"Jason was written to be unlikable."
No he wasn't. Nobody does that. He was written to be likeable and people still didn't like him. Sucks but it happens sometimes. Cope.
JTodds stans never beating the victim complex allegations.
I wasn't saying this as a Jason Todd stan. I just think there are a lot of nuances with Jason Todd that the following robins don't really have. ( and it's very interesting to me, the difference in characters when an author likes writing the character vs when they don't )
Jason being seen as the replacement Robin had a lot to do with things, nobody likes to see their favorite character replaced, especially Dick Grayson who had been Robin for over 40 years at that point. Dick had many stories outside of Batman as Robin, a chance Jason didn't get but other Robins following him do get. Wolfman also stated that Jason Todd was literally created so Dick Grayson could be his own person.
Collins made Jason a street kid because and I quote, "I believe the street kid thing was my idea, the notion being that Batman/Bruce Wayne did not want responsibility for putting Dick Grayson in harm’s way anymore, but this new street kid was already in harm’s way and heading toward the wrong road. So taking him on (and it was a gradual decision) made sense."
Collins ends up quitting, In came Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, Alan Grant, and John Wagner, it is stated that none of them were enthusiastic about writing for Jason's Robin.
Jim Starlin specifically, was a writer for Batman in the 80s, and with him came his hate of child sidekick. He stated multiple times that he avoided using Robin (Jason Todd) in his stories as much as he could. His one story with Robin was issue #424. Where about this he states that, "In the one Batman issue I wrote with Robin featured, I had him do something underhanded, as I recall. Denny had told me that the character was very unpopular with fans, so I decided to play on that dislike." ( Aka he was written to be disliked and this wasn't the only time either ) They actively played into the dislike for his Robin instead of trying to write stories that might make fans like him more. Which is very different than how it went with Tim, in the interview with his writer he states how much he worked on making Tim likable.
( I don't mention other Robins because after Tim the idea of Bruce taking in another Robin wasn't ground breaking anymore. )
O'neil then did say that he should've been more hands on, because suddenly they had this character who was a "disagreeable little snot" and knew they either needed to give him character development or write him out. At the same time, Dc was having an idea of doing an AIDS education book, so they put a box out and had everybody put in the name of a character they think should die via AIDS. About this Jim Starlin says, " they put a box out and wanted everybody to put in suggestions of who should contract AIDS and perish in the comics. I stuffed it with Robin. They realized it was all my handwriting so they ended up throwing all my things out" which is such an insane thing to say about a child character you're writing for. Then after this came the vote to kill off Jason.
This isn't even all my thoughts on this, but it gets my main point across. Jason from the beginning never stood a chance. He was written as a replacement for Dick because they wanted Dick to be his own person. They halfassed his first back story ( literally giving him the same backstory as dick ), then made him a street kid because being a street kid is being on the wrong path already? They never made an effort to make him likable to fans and instead fed into the dislike of his character till they didn't know how to fix it and killed him off.
