deity-hood

jason ascended into godhood after he dead, that's it. i just want to draw a cosmic entity-like jason lol

In the same way that I get annoyed at Damian having taken some of Tim's traits in the past 10 or more years--

I get just as annoyed that I can't help but feel like they gave some of Jason's traits to Tim for--Gosh, even longer I think? 'Cause they at least started during that during Tim's Red Robin series.

Which didn't even come out that long after Under the Hood.

Feels nearly criminal in fact.

I'm not saying writers are intentionally borrowing from these other characters. Odds are they haven't even thought about it this much.

But the super smart, master planner, incredible tactician, that's always 10 steps ahead of you?

THAT'S NOT TIM DRAKE.

THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE JASON TODD.

And don't get too far ahead of me, they're all Bat-Family, they're all great planners and tacticians, that's how this bunch survive the stuff that they do.

Come a little closer, and I'll show you what I mean. It's about the extent of it.

Tim was always a very clever boy with a knack of getting out of tight spots. Very smart in his own right.

But he was nothing compared to Jason Todd.

Back in the days when Jason was still normally called 'The Red Hood' and not just 'Red Hood', he knew just the right thing to say, to get just the right reaction out of people. He can read people like nobody's business.

He hardly does a thing, but he has Black Mask right in his trap and Black Mask has no idea.

Jason Todd plays the role of someone so arrogant, he has to be in over his head right? Surely he is.

That's what Black Mask is thinking at least.

Arrogant--but not crazy.

Jason wants to piss off Black Mask, he wants him to be annoyed. He's doing this not purely for the money (though that'd be great), he's doing this because he's going to set Black Mask's men up.

See this confidence in Jason?

I don't see the hot head all these people make Jason out to be on display anywhere. This is a cool-headed genius, that knows the moves he's making. He may not know everything, he's not omnipresent, but he damn well knows what he's doing.

Jason Todd is able to play chess with human beings.

And given these guys are still under the impression that Jason is another arrogant thug, who probably got lucky or something, they don't realize Jason already has his next 5 moves planned out.

Even better is, when there's an element he had no way of predicting coming into play, he's smooth as silk, it's an instant and he's using his next idea to see how it goes. No sign of insecurity or hot headedness on display. He's not going into a rage, or frustration.

He's fully aware of how intelligent he is.

Guy didn't even want the money.

HE'S NO MERCENARY.

He's a fallen angel scrubbing the waste of Gotham City with as many bullets as he can, bit by bit.

There's a reason why this story kept Jason Todd popular all these years despite the countless (probably actually countable but shush) bad comics that have mischaracterized him as something he's not.

I think you are missing the vital point, that, the Batman Jason met who killed the Joker also. Killed literally every other villain too. Like. even hinted including Catwoman. And was ready to kill more

Like, legitimately the comic seems to say that Bruce going to those extremes is a good thing that would result in literal world peace and happiness for all other heroes who would then get to retire forever.

The reason this version of Bruce is so screwed up has little to nothing to do with the fact that he killed thousands of people - he's screwed up because the was abandoned and shunned by the rest of society

Jason shows up and has literally 0 bad things to say about what this Bruce actually did (I honestly think the author intends for Jason to approve of it tho I agree with op's interpretation of Jason's character far more) and immediately starts injecting hope and heroism back into this Bruce bc again the problem was not his violence, it was his isolation

The state is the institution that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a given territory. State violence is so normalized it often ceases to be seen as violence, e.g if a civilian takes someone off the street by force, throws them in a car and holds them hostage in a secondary location that's kidnapping, if a cop does it it's arresting.

Cops are not simply "people who do violence" they are people who hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of it and commit statist violence to uphold the power of companies and the government. In contrast, vigilantism is non-state violence that challenges this monopoly, at least in theory, but in practice it depends on who vigilantes target and what methods they use.

If vigilantes work with cops, target only people who the state targets and send them to jail then they are functionally state operatives and are acting as a paramilitary wing for the police.

This is why so many heroes seem unaware of their status as criminals. They lecture their enemies of the evil of crime while committing the crime of vigilantism because while they might be law breakers on paper, they aren't in practice. They are implicitly authorised by the cops they work with.

If they instead target people not on the basis of whether or not the state likes them but based on their own independent morality and do not collaborate with the state at all then they are non-state, and if they actively defend people against state violence then they are anti-state.

Of course, most vigilantes don't fit 100% into one of these categories, like most things in life, this is a spectrum and where they're placed can change over time. This is more of a framework that you can use to figure out how much of a cop a vigilante is being at any given time.

Yes, a belief in redemption is often a motivating factor for prisoner's rights advocates, but it isn't always related and does not make someones support of the prison industrial complex more progressive because it does not materially change what they think should happen to criminals.

You're talking about a child who could see untitled at like 8 years old. Talia al ghul saw potential in him but ultimately decided against taking him in. He survived for a while before being adopted, and even then, he had the balls to steal the tires of the batmobile and then swing at batman with a tire iron at 11. A malnourished kid, at 15, was regularly breaking adults' collar bones. This is a kid that terrorised goons with ease while being shorter than 5 feet (his death certificate stated that he was 4'11).

And this is pre death, pre training. He was in a comatose state, and his body remembered how to fight. At 17, he snuck into Titans Tower and knocked out every member in order to clear the area to fight tim. He planted a bomb under the batmobile and CHOSE not to set it off. Then you get to the murder tour in lost days, where he trained with the best, with the ultimate gial of killing batman. This teenager managed to go through the same regiment bruce went through while learning more, since he wasn't bound by a desire not to kill. He learned more techniques and forms from more people and managed to kill the best of the best.

Ra's al ghul, a centuries old man, called him a plague to earth, and he was also deemed fit for the all caste, who are experts on the soul and magic shit. He's the chosen one of a secret sector of warrior monks with magical flaming swords imbedded into his soul while being too young to drink alcohol. The all mother herself said that he'd brung death and destruction wherever he went.

Additionally, he's a strategic genius who managed to run circles around batman and his team, only revealing what he wanted to, all while taking over the underground and beefing with black mask and other kingpins.

No way in hell does he get beat by dick, or future tim, or damian. The only one who could even give him a fight is cass, and even then, she would struggle. When dick got turned into a juiced up vampire, jason stopped holding back and laid him out immediately. When he was drunk and in mouring and damian came in with the intent to fight, he still kicked his ass.

(We request that any future trivia questions include an answer (in a separate ask, ideally, so we can post the question with the original ask), so that we can be more confident in posting answers.)

Bruce and Dick send Tony Zucco to the electric chair in Detective Comics #38:

In Batgirl (2000) #19 Cassandra Cain breaks a man scheduled for execution out of prison, but returns him on the request of the mother of someone he murdered:

FUCK

I FINALLY ARTICULATED WHY I LIKED JASON'S ARC IN FUTURE STATE

so the thing with future state is that jason becomes a peacekeeper for the magistrate, which is basically a rent-a-cop/bounty hunter for a deeply corrupt company that's trying to control gotham through an authoritarian police state. and at first, it's like wow, okay, jason has COMPLETELY given up on morality, right? but then we learn that jason is the only peacekeeper that doesn't kill. the peacekeepers act as bounty hunters, bringing in "criminals" like the masks/vigilantes, and the thing is that they have the option to bring them in dead or alive, and jason ALWAYS brings them in alive.

which, on the surface, is a breach of what jason does in a narrative, right? he is almost ALWAYS the voice advocating for more violence, more permanent ends. so then, why the fuck has he suddenly become this jim gordon figure who is trying to work within and reform this incredibly corrupt system from the inside?

but i think... i think that's the key of it. jim gordon, the one honest cop in the whole of gotham city, the man who championed a one-cop crusade against the unstoppable flow of corruption in her streets, is the blueprint here.

because jason is, in some ways, always the underdog. the scapegoat or the black sheep or the powder keg--however you want to frame it, he's usually a dissenting voice. he has no qualms about standing in opposition to everything and everyone around him. which is why his stance of not killing ANYONE in future state makes so much sense. when the whole world has become okay with killing indiscriminately, when there is basically a genocide happening in gotham's streets, of course jason is going to fight back against the complacency.

jason todd isn't a killer. it isn't that the red hood decided to kill in UTRH/lost days, and so that's his personality now--no, what he ACTUALLY does in a narrative is challenge it. when batman shows too much hope for the villains, when the bats refuse to kill them even though it would reduce the (high!!!) numbers of their future victims--THAT is when jason grandstands about killing rogues. but when there is no hope, and everyone in power is happy to wipe out whoever comes up on the naughty list... well, then that's when jason REFUSES to kill. it's not that he's contrary, or that he's wishy-washy, or that he has no morals--jason todd red hood is, in essence, a critique of the system. when the system forgives, jason asks why. when the system murders, jason asks why. and i think, looking at it through this lens, i can see why jason is the perfect jim gordon figure. after everything, it makes perfect sense that future state!jason has decided that there's been far too much blood spilt, and thus is trying to do something about it.