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Even More of a Disaster - @evenmoreofadisaster

What’s funny about the death of Jason Todd is that DC never meant it to be taken as seriously as it is now—not in terms of judging the characters, anyway. 

I had a conversation with my dad recently (someone who grew up around the time he was Robin and when they killed him off) and it opened my eyes to a couple of things. 

The real tragedy? His death by telephone  poll eerily mirrors the comic itself. Jason follows a woman he believes will give him the answers he’s been aching for, that woman being his very own biological mother, Sheila Haywood—only to be betrayed.

We were that woman. We were his mother who pretended to care. 

We led him to the Joker. 

We betrayed him, too.

And the funniest part? Most fans didn’t see him, didn’t want him, until he was already gone. Until he came back as the worst and saddest version of himself—broken, violent, and vengeful.

Just like Bruce. He didn’t really see Jason until he was dead.

Nobody cared about him—not really—until he became Red Hood. Until he became Joker’s twisted mirror. 

And even beyond that, the edgy romanticized antihero. 

In a way, DC made his death reflect us, the very fans who claim to love him now. Because like Batman, where were we when Jason needed us most?

Where were we when we were given the choice to let Jason live or die? Because most of us… chose to let him die.

We called him “the lame Robin.” “The Robin who wasn’t enough.” “The one who’d never live up to Dick.”

My dad? He remembered Jason as brash, annoying—‘not as cool as Dick.’ But talking to him made me realize how Jason’s story wasn’t meant to be neat. It was meant to be forgotten. And that’s what makes it tragic.

The hard truth is one most people aren’t willing to accept.

That the Joker never really killed Jason Todd. DC didn’t either. We did.

And that beautiful part of him—the raw, messy, “problem child” who challenged everything we wanted our heroes to be that we could never accept? Possibly the part of him that represents those like Joker in society (who are broken down and ridiculed for things they never could control about themselves whether that’s mental illness, race, sexuality, gender identity, etc. until they finally have the final “one bad day” where they break or are broken completely)—that part died too.

And it’s never coming back.

So the question is: If we really love Jason Todd as much as we claim to now... Would we have ever let him die in the first place?

Maybe that’s why it’s kind of genius that it’s the Joker who kills him. Because Jason’s death? It was a joke. A cruel one.

His pain was the punchline. 

“You know… maybe it was all a joke. Just a horrible joke.” – Joker, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore