By 1982, Dick Grayson had clearly outgrown his role as Robin and was operating under his own moniker, "Nightwing". Bringing in a new Robin made sense, if for no other reason than that Robin provided Bruce Wayne a dramatic sounding board, someone he could talk to and bounce ideas off. To fill the role, the DC writers basically just cloned Dick Grayson: Jason Todd was yet another orphaned circus acrobat, this time with blonde hair instead of black. He might've had a different name, but he was literally the same character. Post Crisis on Infinite Earth's rebooting of the DC Universe, it made sense to try to rethink Todd's character, give him a little more individuality. This time around, DC writers imagined Todd as an orphaned street kid from a troubled background. In contrast to Dick Grayson's always eager adventurer, he was a hot head, undisciplined, with an attitude and a predilection towards talking back to Batman. This may've made Jason a more "complex" character than the golden age Dick Grayson had ever considered being, but it also made him a pain in the ass. Aside from Mike Barr's underrated Detective run, Jason was being written, by and large, as an out of control snot who disobeyed orders, believed he was more skilled than he was and allowed a criminal to fall to his death: Little surprise, then, that when DC tried out an "interactive" stunt - allowing readers to vote on whether or not Jason Todd should die in their comic book storyline "Death in the Family" - the fans voted to have him killed. By an admittedly small margin (5343 votes to 5271 votes), and one that might've been skewed (editor Dennis O'Neil claims that one zealous fan programmed a computer to continuously dial the "Die" number for a month), but still. Ironically enough, Jason turned out to be a much more powerful character in death than he had ever been in life. Jason's death became "Batman's greatest defeat"; until his pointless resurrection Todd's death was arguably the second most defining moment of Batman's life after the death of his parents. That's a pretty long shadow to cast, considering we're talking about a character who was never much more than an irritating replacement for Dick Grayson. Anger doesn't substitute for character; Jason Todd is more remembered for his legacy than he ever was for being Robin (when the minds behind the Batman animated series brought "Tim Drake" into their show, they gave him Jason's origin and Tim's personality, arguably striking the best of both worlds). To paraphrase Batman's snarky words to Superman, the only time Jason Todd has ever inspired anyone was when we was dead.
C.B. Jacobson pops up at What Culture every once in a while, and almost without fail manages to embarrass the site with his clumsy writing. When he's not here, he's making movies, or writing about them at http://buddypuddle.blogspot.com.
Little surprise, then, that when DC tried out an "interactive" stunt - allowing readers to vote on whether or not Jason Todd should die in their comic book storyline "Death in the Family" - the fans voted to have him killed. By an admittedly small margin (5343 votes to 5271 votes), and one that might've been skewed (editor Dennis O'Neil claims that one zealous fan programmed a computer to continuously dial the "Die" number for a month), but still. Ironically enough, Jason turned out to be a much more powerful character in death than he had ever been in life. Jason's death became "Batman's greatest defeat"; until his pointless resurrection Todd's death was arguably the second most defining moment of Batman's life after the death of his parents. That's a pretty long shadow to cast, considering we're talking about a character who was never much more than an irritating replacement for Dick Grayson. Anger doesn't substitute for character; Jason Todd is more remembered for his legacy than he ever was for being Robin (when the minds behind the Batman animated series brought "Tim Drake" into their show, they gave him Jason's origin and Tim's personality, arguably striking the best of both worlds). To paraphrase Batman's snarky words to Superman, the only time Jason Todd has ever inspired anyone was when we was dead.