10 Awful DC Superheroes Who Were Successfully Reinvented
4. Jason Todd
Why He Was Awful
Jason Todd was introduced in 1983 as the replacement of Dick Grayson as Robin. These were big booties to fill, evidently, after decades of stories with Dick, so despite the previous Boy Wonder sticking around for far longer, he was killed in 1988's Death in the Family storyline.
Jason is not unique in this, certainly - plenty of comic characters have died before him. He is the most short-lived Robin, however. And while his death was significant to Batman, there was something else about the event that makes it special. Readers voted to kill Jason.
The current editorial team of Batman wasn't sure what to do with Jason in the late eighties. They had reason to believe he wasn't popular to begin with, and wanting to create interest in the book by allowing audience participation, they created two 1-900 numbers. Calling one placed a vote for the character to die, the other for him to live. The numbers were published in an issue where Robin was already kidnapped, and beaten by the Joker. The lines were open for 36 hours. The final tally was 10,614 votes, with 5,343 to kill him, and 5,271 to let him live. The next issue had the warehouse where Jason was exploded.
The cover where Batman holds the destroyed body of Jason Todd is arguably one of the most famous.
How He Was Fixed
In 2005, Judd Winick was writing a storyline entitled Under the Hood. The villain in the piece, the Red Hood, was a legacy villain - to those not familiar with the original, the Red Hood was the identity of the Joker before the fateful plunge into acid. This new Red Hood, however, was less theatrical and more tactical, a brutal vigilante that had no trouble using lethal force to take care of criminals.
After confronting the villain, the mask is removed and the truth is revealed - this was Jason Todd, back from the dead. The original purpose of this was not to reinvent the character. Winick wanted to bring Jason back because he liked the character, and was interested in seeing how Batman would respond to the unexpected return. The new Red Hood, however, stuck around, providing an interesting addition to the Bat family.
Much better and more interestingly than another Robin, Jason Todd was now the failed apprentice, a walking reminder of Batman's previous failure not only to prevent his death, but to have killed the Joker long before that could have taken place. It is a new aspect of Batman's moral dilemma, making the re-invention a meaningful one. The character even went on to menace the previous Robin, Nightwing, by briefly taking over his mantle and becoming a villain in the later Battle for the Cowl story.
His return was adapted to the excellent animated feature Batman: Under the Red Hood, and in DC Rebirth, the character leads his own team - The Outlaws.