So where does the Batfam's Jan Brady go from here....

[benicio127]

Since Morrison decided to make Jason Todd the literal red-headed step-child of the Batfamily (.....As much fun as my friends and I have had making fun of Jason for being a closet ginger, this was really ridiculous), where does he go now?

Jason came back and was written brilliantly by Judd Winick in Under the Hood. Then came that.... Nightwing Story We Do Not Speak Of, Geoff Johns' Jason (which I personally think was awesome) in Titans, Countdown and Fabian Nicieza's Jason (which I also think was really good).

Then came Battle for the Cowl. .............................Yeah. And now while I don't think Morrison did as bad a job with Jason as Tony Daniel or Bruce Jones, the red-head thing is a head-scratcher. (pun intended). I still don't understand why Morrison did it. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

But what was very interesting is that Morrison made Jason very meta. It' almost like he's also telling the reader: It was too late for him. He was killed by a phone poll. So it was ...too late for him in a way. 










Oh good dear, Tan's art is..... Not Good in that last panel. EW.

So anyways. While I like Jason's Red Hood (Winick) the best, he's really made it his own and plus it has that irony, he's only worn borrowed uniforms. And apart from Winick, Johns and Nicieza (IMO), he's been written fairly inconsistently. DC can't seem to figure out if they want him to reform (Countdown), be an anti-hero/vigilante who kills criminals, or become a cliched villain (BftC).

So any ideas on where he goes from here? (After he gets out of jail). I'd love to see DC put Winick back on him and do a mini finding out who he is, but this is just really wishful thinking, I know.

What do you want to see him do?
Reform and join the Batfamily again?
Reform, but still be at odds with the Batfamily?
Stay an anti-hero?
Officially become a villain?
....Other?

Comments

[sistermagpie]

It's depressing, because he comes from such a bad background in the first place, and yet was always honestly and earnestly GOOD at heart. He had a different approach to things, because he was young and traumatized and came from a different side of life than Bruce did -- the man we compare his moral compass to (along with Dick), ultimately.

Yes to everything in this comment. Which is so frustrating. I don't get why the writers are at all interested in meta about "bad kids" because that's completely meaningless. Whether you're bad or not is not determined by your early circumstances, even if of course that can effect a person. In Jason's case it seems like it honestly just affected him in giving him a black and white moral code--much like Bruce's, only Jason lacks Bruce's ability to temper it with compassion. (Hardly surprising when you look at how little compassion he's shown.)

So it just frustrates me because when you look at the actual character Jason is, outside of just being from the streets and angry, you can see why he would scare the Bat-family so much as individuals. Alfred maybe not, but Winick made UtH about some really specific things about Bruce and Jason that worked.

And I can also totally see why he'd freak out the other two. As you mentioned, he's the first one to question Bruce, where Dick and Tim both needed to rely on Bruce unquestioningly in different ways when they were growing up. I can see why they'd not want Jason to exist, or to need him to exist on their own terms, but Jason's a character who wouldn't let them do that. So it's frustrating to me everytime he shows up and it seems like writers want to make his interactions with the rest of the family "safe" in some way. Not physically safe, obviously, but emotionally safe for everybody where it wouldn't be imo.

Not to mention, of course, the whole "he's from the streets so he's bad" is even worse given the current Robin who's so violent it's a fantasy, yet he's clearly a hero underneath it all because his Dad that he barely knows is a heroic billionaire.

[cuntfucius]

o it's frustrating to me everytime he shows up and it seems like writers want to make his interactions with the rest of the family "safe" in some way. Not physically safe, obviously, but emotionally safe for everybody where it wouldn't be imo.

THIS this this. This is one of my biggest qualms because a major factor that plays into the entire inconsistency around Jason is the fact that he repeatedly deals with the Batfamily, and they repeatedly have to make these interactions safe -- both ethically and emotionally. Jason often loses it merely so moral flattening can be done, and so the member of the Batfamily that is facing him has a much easier choice to make when taking him down. He's out of his mind, so anything he says that might have a POINT will just get lost in his crazed ramblings, and he never truly challenges the Bats in ways that he easily could. It's kept terribly simplistic and it just shouldn't be. At all.