Sunday, October 4, 2015

Five Great Robin (Jason Todd) Stories

Because DC once again shows it's bias. Not to mention this list makes no sense as one of these stories is fairly recent and the others are pretty well known. Tim is in his "graduated" ID and I'm pretty sure Dick becomes Nightwing in one of the stories listed. Since I haven't finished reading all of the Jason issues it doesn't seem fair to pick the best. Still here are some of the ones I enjoyed.


  • For the Man Who Has Everything: I reviewed this one but while this is a Superman story Jason has a big part. He's the newbie that easily gets overlooked and doesn't seem to pose a threat. By all rights he should be terrified because if the Trinity aren't fairing well what can he do? Despite all these Jason does manage a remarkable feat.
  • Batman The Cult: Batman doesn't do so well after being in Blackfires' cult for some time. Jason has to help him escape and basically do the hard work when his partner falters. THIS is definitely the story I'd say affects Jason on a deeper level. Sure it's about Batman breaking down but you can see how horrified Jason is and get why his beliefs will differ from Batmans'. He sees Batman broken, isn't allowed to save people and his scenes have a loss of innocence feel to them. This story is also used as a partial excuse for why Batman wasn't on his A game in DITF in one passing line.
  • The New Teen Titans #20: All of the Titans Donna has rounded up are experienced professionals except Jason who joins the team for the first time. And all of them are having emotional issues at the moment leading to Donna snapping under the pressure and nearly kill Hawk. Jason manages to get her back on track which keeps the team together and he's there for Roy at a rather important moment.
  • Batman #410 and #411: Jason finds out his dad was murdered by Two Face and Batman hid the truth. While I admit I found some things corny like Two Faces' far too many two puns the Jason parts are solid. He's smart and resourceful on the job. There's a real interest and effort to be a good partner which makes Bruces' betrayal hurt so much worse. While I would have liked to see how the original arc would have gone his acceptance of Batmans' rules shows how false the "bad Robin" crap really is.
  • Batman #413: This one really shows what a hard worker Jason is and how much he values his school life. Some later writer have tried to retcon Jason as a stereotypical street kid but this shows what he was really like. RHATO had some of this with Jasons' excited reaction to Kori and her alien tech. Just like there Jason enjoys learning and he gets to apply it in a way that helps Batman. 

4 comments:

  1. Excellent choices, Jason's tenure as Robin really needs more exposure.

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  2. It really does, far too many writers ignored it to make him fit their bad Robin role. I feel cheated because he's the Robin with the least amount of issues.

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  3. In general Jason's tenure was really messed up by Editorial. The whole mess with the pre and pos crisis versions of Jason are the biggest offense.

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  4. I lay a lot of blame of Starlin who wanted to get rid of him. Editorial certainly didn't help as we heard from Collins account.

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