Create a more sensible resurrection for Jason Todd.

[Super Buddies Forever]

One of the biggest problems people still have with the return of Jason Todd is not how they took what was one of the more cemented aspects of Batman-lore (the dead Robin) and undid it, but the manner in which it happened: An alternate Superman creating a reality wave that didn't undo Todd's death, but somehow raised him from the dead because "it wasn't supposed to happen." Besides the illogical circumstance of something in history that was not supposed to have happened but still did, it's a far too cosmic solution for the more grounded world of Batman.

Oh, sure. There are some who say that it doesn't matter how we got here so long as we can now deal with stories about a living Todd. While this argument may be a valid one, the biggest problem is not in the now, but how "Death In The Family" and the 15 years of a dead Jason are now cheapened. After all, he wasn't supposed to die but he did but now he's back because he wasn't... supposed to die. See? This makes me want to take up drinking.

What few have mentioned, however, is that we're now in "New Earth" continuity, and therefore Superboy Prime's history-changing hissy fits may not have happened (for example, Superman's origin didn't go from Silver Age to MOS to Birthright). So, there is still an opportunity to make sense of this mess. Now the question is... how would you do it?

[DonC]

The popular idea seems to be Ra's al Ghul stealing his body and placing him in a Lazarus Pit. I could have bought that, if it had been done years ago. Now, there really is no way of bringing him back that I would consider even remotely plausible.

But what's done is done. And I doubt DC will undo his resurrection.

[The Batman]

Pretty much that.

Ras stole his body years ago, tossed him in a Lazarus Pit and kept it all hidden from Batman because if anyone's got the resources to keep Batman in the dark about something it's Ras Al Ghul. If Ras thinks that Batman, by refusing to join him or turning Talia against him, has robbed him of an heir than that would be his way of doing the same to Batman.

[Cornelius Stirk]

See I never liked how Jason Todd came back, but I didn't so much mind his Red Hood persona.
Yeah he cuts off heads, he's a messed up guy with his priorities out of whack. I happen to think he could have been a perfectly good (maybe even great) anti-hero villain for Batman.
Should he have been Hush? Maybe, but Red Hood was O.K. It was certainly better than this Red Robin who looks like Space Ghost junk.

The story of his miraculous return is another matter, The Superboy punch was just stupid, and don't even get me started on why Bruce Wayne would create a one way security system. See that's the thing, Batman had been set up for years as occupying a world where stuff like this doesn't happen, hence the security system. People don't come back from the dead, except Ra's. That's what annoyed me the explanation was silver age idiocy in a modern age setting.

So how to solve it better?

1. Jason’s a clone. Yeah I know this ruined the Spider-Man comics, but hear me out. Jason is cloned by someone who we discover knows the truth (already established villain or new-preferably Hugo Strange) and he raises this clone and has Dr.Moon manipulate his mind to screw him up like he did to Selina in 'Tec 569-70.

2. The silly soap opera long lost twin brother option-oops forget that...

3. Go the full hog and have Ra's al Ghul rob the grave somehow and resurrect Jason. Ra's decides to turn Todd into a secret weapon to screw Batman over once and for all, so dunks him in a Lazarus Pit, knowing full well the damage this will cause to an already damaged brain. He trains him up, encouraging his perverted sense of Bruce's values and sets him loose on Gotham. This has some similarities to what happened, except Ra's wanted no part of it and Talia defied him.


Now, none of these are perfect-but I could live with the third one.

[Super Buddies Forever]

I doubt DC will undo his resurrection.

This is the company that goes through Superman origins like potato chips. The only reason Todd's resurrection hasn't been touched is because the braintrust that conceived it are still in control (though Winick is now off the Bat books).

Keep in mind that I don't even necessarily mind the Prime punches (even if Hypertime is a more thought out and nuanced idea). It's this specific Prime punch that gets to me like no other. After all, why didn't anyone else rise from the dead? How was it that, in all of the cosmos, this one reality wave just so happened to effect the dead sidekick of Batman? Thanks, Prime! We could have had Martin Luther King. Robert Kennedy could have finally won the presidency. John Lennon and George Harrison could come back for a DCU Beatles reunion! But no. You gave us Jason bloody Todd.

Then there's the notion that both Batman and Todd have stopped questioning why he's alive. I really dug that initial Under the Hood arc, with Batman going to Superman for answers about the nature of death. But then Infinite Crisis hit, and bam! Bruce is going on a world cruise with Dick and Tim. Your dead son is back decapitating people, and the last time you saw him he was caught in an explosion, but all of that can wait a year?

Then there's Todd's stint in Nightwing and Countdown, both adding to this ungodly mess, but I guess I'm getting sidetracked now.

I believe it was Geoff Johns' (and I may be off on that one) idea to have him be the Jason Todd of the original Earth-2 trapped on our world, and while that's still too cosmic a solution for the Batverse, it would have both preserved Death In The Family ("our" Todd would still be in the ground) and added dramatic weight to Infinite Crisis (was a psychopathic Jason Todd proof that Earth-2 wasn't the utopia that Kal-L claimed, or had living on our world indeed corrupted him?) Why Winick didn't go with that, or why he thought HIS idea was better still confounds me.

[Choppa]

^Your last paragrah is what they should have gone with. But more like this- Have Jason be from another universe where he survives the blast, loses his memory, and returns years later seeking revenge and ready to kill to get what he wants.

Batman and him fight and eventually he dies/goes back to his universe.

Batman is then haunted by the thought that if Jason had survived in his universe he might have become a cold blooded killer, adding to his guilt for this death.

We get to see Batman and Jason interact, it doesn't ruin our Jason's reputation (because it's not really him), and adds to the Jason mythos by implying that that could have been a possible future. Having that be a potential possibility also makes it become more than just a fanboy-esque story where he meets Jason like in Zero Hour.

[rZi]

It pretty much should have never happened, there is the cure right away. Having Clay face mimic an older Todd in Hush was great...but that should of been it.

[TeamED209]

I disagree i've really enjoyed his come back and even tho the reality wave punching thing was stupid the rest was ok...I'm more concerned with how badly they've treated him since nightwing,I liked him much more as the dexter/punisher type villain...

[metalhead_dave743]

I can think of a very sensible resurrection for Jason in four words... MAKE HIM A ZOMBIE!:biggrin:

[BrikHed21]

I can think of a very sensible resurrection for Jason in four words... MAKE HIM A ZOMBIE!:biggrin:

I am all for this one - anything is better than what happened.

[WorstThingUS]

The popular idea seems to be Ra's al Ghul stealing his body and placing him in a Lazarus Pit. I could have bought that, if it had been done years ago. Now, there really is no way of bringing him back that I would consider even remotely plausible.

But what's done is done. And I doubt DC will undo his resurrection.

What's sad is that Winnick had it right there but decided to add that "Superboy Punching" nonsense. Batman has never been about cosmic occurrences, so this is perfect. Jason was killed and Ra's stole his body even before it left the country for the specific purpose of turning him against Batman. That's it. No muss, no fuss.

[Choppa]

Just to be clear, the punch brought him back to life, but it was the pit that cured his brain damage.

[cactusmaac]

I had an idea years ago on the DC Comics AOL forum where I said it would be great if there was an Elseworlds crossover with Jason being brought back as the Crow. A DC assistant editor told me it was a nice idea but very unlikely to happen.

[BoosterBronze]

Just to be clear, the punch brought him back to life, but it was the pit that cured his brain damage.

That is specific, but in no way makes punching reality any more palatable.

[Choppa]

That is specific, but in no way makes punching reality any more palatable.

What? :confused:

[earl]

It would take a writer with a whole lot of grace to pull it off in a Batman centered story, but you could even tie in the cosmic angle if somehow the ressurection of Jason Todd was just some manipulation of Darkseid. Or they could go to some mystical way and have it be a doppelganger for the original Jason Todd.

Far fetched, I would agree but I bet Grant Morrison or another top writer could probably make some odd pairing with Ra's Al Ghul and Darkseid work.

Who really is the narrator in that Annual storyline where they show 'how' Todd returns? The reader is shown a possible 'how', but I don't think there is really indication that Batman or really anyone else for that matter knows 'how' Jason Todd is back other than the fact that he is back. The reader is shown how it happens, but I don't recall any scene with Batman or anyone else going "EUREKA" that is how Jason Todd shows up.

I think a good writer could fix this thing a whole bunch of ways.


There are a bunch of unanswered plot questions from that time period of Batman comics that need answers, Jason Todd is really only the tip of the iceberg.

[nepenthes]

The Lazarus Pit is certainly feasible and no fuss.....but it's also a little boring and predictable. Besides that the Al Ghuls have already played a rather substantial role in Batman lore...especially considering that we now have DAMIEN filling the whole surrogate son "I stole your baby" angle. And I happen to like Damien, alot, but I know that's hardly universal.

Poison Ivy. Do something genuinly new and set-up a refreshing status quo for her. Jason has huge potential in building on her character in a meaningful way as well as upping her status in Batmans rogues gallery. Ivy is both motherly and manipulative, gentle and spiteful. She can animate plant matter but she's never actually created (or recreated) sentient intelligent life. This would be her ultimate acheivement as Earth Mother - her 'new man' could even be the model for all intelligent life on earth if she gets her way.

Basically, give Jason some minor plant powers and write the ressurection story in a retroactive mini so it doesn't affect Under the Hood. The story would involve Jason waking up as Ivy's amnesiac toy-boy, soldier and 'future man', then struggling and reconciling with Ivy before eventually going out on his own. I think Jason has always needed a mother figure and Ivy works best when she has someone to domineer. Initially Jason would be subservient but this breaks down and we explore the nature of his willingful (?) and tender relationship with her. Entirely non-sexual. Not only has she created the elusive Perfect Man (he has every quality she admires - pushing her former obssesion with Batman to one side), but she's also found a man who's unquestioningly loyal without the aid of plant drugs. In the end she's restored Jason as a more balanced, happy and capable man than Batman ever could accomplish, and this is the Red Hood we now know. Despite initiall appearances I do think Jason Todd as Winnick wrote him is actually quite rationale and at peace with himself - he just happens to be a murdering vigilante. This is Poison Ivy's victory. It would also be interesting to see how Harley reacts to all this.

[mohammedali]

I agree that they need a better explination for Jason Todd's resurrection. The Retro Punch really annoyed me.

Personally, I'd like to see him as an alternate world's Robin, where either he survived, or was brought back to life straight after the blast by either Bruce or Ra's using a Lazarus pit. That's what would have made the most sense, and given Final Crisis establishes new Earth's, this could be very easily done.

[Choppa]

There are a bunch of unanswered plot questions from that time period of Batman comics that need answers, Jason Todd is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Probably the understatement of the year. I'm interested in knowing why OYL, Jason no longer cared about getting revenge on Bruce.

[Lorendiac]

I actually come up with several theories before we ever knew what the "official excuse" would be.

Here are five spontaneous suggestions I made in April of 2005, a few weeks after I got the word that Jason Todd was back! In order to avoid having Spoilers within the title, I called this post:

A handful of theories about the Red Hood (SPOILERS for Batman #638)

In a Newsarama interview, Judd Winick recently said (on the subject of explaining why Jason now seems to be a full-grown young man): "“Nope – nothing out of me on that. This is so not about the why right now, and I apologize to people who are looking for that immediately. The why is not going to be important for a really long time. The only hint I’ll give is that it’s no accident that DC Countdown and the return of Jason Todd happened on the same day. There’s a much larger story here – a story that Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and I have been planning, and Jason Todd plays a part in it. So yeah, in one day, I’m partly responsible for killing off a hero, and bringing back another one…”

A bit later in that same interview, he said, "We decided a long time ago that Jason would be a very important part of the puzzle – this was brewing while Countdown and Infinite Crisis was being created. Jason plays into all of what’s coming. It’s going to be a while before the why and how is explained, and for me, it’s the least important part of things right now." (See http://www.newsarama.com/DC/Countdown_more/Batman_Hello.htm if you want to check out the interview yourself.)

If the answer is not coming our way in the near future, that leaves plenty of time for wild speculation. So I asked myself, "How would I do it? If Winick left the Batman title without explaining this, and if DC came knocking on my door tomorrow morning, begging me to take over on the Batman title a few months from now, with the requirement that my first assignment would be to explain the Strange Return of Jason Todd, after which I could have a pretty free hand to tell whatever stories I liked for the next couple of years, what would I do?"

I decided to throw out a few of the more obvious and disappointing possibilities, such as a Lazarus Pit Resurrection or a White Martian disguised as Jason, and try some others on for size. Granted, some of my readers may think that some or all of these theories are equally "obvious and disappointing possibilities," but what can I do? There are only so many ways to bring back or pretend to bring back a dead character, and most of them have already been done over and over!

For inspiration, I went back and reread a post of mine from last summer: "15 Excuses for Bringing Back a Dead Character."

(http://www.thekryptonian.com/showthread.php?t=4098)

All five of these theories are "original" as far as I know - I have not deliberately copied anybody else's ideas from the last few weeks. I am thinking of collecting some of the best of other people's theories in a later post, but this one is all mine, for better or for worse.


FIRST THEORY

Remember that time when the Joker, in a Grant Morrison JLA story arc collected in the "Rock of Ages" TPB, got his hands on the Philosopher's Stone that would give him vast power over time and space, etc.? However, it did not automatically make him proof against telepathic assault (although I figure it would have if Joker had thought to specifically wish for that right away). Thus, J'onn J'onnz managed to reach out and grab hold of the Joker's twisted mind and make it think in a fairly "sane" and "moral" fashion - for about ten seconds. (Even J'onn has his limits when he's up against such lunacy.) Fortunately, that ten seconds or so was long enough for Lex Luthor to cleverly suggest undoing the deaths of a bunch of innocent civilians in Star City, earlier in the story arc. How convenient!

But think - Joker has killed hundreds of people in his time, but in at least some stories, he has seemed exceptionally proud of having once iced a Robin. Whereas he probably can't even remember the names of 99% of his other victims. So in that brief window of opportunity when he seemed to be regretting all the horrible things he had done, isn't it possible that in addition to Star City's unfortunate residents, he also suddenly remembered the dead Robin and did something about that in the last split-second that he had control of the stone?


SECOND THEORY

Similar to the first one. I can't recall offhand if Joker explicitly had the power to resurrect the dead in the "Emperor Joker" storyline in the Superman titles, but if he did, then he might have found it amusing to bring back the dead Robin. Without bothering to warn Batman right away that he was doing this. Since the Joker was still his evil and twisted self at the time, he might think it was the most hilarious thing in the world to bring back a Robin who was suddenly in the body of a grown man and who was determined to out-Batman the original Batman when it came to grim'n'gritty crimefighting and other fun stuff!


THIRD THEORY

In a parallel world, the Joker still worked Jason over with a crowbar, and then left him lying on the floor, battered and broken, while Sheila Haywood (Jason's long-lost biological mother) was tied to a support pillar. Jason still woke up and managed to untie her and urged her to run before the bomb went off, since he was in no shape to see clearly and work delicately with his fingers in order to disarm it the way Batman had taught him back home in the Cave.

Okay, that all happened in the mainstream world of "A Death in the Family," and then Sheila had an attack of conscience and grabbed Jason so he could lean on her and started dragging him toward the door at the end of the room . . . but when they got there, they discovered it was locked from the outside, just in case one or the other of them managed to reach the door before the timer ran out, the Joker not being a total idiot. So the bomb went off and they both suffered fatal injuries.

In my conjectured Parallel World/Alternate Timeline, when Jason untied his mother, she didn't try the lock on the door first. Instead, she had a flash of inspiration and broke open a window and tossed out the bundle of dynamite through it as far as she could, then retreated, dragging Jason, to the farthest part of the building away from that window, with the result that they both survived. Pity about the dynamite killing Batman as he came running down the hill to see what was going on in that building, however. Jason was heartbroken, but said pointedly to himself, "If Batman had possessed the guts to kill Joker after the first time he went on a killing spree, this wouldn't have happened!"

So he devoted himself to becoming the merciless crimefighter that he figured Batman should have been all along, because just think of how much trouble it would have saved everyone if Batman had iced the Joker way back when. Just now, Jason (perhaps 18 or 19 years old, having "aged normally" in his world) has somehow been pulled sideways in time over into the mainstream timeline of the moder DCU, possibly in connection with some of the weird stuff that will presumably happen in the Infinite Crisis later this year. Or perhaps his entire timeline, grimmer and grittier than the usual one, has merged back into the mainstream DCU timeline, causing all sorts of weird ripple effects as people suddenly remember things that happened a long time ago that nobody ever mentioned before . . . (such as some of the really weird stuff, past and present, that seemed to be happening in Identity Crisis last year).

[Lorendiac]

FOURTH THEORY

Jason Todd is dead. But he's still active. In a previously unrecorded adventure, he got bitten by a vampire, or infected with a portion of the curse that made the Gentleman Ghost the man he is today, or drugged with something subtle with lingering effects by Dr. Voodoo (a very obscure old Batgirl villain from a few stories in the early 80s, when Barbara Gordon was Batgirl starring in short little backup features in Detective Comics - don't feel too guilty if you don't remember him at all; I don't think he's been seen or heard from for a good 24 years now!).

Heck, let's go for broke - if you prefer, we can suppose that in different unrecorded adventures, Jason Todd was bitten slightly by a vampire (just a tiny scratch one fang made on his bare leg, so that he never even realized it was a bite from that fast-paced fight scene, and it just barely infected him with a very slight case of vampirism), and he somehow got all tangled up with the Gentleman Ghost's curse in some high-powered magical confrontation as other people were tossing spells around, and he once unknowingly imbibed a mystic potion prepared by Dr. Voodoo!

Either the lingering effect of one of these things, or the cumulative effects of all of them, combined to create a situation where when Jason died of his injuries in "A Death in the Family," he really was dead . . . except that a few weeks later, his dead flesh supernaturally "revived" as a weird combination of certain aspects of a vampire, a ghost, and a zombie, without the insatiable thirst for blood and without the rotting flesh or generally low intelligence of a zombie, and without the intangibility of a ghost. (At least, none of those problems as far as we know at the moment.) But he's not exactly alive, although he is substantial and his body has (apparently?) healed itself of its worst wounds. Having experienced death and discovered that it's really no big deal, Jason has devoted the last few years to training himself to be a much nastier, no-holds-barred kind of vigilante.

(Later on, we can reveal that Dr. Voodoo's hypnotic influence had a lot to do with Jason's excessively violent and stupid actions before and during "A Death in the Family." Didn't you just know there had to be a good reason?)


FIFTH THEORY

You may recall that one of the earliest and most notorious cases of mass-production cloning in pre-Crisis DCU continuity was the time Paul Kirk, the original Manhunter, was on the run while a whole bunch of evil assassin clones of himself were chasing him across the map. Batman got involved in that Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson storyline toward the end, as a matter of fact. The evildoers who had cloned Kirk were called The Council, and I don't think they had anything to do with the evil Manhunter robots who were later discovered (retconned) to have trained Paul Kirk and equipped him with a costume similar to their own red-garbed-with-blue-faces appearance.

I believe that Council has recently been making a comeback, but during the lean and hungry years following the huge loss of their main base and most of their assets (in the Goodwin/Simonson storyline of three decades ago) I suggest that one of the surviving agents of the Council spent some time in Gotham, searching for a way to get even with Batman, whom they partially blamed for the downfall of their earlier efforts (along with Paul Kirk, but since he had died in the course of that story, there was no need to worry about him causing any further trouble, right?).

The guy was probably thinking it would be nice if he could get a skin scraping from Batman that wouuld have useful DNA in it, but this proved difficult since Batman wears a costume that covers almost every square inch of his body except around his mouth and jaw. The Robin at the time, however (Jason Todd) wore a costume that left him bare-legged, which created many more opportunities to contrive some way to scratch one of his legs and get a little skin (maybe even some blood) without attracting attention. This was done. Since then, the Council got set up with a new secret base and started growing a Jason clone, whom they further trained much the same way they used to train Paul Kirk's clones. Whether or not the Council is currently pulling the Red Hood's strings is unclear.


And here is another approach I later suggested DC might take. I wrote this one in July 2005 as part of a discussion about the then-still-in-the-future "One Year Later" thing which we had learned would be taking place in early 2006, as DC's regular titles suddenly fast-forwarded to "what is happening one year after Infinite Crisis finally ended." I'll start by quoting what I was reacting to directly, at the time:

IIRC, there was also the feeling that it would be boring to show everyone resuming their normal lives and routine all at the same time. So now we will see people in the middle of new situations.

Great, now you're stirring up my sense of humor, and we all know what terrible things can occur when someone does that. What if it goes like this?

First Issue of one of the Batman titles to be published after the One-Year-Forward Leap

Page 1.
Panel 1. Tim Drake is finishing a long-winded speech.

TIM: -- And that's how I solved the nagging question of how Jason Todd had come back from the dead!

BRUCE: Good detective work, Tim! I knew there had to be a logical answer, but I was too close to it emotionally to sort out the real clues from the red herrings!

TIM (modestly): I just applied the lessons you taught me, Bruce, and then followed my gut.

[Move on to Page 2, where they start talking about their newest case. The Mysterious Return of Jason Todd is never mentioned again in any comic book! It's all been resolved during that missing year, and we were just unlucky enough to miss Tim's brilliant speech that wrapped it all up in one nice, logical explanation of how he fit all the clues together and found solid evidence to confirm them!]

Wouldn't it be utterly hilarious if DC actually did that to us to show us how much we had missed during the lost year?

[nepenthes]

^ Ha ha. I do like that last one alot!

So basically your five methods are:
1. Joker rewrites reality in a moment of sanity
2. Joker rewrites reality because it's funny and cruel
3. Jason never died on a parrallel earth
4. Jason is part undead
5. Red Hood is a clone of the original Jason

Pretty standard options for a comic book ressurection - but really it all comes down to to execution I guess, if it's great story then it doesn't matter if the premise is silly or cliche. It's not easy with a character who should generally avoid cosmic or supernatural or reality-altering type benders.



Just for fun I'm going to try to add to that list every possible method I can think of right now. We can get this list up to fifty, I'm sure

6. Lazarus Pit, someone throws him in
7. Jason's body is regrown from cellular tissue containing latent memories
8. Poison Ivy repaires his brain and body with organic matter and re-animates him
9. Jason never died - the Joker merely injected him with a mock-death poison and staged the blast
10. Mr. Freeze preserves the body and Mad Hatter uses a device to download Jasons mind into a new brain - under direction from another mastermind villain (who is not Ra's Al Gul).
11. Jason went to Hell and was sent back a) to complete a mission b) because he beat Satan in a bargain c) he's just too badarse for hell or d) Etrigan, Deadman, Constantine or whoever go to hell and bring Jason back
12. Jason went to limbo and his soul was just too restless and angry and he literally rebuilt his body using cosmic forces and woke himself up through sheer force of will.
13. The 1800 poll and the thousands of votes entered provided an unrecedented jolt of dream power to Jason Todd from his audience of dreamers and readers. Dream of Endless noticed this ripple in the Dreaming and goes to observe this remarkable young character. Jason Todd greets Dream with hostility but this amuses his sister Death who takes a liking to Jason and restores his life because she thinks he's a cool character.
14. A quirk in the reincarnation loop meant that the instant Jason died he was actually born again 300 years into the future in a body identicle to his own since his immortal soul remembered the coding sequence of his DNA. He travels back in time because the future is digital and he is only an analogue man
15. Jasons mother was really a covert demon/angel/Amazonian goddess on secret mission that Jason was unknowingly about to compromise. She feels bad that he died trying to know her so she fights to save the life of her son.
16. The Robin totem god looks down on Jason and says 'that is fcked up' and restores his life along with the powers of Robin vision and birdsong.
17. Jason was really two twins pretending to be one guy, that's why his training progressed so slowly - Batman always had to tell him twice
18. The real Jason was abducted by aliens who left behind a clone to avoid suspicion while he was gone. Jason has merry adventures in deepspace, meets many colorful characters and returns to earth wth an affinity for Hanna Barbera-styled space costumes
19. Superboy punches the walls of reality
20. Zatanna only tricked Batman into believing Jason was dead, in order to teach him a lesson on parental responsibilty, under the advice of Leslie Thompkins

See how that works? You can come up with any number of desperate ideas and number19 will always be dumbest idea on the list :rolleyes:

[Damiean Dark]

In the comic Winter Soldier, Marvels version of Robin, Buckys ressurection was done well blown up over europe and found and revived by russian scientists to be used as a assassin and seemingly only a few years older then he should be from being brought out from cryo sleep every 5 ears or so to do a job.

The key thing when creating a story like this is not making it look like a crappy attempt to revive a dead character for ratings thats what was done with jason todd imo.

[Sizzle]

He stays dead. Period.

[brundlefly]

He stays dead. Period.

*nods approvingly* This is the correct answer.

[Choppa]

21. When the universe was restarted at Zero Hour, someone removed Jason from the blast and replaced his body with his carcas from his grave in the future

22. Some time bandits stole his body after burial and threw him in a pit

23. Jason is a skrull (they really are everywhere!)

24. No explanantion is given

25. Jason didn't die

26. Batman is offered a chance to change one thing in his life. He picks Jason's death.

[Wind-Breaker]

23. Jason is a skrull (they really are everywhere!)


thats somewhat familar...

The only thing I could think of was if during the Emperor Joker storyline, Joker could have resurrected Todd as a sick joke on Batman, and forced Bruce to watch him kill/resurrect Todd over and over again. And after Superman unseated Joker power, Todd resurrected last (during the loop between death and life), and when Clark asks Specter to bring things back as they were, Todd being anomaly somehow slipped through the cracks and still stayed alive.

[Rolltideguy77]

Did Jason ever visit his grave? Is there a body there of "someone"?

[Super Buddies Forever]

Well, the only time I can recall him "visiting" his grave was when he dug himself out of it.

Kind of makes you wonder how Batman never noticed the giant gaping hole in both the casket and the ground covering it.

[nepenthes]

^ especially since Batman had sensors all around the coffin. He mentions that in Hush anyway....

[Choppa]

It was explained in that Batman Annual that Batman's senors were programmed to go off if someone tried to get into the grave/coffin, but not the other way around.

I don't understand it but that's what we're going to get. Be glad you got something

[Lupek]

I'm late to this thread but this outer space werewolf would have preferred a Lazarus Pit resurrection to the multiverse thing. I like the multiverse but that wasn't the way to do have done this.

I dont think it's been handled so well, but still, I liked the idea of Batmans biggest failure back from the dead as the Red Hood, to rub his face in it.

[PatchMadripoor]

Pretty much that.

Ras stole his body years ago, tossed him in a Lazarus Pit and kept it all hidden from Batman because if anyone's got the resources to keep Batman in the dark about something it's Ras Al Ghul. If Ras thinks that Batman, by refusing to join him or turning Talia against him, has robbed him of an heir than that would be his way of doing the same to Batman.

Or the camp that Jason was killed in was a front of humanitarian services controlled fromthe shadows by Ra's. Ra's sees from a distance the Detective mourning the boy and does the math. Resurrection a la Lazarus pits and he has a Robin of his own that Bruce would hesitate to fight full out.

[nepenthes]

I think the once possible Ra's/ League of Shadows angle is ruined now that we have Damien on the scene. If we're gonna get a new explanation it will need to involve someone else. Maybe Lex Luthor, Ivy, even Green Arrow. anyone one of the 1-20 solutions listed before

[JohnRD]

I prefer the explanation where he doesn't come back, because he was lame to begin with.

[Jim Thompson]

I think I must be the only guy on the planet who actually enjoyed the Red Hood storyline. :redface:

[NeoStar9X]

I don't have a problem with how he was brought back to life. It's what has been done after him after Infinite Crisis hit. There was just no plan at all. If there was one then it got screwed up due to all the changes at the last minute. The first mistake and the biggest was trying to pass him off as Nightwing. That didn't make sense and never should have been done. He already had a persona in the Red Hood and even if you wanted to drop that you could have just had him go by Jason Todd. You didn't have to shoehorn him into anyone elses book. You already had a one where he could have appeared in. Detective Comics. The nature of that book allows for you to do short arcs with the character.

The actual annual with his resurrection had a number of plot points that could have been expanded upon but they were ignored.

1. The affects of the pit on Jason already damaged brain?
2. Jason's relationship with Talia? The true nature of it?
3. Jason's obsession with the Joker and how Batman has handle things since he died. The scene at the end of the annual where Jason is staring at the wall of newspaper articles (about the Joker after he was killed I believe) showed in what state of mind Jason actually was and why he was so upset.
4. Batman's reaction to learning it was Talia that had Jason all that time and hasn't mentioned even when she told him about his son?
There are a number of other things that could have been done as well.

If they weren't prepared to use him in a decent manner then he should have gone into limbo with his status in doubt until he returned. There is actually nothing wrong with the character. Dislike him or like him due to personality but there is nothing actually wrong with him. It's all in how he's been used.

I think this mess could still be fixed though. First I think that whole Nightwing arc should just universally be ignored. It wasn't good for Jason and it wasn't good for Dick. The Countdown stuff can stay and just excuse it as him still trying to find his way. However his thoughts on being brought back to life have to be addressed and Batman's reaction to it finally. Perhaps both can be written as not forgetting about it but they don't really have anyone they can actually talk to about it so they just push it aside. Forcing them back together should bring it back to the forefront for them and then you can address it then move on.

I would not mind if after that he ends up on one of the other Earths as either perhaps Red Robin or even taking up the mantle of Batman on one of those worlds as he tries to redeem himself. He could still appear if a writer desired or minis could still be done based on the character. This could be fixed without to much trouble. They just need to acknowledge that he exist in the Batman titles and the nature of his relationship with Bruce. He could be hated by Nightwing and Robin but the relationship with Batman can't be ignored and has to be addressed. The fact they haven't do so yet just makes the whole situation worse and worse and it gets worse the more time that passes and it isn't done.

Perhaps at the end of RIP it finally will be.

[earl]

I think the biggest problem is that they ever published that Annual at all, then compounded it by having that dorky Nightwing storyline and however they used Jason Todd in Countdown.

If they would have left it as it was at the end of the Red Hood story, people might look at the whole thing a different way. It is just like the Hush story where they botched the ending that it kind of spoils the whole thing.

I don't get the whole thing that the Lazarus Pit 'cured' his broken mind either, as the whole thing that has been shown whoever uses a Pit goes freaking loco after it is done. I think a big part of Ra's Al Ghul's way of looking at things has been tempered as dipping in the strong stuff for a few hundred years has warped him.

It is all in the execution of the idea.

How DC let the Jason Todd storyline get fumbled is an editorial problem, but hey it is only one of many that they have done in the last few years. It could have been a classic, but now it is just another goofy comic story that doesn't quite work.

[The Cool Thatguy]

My solution:

At the time, Joker was working on getting capital, finding weapons, etc. As he's doing that, he comes across a weakened, stolen sample of Ra's Lazarus. According to the guy he bought it from, the sample only takes effect after several days, maybe a week and doesn't completely heal a person, especially mentally.

So Joker, with his sick sense of humor, gives Jason a dose after he beat him unconscious. The plan is for Jason to wake up in his coffin and sufficate. The joke would be that it wasn't Joker who really killed Robin, it would have been Batman!

'Course, Jason had to screw up a nice punch-line by surviving.

[Nate Grey]

I said this a while ago, but my theory when he first returned was that NYSSA was involved. And only Nyssa.

She obsessed over Batman because her father, Ra's Al Gul, did. So she knew everything about him as well, his secret identity, his wards, everything. In her mind, Batman left Jason to die, and that mirrored her father leaving her to die during World War II. So, shortly after Jason was buried, she figured out a way to get his body and take him to wherever she has been residing for the last 50 or so years. In her mind, she would give him the parent he deserves, and to her he would be the child she deserves (remember, after her internment during WWII she can't have children naturally). To make this a reality as well as metaphorical, she gave the body blood transfusions of her own blood, and then recouped from the blood loss in her personal Lazarus Pit. She did this daily for a few months. Finally, when it came time for the body's daily dose, Jason was sitting up looking back at her, fully aware and asking "Where's Bruce?"

She explains what happens and even offers to let Jason go find Bruce (similar to when her father let her go, believing she'd return one day). Jason, instead, angry that Bruce hasn't avenged him, decides to stay with Nyssa. Nyssa gives him more training to add to Bruce's, teaches him in weaponery, and gives him the education equivalent to a Ivy League college. This lasts until Jason hits 18-19, when he decides to leave the nest and succeed where he believes his "father" has failed.

But, alas, wasn't meant to be.

[Nate Grey]

Okay, I wasn't sure if this took or not. CBR was "hiccuping" or something around the time I posted it (4 in the morning).

[Captain Jim]

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