DC's Greatest Failure: How A Bad Marketing Stunt Tainted Jason Todd's Character

It’s no secret that sometimes, in an attempt to garner more fans/customers/attention, companies will lay out big stunts or features that are designed to impress the masses. Most of the time, these events go the way of anything viral on the Internet or social media: they bring in people and press for a few days and then disappear from existence only for those companies to plan something else in the years following that will make an even bigger impact. But every now and then, an idea can be taken to the extreme and find a way to derail itself. When that happens, companies are left scrambling to pick up the pieces and employees are scrutinized until a supposed perpetrator is found. They make a public apology or just do their best to sweep the situation under the rug, praying that their slip-up won’t hurt sales. Yet, despite all their efforts, the stigma of that mistake never fully goes away. Unlike with a successful gimmick, people can’t forget the time that a certain company dropped the ball and produced either offensive or hilarious results (depending on your point of view).

The comic book industry is certainly no stranger to this phenomenon. In fact, many of the choices that writers and editors make on behalf of characters, such as costume designs or who will wear the mask, are often controversial enough within their own circle of readers. It takes a lot to do more than simply ruffle the feathers of many comic book fans, although the rise of social media has enabled audiences and writers to interact on a far more personal and direct level than they ever were before. But just like any other company, comic book big shots like DC and Marvel are still, at the end of the day, a business, and their first and foremost interest is making money.

And lots of it.

The history of comics is similar to most other forms of media in that it experienced a rise and fall regularly over the course of the 20th century. After the Golden and Silver Ages of comics in the 40’s-60’s, readership began to peter out, and sales of comics dropped considerably from what they had once been. The 1970's and 80’s brought about a new age for comics for both DC and Marvel. For DC, it was a dark one, an age where many of their superheroes and other characters were receiving re-writes and retcons in the wake of their Crisis on Infinite Earths event that reset their universe in an attempt to consolidate the tangled mess that had become their cannon. Several DC characters had already undergone grittier transformations prior to the event, such as Green Arrow’s Speedy who, in the 70’s, was baptized into the new era by way of a heroin addiction.

Batman #408

Along with Batman’s comic generally dropping itself into the Angst Bucket, the character of Robin was given a re-vamp. After Dick Grayson had left Batman’s side to lead the Teen Titans and become Nightwing (rocking that hideous-as-hell collar), a new Robin arrived on the scene named Jason Todd. His origin story made him a nice little Grayson Clone as a way to let fans adjust to the loss of such a legendary character that many readers had grown up with. The only real difference between him and Dick was that Jason, at the start of his tenure, had curly red hair that was promptly dyed as a way to make himself look more like his previous mantle-holder. After Crisis, the writers at DC found an opportunity to make Jason his own character. They scrapped his copy-cat backstory and replaced it with the tale of a young boy that had been born and bred on the streets of Gotham. His new character spoke with slang speech, had a bit of an attitude, was arrogant, and had more guts than he probably should have had at the tender age of twelve. Hell, he came into contact with the Caped Crusader because he was caught stealing the tires off of the Batmobile.

And as infamy would have it, the most well-known aspect of Jason’s character is that he died. And he didn’t just die--he was beaten within an inch of his life with a crowbar and then blown up with a bomb. Batman arrived in time to find his body and hear the dying words of his mother lament the fact that he was a much better child than she deserved. For well over a decade, Jason remained dead. His time as Robin was memorialized with his costume hanging in a glass case in the Batcave, forever a reminder to Bruce of his greatest failure. Jason was then marred in future comics as the “Bad Robin,” the reckless and impulsive failure who died because he didn’t listen to Bruce.

Note: This was, in fact, approved by the Comics Code Authority

I will admit that Jason’s story was the source of my interest in comic books. After watching his 2010 film and reading into what happened (and I posted a review of that here), I felt I needed to explore what this world of comics was and how Jason fit into it. So maybe I’m biased, or maybe I’m still relatively ignorant. But what I will say is that I came into this scenario with fresh eyes, as someone who had never had an attachment to the previous Robin or even Batman to a large extent. Given the evidence presented in both the movie and the comic that featured his demise, I didn’t see this Robin as anything other than a fascinating, tragic figure.

The infamy surrounding what happened and his later blatantly inconsistent interpretations are incredibly obvious to someone like me, who was neither alive during the time in which he was killed or knew anything about him going in.

So what about those gimmicks I mentioned earlier? Well the entire situation behind why, exactly, Jason was murdered is layered in gimmicks and company nonsense. Along with darker storylines, characters, and settings, the 80’s brought about early experimentation in technology (I imagine that at the time Bruce having a computer in the Batcave was more-or-less impressive to many readers). DC, like everyone else, was interested in finding new ways to use this technology for the sake of gaining attention and interest. One of the new features that they had been toying with was the idea of a phone poll which Dennis O’Neil, the then-editor for the Batman comics, described as “heeding the opinions fans express[ed] in letters and conversations at conventions and comic shops.” It was, essentially, early social media. The gimmick worked by having Jim Starlin, the writer for Batman at the time, set up a storyline, titled A Death in the Family, in which it was left ambiguous whether or not Robin was dead or alive. They then placed an ad at the end of the comic inviting readers to call a hotline number (after being charged a paltry 50 cents) and cast their vote for whether or not they wanted him to die. After the 36 hours allotted to vote, the numbers were tallied: of 10,614 calls, 5,271 wanted him alive and 5,343 wanted him dead by a margin of 72 votes.

As Denny said, “Hail and farewell, Jason Todd.”

The reaction to the stunt was unexpected. In the Postscript to the graphic novel, O’Neil writes:

“One of the pro-Jason votes was mine[...] any essential alteration to a lengthy series would necessitate much redefinition, much editorial scrambling. I was prepared for long hours at my desk if Jason died.

I was emphatically not prepared for the reaction. As soon as the news of Jason’s expiration got out, our publicity whiz, Peggy May, began getting calls from journalists. Dozens of them. For three long working days and part of a fourth, until Peggy declared a moratorium, I talked.”

Not that anyone could blame poor Peggy.

People across the country were outraged. The big question was why they would choose to kill off a child, especially one that was holding the title of one of the most iconic characters in pop culture history.

While O’Neil believed that many readers only voted to let him live because they were under the impression that the Robin they were going to kill off was Dick Grayson, I find that assumption to be unlikely. Dick had been around since 1940 and had become an iconic figure in the DC Universe. He was as legendary and as popular as his mentor, and went on to be successful even apart from Batman. After the reboot, it was still made clear that Dick was a member of the Teen Titans and had taken on the mantle of Nightwing. Very little of his history had been changed. Long-time comic readers would have known that. They would have been, at the very least, familiar with the notion that Dick was Nightwing and Jason was the new Robin.

As for the media backlash, it wouldn’t be all that surprising for the general public to assume that it was the original Robin, since comic politics and retcons weren’t exactly common knowledge. But again, O’Neil implies that much of the anger and vehemence from the media came from the disdain for the stunt itself, rather than because it was Dick Grayson. O'Neil remarks in the Preface to A Lonely Place of Dying:

“…one reporter claimed that the whole event had been rigged—that, in fact, we had decided on Jason’s demise ahead of time and staged an elaborate charade… several colleagues accused us of turning our magazines into a ‘Roman circus.’ Cynical was a word used. And exploitative. Sleazy. Dishonorable.” 

People were upset and offended by the nature of the crowd-sourcing tactic, viewing it as what it was: a gimmick designed to garner attention. A reporter for The Globe and Mail wrote an article mocking the stunt, saying:

"How far will this go? We picture an author drafting a scene in which a private eye is to rush headlong into a gangster’s hideout rather than wait for the police, but the shamus won’t budge. He won’t touch the doorknob. He’ll sit on the front stoop and insist that no self-respecting character would be so dumb as to walk into certain danger all by himself, and that if the author wants to press the point he should hold a poll of the readers and see whose side they’re on.” 

O'Neil later went on to emphasize the fact that they didn't kill a human being, child or not: “First of all, let me speak to the shock: We didn’t kill a real kid. This is paper and ink.” There’s no mention of it being Dick; just that is was a child, a child that was brutally murdered at the hands of a psychopath for no other reason than because he knew it would hurt Batman.

Reader reaction to Jason’s time as Robin has also been pegged as virulent hatred. Many comic fans and employees of DC insisted that Jason was seen as a whiny, annoying usurper of the Robin mantle up until his death and that many people wanted him out of the picture. In the special feature short Robin’s Requiem: The Tale of Jason Todd, found on the Blu Ray copy of Under the Red Hood, Judd Winnick (who later went on to write Jason’s resurrection story) remarked, “Let them put their money where their mouth is: if they really don’t like him this much, we’ll leave it up to them if they want to kill him off.” The assumption was that readers had it out for this young kid born and bred in Crime Alley, yet Denny O’Neil’s commentary in the Postscript contradicts that idea:

“This Robin, Jason...well, we didn’t know how people felt about him. Some seemed to like him, some didn’t. Others were suggesting that The Batman commemorate his fiftieth birthday in 1989 by reverting to what he had been when he first appeared, a relentless loner. So we had a character whose popularity was, at best, uncertain, and we had a telephone experiment we wanted to try.” (emphasis me).

Uncertain. Not, “hordes of screaming, angry fans wanted to see this kid bathed in blood and left for the buzzards.” Sure, there will always be a group of people who dislike a specific character for various reasons, and I personally believe a lot of the hatred that did surface towards Jason was rooted in the feeling that Jason had taken the role of Robin away from Dick who had been a fan favorite for several decades and not so much that he was “annoying” or “bratty” or “a little snot.” Winnick even admits that the notion of making the character unlikeable came after they decided to kill him. A decision like that is borne out of a desire to justify an action taken, and that is why I believe much of Jason’s legacy has been tainted by anger, hatred, and victim-blaming. It isn’t out of ignorance on the part of the writers; it’s out of a desire to make Jason Todd look like he deserved death in order to shift the blame from the writers and DC.

The irony of their argument against Jason is that there are plenty of examples of people who liked Jason or who, at the very least, thought he had potential as a character.  One reader even wrote to say that he insisted on dialing the Kill number because he wanted to see if they would actually do it, not because he didn't like the character.

After the media explosion, DC was forced to backpedal faster than a circus performer on a unicycle. Reading some of the commentary is hilarious because it’s incredibly obvious that everyone involved--O’Neil, Starlin, and other people in charge of what has been dubbed The Stunt--tried desperately to place the blame for Jason’s death on anyone but themselves. Unfortunately, that included the character himself (despite the fact that O’Neil, again, contradicts himself by saying that he was just “paper and ink” and then calling comics the “post-industrial equivalent of folk tales” that “must evolve...or become irrelevant to the real world they mirror.” Way to go, Denny) and the fans of the comic. The Postscript even opens with O’Neil’s protest that became a mantra in the days (and decades, really) following Jason’s death: “We didn’t kill the Boy Wonder. The readers did.” On the back of the graphic novel, three out of seven quotes explicitly state that the readers are the ones at fault for what happened, all of which would have been chosen by the people who put the novel together. The fact that the infamous “guy with the MacIntosh who rigged his computer to vote every few minutes” story continues to surface and is cited by many of the creative staff as the real reason Robin died again speaks to the company’s desire to hot-potato the blame to someone--anyone--else. Never mind the fact that they were the ones who set up the hotline and Jim Starlin even openly admitted to hating the character of Robin (on more than one occasion it’s been stated that he wanted to give Robin AIDS).

The whole situation just makes me picture a handful of little kids being caught in the act of painting a wall by their mother and when asked who did it, they all pointed at the paintbrush.

In the decades that followed, Jason continued to be beaten with the “bad Robin” stick, with various characters calling him reckless or impulsive or brash or disobedient or anything that could possibly justify his death. It was almost as if there was an unspoken policy that Jason be depicted--whether in flashback or through conversation--as deserving of his death as another means to establish a reason for his demise. He was re-written as a punk, someone who was asking to be killed because he dared to act like an actual child and have emotional problems after the death of his parents. There's even a scene in Gotham Knights #43 (which I do, all things considered, think is a genuine and decent story) where Jason is seen smoking and Babs (Batgirl at the time who was asked by Bruce to get an emotional reading from him after the incident with a certain diplomat and a certain balcony) calls him out on it. Even Batman, who blames himself for what happened pretty regularly in cannon, is still always being told by someone that “he did his best” and “there was nothing else he could have done” to prevent Jason’s demise by other characters. It seems DC isn’t very fond of making one of their heroes out to be a human being that makes mistakes, let alone one that resulted in the brutal murder of a twelve year-old.

Gotham Knights #44

It would be an amusing look at how marketing affects story lines and characters if it didn’t result in the ugly reality of an emotionally traumatized child being blamed for his own death that came out of his desire to protect his rotten mother who sold him out to the Joker and put him in the situation in the first place.

Why would they do all this? As I mentioned above, DC comics is still a company that is out to make a profit on their books and characters. Having their writers or--God forbid--their most popular characters made out to be anything other than positive role models would be a death wish. The back-pedaling they did after The Stunt and the subsequent retconning of Jason’s character speaks to that. “If his murder was justified--if he was just a punk that couldn't listen and had an attitude and SMOKED--then the unholy mess that came from it was really just people overreacting. It wasn’t OUR fault. We just have really vindictive readers. Now go by our new issue of Batman. There’s a new Robin and he’s NOTHING like Jason--he’s rich and awkward and not socially adept, just like many of our readers!”

And perhaps the greatest irony is that their biggest blunder, the character who died because some writers and execs needed cannon fodder for their gimmick, came back to life in the early 2000’s and experienced unprecedented popularity, according to Judd Winnick:

“When we re-introduced Jason Todd as the Red Hood, I was surprised at how many of the readers liked him and liked him in a way of liking him as a hero. Basically, the best way to put it, was they thought he was cool. And that was not really my intention.”

I wouldn't exactly describe this as "cool;" more like disturbing. But okay.
Batman Annual #25

So where does that leave Jason? Well I think the blatant reality of marketing getting the better of a character has pulled out from the shadows a desire of many people to defend Jason. His anti-hero status and the fact that audiences were so willing to accept him (generally speaking) says that the culture at large is changing their perspective on troubled characters. More people are jumping on board the Sympathy Bandwagon or, at the very least, are willing to set aside the twenty-something years of convoluted interpretations to welcome Jason Todd into the realm of “cool anti-hero.” And even now, there are still many readers who are interested in seeing Jason overcome his anger and vengeance and mend his broken relationship with not only Batman and the Batfamily, but DC fans as well.

Hail and farewell Jason Todd? I think not.

Quotes from Robin's Requiem: The Tale of Jason Todd were taken from here.

Other graphic novels/comics include:

A Death in the Family (1988) by Jim Starlin
A Lonely Place of Dying (1989) by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
Gotham Knights #43 & #44 (2003) by Scott Beatty
Batman Annual #25 (2006) by Judd Winnick
Batman #408 (1987) by Max Allan Collins