it had on me was it changed my mind about what I was doing for a living. I thought I was a writer/editor working in this odd literary backwater. Coming off of that experience, I realised I am the custodian of modern folklore. 

MM: I think at the end of the day, it was the better choice, it was the more interesting choice. To have the character survive just another battle is just another month in comics. When you lose a character like that, it definitely sends a more complex message out there that makes it more interesting to read. 

DN: The promise I made to the comics community was that on my watch, he won’t be back. We wanted some deaths to be permanent. I mean, it’s the biggest cliche in comic books: nobody ever stays dead. I kinda expected our editors down the line would not be bound by that, nor should they have. 

DD: There was actually points when we brought Jason Todd back from the dead after Infinite Crisis and during Infinite Crisis that I’m at conventions on panels and people came up to me and say, “Why don’t you give me my 50 cents back, I voted for him to die! And now you brought him back to life, I should get my 50 cents back!’ And I’m like, you know, I appreciate your thought on that, I voted for him to die too, but guess what? I’m not giving myself 50 cents, you’re not gonna get it either. 

JW: You had to ask yourself: who was going to be Jason Todd’s Nightwing? …It was something I always thought about. Would this Robin be allowed to grow up? He wasn’t, he died, but as a writer, when it came my turn to take on these characters, I decided to sort of continue on with what he would be. Which, well the best way to sum him up would be a really, really horrible good guy.

When we re-introduced Jason Todd as the Red Hood, I was surprised at how many of the readers liked him and liked him in a way of liking him as a hero. Basically, the best way to put it, was they thought he was cool. And that was not really my intention. 

MM: It speaks loads to modern audiences that this anti-hero would appeal to them. 

DD: I see him as a villain. I think he’s crossed the line. I think he has lost what it takes to be heroic. I think what he believes is the ends justifies the means and that any ends justifies any means and I don’t believe that’s the attitude of any true hero. 

JW: It’s a tougher world and I think Jason Todd becomes more of that anti-hero. There’s a much bigger line for him to cross now. Batman won’t cross that line and actually kill criminals. Jason Todd does. 

MM: I think the introduction of Jason Todd as the anti-hero in Under the Red Hood, I think it’s significant, it really points home that Batman considers Jason Todd his greatest failure. 

Phil Cousineau (author ‘The Hero’s Journey’): The anti-hero is angry at the lies of the day and he is desirous of showing you that. So Jason Todd and the Red Hood character want to flaunt the cultural disintegration right in front of us. They’re embodying this for us, they’re not going to be a cute little sidekick. 

DD: I just got a postcard in the mail, which apes one of the Jason Todd covers, the Red Hood covers. What they did is they have Jason Todd holding the Red Hood. And in the original picture, there’s a reflection of Batman’s face and actually they superimposed my face in the reflection, saying, “No, I’m not a villain, make me a hero again!”

DN: The characters that stay in publication are the ones that are allowed to change. 

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