Lorendiac
04-14-2005, 10:59 PM
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).
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.
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).
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.