SEEKERS OF THE BAT

After Dick Grayson left the fold to become Nightwing, Batman was left without a partner. That wouldn’t last long, as he soon came across an angry but extremely gifted juvenile delinquent named Jason Todd.

As the second Robin, Jason was violent, unmerciful and allowed people to die. Although Batman tried to reel in his tendencies, Jason soon became a very unpopular character, prompting DC Comics to conduct a nationwide poll on his fate.   The people spoke, and in the infamous ‘A Death in the Family’ story arc,  the Joker bludgeoned Jason Todd to death with a crowbar before Batman could save him.

Much like the obsessive, irrational guilt he holds over being unable to prevent his parents’ death, Batman also punishes himself for Jason Todd’s death. Soon after he took on Tim Drake as the third Robin, he erected the now-familiar glass memorial to Jason’s memory to ensure he never forgot his greatest failure.

The significance of Jason Todd’s glass case would eventually have gone the way of the giant penny and robot dinosaur except that in 2003, Jason was brought back to life by the ridiculous “Superboy-Prime Reality Punch”. In retroactive continuity, Jason now inexplicably clawed his way out of his grave shortly after his death to be nursed back to health by Talia, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul. He has returned to plague the Bat family in a number of guises, first as an adult Robin, then as an evil Nightwing, then as the murderous Red Robin, then as a gun-toting stand-in for the recently killed (Omega Sanctioned) Batman, and currently as the new Red Hood, the original alter ego of the Joker. In all his versions, he sees himself as a more effective Batman, using lethal force to succeed where his mentor failed.

Update: His return in the comics has coincided with the release of the excellent animated film: Under the Red Hood, which recounts Batman’s reaction to his return:

There was once a young engineer who lost everything. With nowhere to turn, he was taken advantage of by some local thieves. They took him along on a break in and tricked him into wearing a red hood, supposedly to conceal his identity. Little did he know that if the police caught them, their plan was to finger the engineer as their ringleader.

Unfortunately for him, the police never arrived. A horrific horned demon in a black cape did instead. As they fled, the engineer fell into a vat of toxic waste. The chemicals bleached his skin, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to the engineer anymore.

Batman’s greatest challenge has always been the murderous Joker. Both insane and brilliant, the Joker epitomizes the supervillain; the unstoppable criminal that can terrorize an entire city. Moreover, his seemingly random crimes strike a stark contrast to Batman’s calculated sense of order.

Batman started his career content to fight common street crime as an unseen urban legend, but foiling the Joker’s elaborate plans led him to up the ante and become a public defender of the city. However, some surmise that the Joker’s theatrics wouldn’t have surfaced in a world without a Batman. So which came first, the chicken or the egg?