Jason Todd


 * "INSERT WITTY QUOTE HERE"


 * ---Jason

Jason Todd is District 4 Tribute who was reaped during Arena 09.

Before The Games
Once upon a time, there was a Catholic school girl named Catherine. She came from a good family, grew up in a fancy part of Gotham, and was generally treated like a princess. One day after school, Catherine met Willis Todd, a lowlife drug dealing loser who hang around her school dealing to the older kids. Catherine made a terrible life decision and started seeing Willis, and you can probably guess how this one ends. Despite her terrible life decisions, Catherine's family didn't reject her. For a time they were remarkably supportive and tolerant of her terrible life choices, but that didn't last long. Shortly after Jason was born, the entire terrible triad got themselves got themselves kicked out of Catherine's parents' household.

Forced to actually provide for his family, Willis turned to a life of crime. They didn't have a lot, but the Todd family got by mostly okay by Crime Alley standards. Jason attended school infrequently and spent some (too much, all things considered) of his time learning the tricks of his father's trade. Willis' criminal involvement led to his arrest and eventual death in prison. After that, Jason provided for his mother as best he could by stealing and cheating the lowlife gangsters his father had been involved with, but it all amounted to naught. While living in Crime Alley, Catherine had developed a terrible drug problem and ODed shortly after Jason's father's death.

Jason survived on his own using the same tactics. All in all, he lasted pretty well, but eventually he picked the wrong scumbag to screw with and either got himself shot, or just beat to a terrible bloody pulp (the panel's a little vague). This is how he fell into the care of Leslie Tompkins, a charitable doctor working in crime alley who had connections to Gotham's favorite caped crusader.

Tompkins nursed him back to health, and being the ungrateful little shit that he was, Jason paid her back by stealing prescription drugs before running off. This, in turn, landed him in the care of Batman. Doctor Tompkins pleaded with Batman not to turn Jason into the police and, finally, Batman relented. Jason was set up at Wayne Manor as "a friend of a friend" and that was that. Six months (and some hellish training later), he took the mantle of Robin the Boy Wonder.

Jason's tenure as Batman's partner was problematic, to say the least. He was eager to learn, but overly aggressive. He liked helping clean up the streets, but he wasn't able to control his impulses very well and more baddies than necessary ended up suffering for it. Eventually he was "grounded" and put on monitor duty. This strained his already somewhat tenuous relationship with Bruce Wayne.

While on monitor duty, he spotted something that seemed unlikely; his mother alive and well. He left to track her down, using all of his Batman-trained skills to not be found. As it turned out, his father's death, his mother's OD, and seemingly miraculous recovery were all a set up by Batman's greatest enemy, the Joker. The Joker put it all together so that he could create the most important thing possible to Batman and then take it away. After revealing his nefarious plot, the Joker broke Jason's legs and beat the shit out of him, then blew him and his mother up. By this point Batman had tracked him down, but it was too late. All he could do was clutch Jason's broken and crispy body and cry. (You can tell I take the new 52 super seriously, right?)

(It should be noted here that the Joker narrates the latter half of Jason's origin issue, meaning that a lot of his culpability is kind of... Up for debate. Jason never refutes the facts, though, so we can presume that that's all accurate or at least what he knows to be accurate. The Joker's involvement is just um, a thing. Anyway remember how they rebooted the universe to make it less convoluted? Yeah. I remember vaguely hearing something about that, too. Wonder what ever happened there.)

The details on Jason's resurrection are vague, at best. The end result is that he was found by Talia al Ghul, a sometime lover of Batman and the daughter of Ra's al Ghul, the head of the League of Assassins. Though his body was... Fine... Mysteriously... Jason's soul was missing and Talia conspired to send him for a swim in the Lazarus Pits, a mystical regenerative spring her father used to attain immortality. Also through Talia, Jason (now complete with body and soul) was hooked up with a number of League of Assassins tutors and eventually the All-Caste.

Residing in what is possibly a pocket dimension somewhere in the Himalayas, the All-Caste were an order of mystical ninjas charged with preserving the balance of the universe. When presented with Jason as a pupil, Ducra (the Mister Miyagi of the All-Caste) declared that he would be the death of them and of many others, but to leave the world at his mercy would be unthinkable. Through hard work, perseverance and talent, Jason became the greatest of Ducra's students and the pride of the All-Caste. (Because the art looks fantastically 90s, so the story's got to be some kind of unironic 80s throwback to keep up, right?)



The details of why Jason left the All-Caste and their mystical mysticalness are unclear. He mentions a vague falling out with Ducra after which she sent him away, but there's really not much else explicitly stated. After a few years with them, however, he left and met up with Roy Harper, an expert archer, hacker and alcoholic who may, or may not have been Green Arrow's sidekick in this universe. (It was retconned out, retconned in, and then re-retconned out again. You go, DC. Four for you, DC.) At some point, (and for no explicitly stated reason, and no real logical jump that I can make here) he started going by "Red Hood".

(Before meeting up with Roy, though, Jason carried out what I assume to be the scaled down and less fantastic version of his murder-suicide plot from New Earth's Under the Hood arc. It basically boils down to him cornering Batman and whining about how he was abandoned and killed and the Joker's still running around Gotham being awful. Nightwing was there in this version. Anyway, it's... Really never touched on in any depth and only seen in flashbacks.)

Roy and Jason had some decent bro-y adventures together that are alluded to in the first issue and then literally never mentioned again. They parted ways after Roy decided to assist an offensively named middle eastern country with their offensively referential civil war. He got himself captured as a war criminal and as far as Jason was concerned, that was that. Or was it.

Well, it was for a while. Red Hood kept doing his vaguely defined, anti-hero/counter-terrorist(?) thing on his own. This eventually got him blown up in a submarine of the coast of a gorgeous tropical island. (Yep.) He woke up in the care of Koriand'r or Starfire (and you know what, it's dumb that she even goes by "Starfire" in this universe), an alien princess who was once a paramour of Nightwing, Batman's first sidekick and the original Robin. (This is also ambiguous and contradicted just as many times as it's mentioned.) Kori and Jason made friends and Jason learned that Kori had no real memories of anything; Some unknown force gave her mondo amnesia. She offered him one of Nightwing's costumes (because his clothes got burned up in that... Submarine explosion...) and confessed that while she had vaguely warm memories associated with the costume and a dark haired human, she couldn't really remember much about any of it.

Still a magical flying alien friend who shoots fire and is like six feet tall is nothing to scoff at.

After learning that Roy was up for execution in Qurac (I told you it was offensively named), Jason and Kori conspired to rescue him. In a daring feat of ridiculousness, Jason infiltrated Roy's Quraci prison as a priest and gave him his bow and quiver. Together they burst out, and with Kori's help they managed to get back to her spaceship. And thus, the Outlaws of Red Hood and the Outlaws were born.

Not long after their reunion though, Jason was confronted by Essence, a fellow student of the All Caste and sometime romantic partner. According to Essence, the All Caste had all been killed, and Ducra along with them. An ancient enemy called "the Untitled" had managed to break free of the protections placed around the Earth by the All-Caste and were generally up to no good. With Roy and Kori in tow, Jason began a globe-trotting mission to find out the truth about the All-Caste's demise and bring the Untitled to heel. This mission took them to Hong Kong, where Jason fought the local mob, then back to the Himalayas, where they fought zombie!mystical ninjas, came face to face with a memory snatcher, and then back to the US where they finally tracked down one of those terrible Untitled. Unfortunately, before Jason killed her, the Untitled revealed that she wan't the one who murdered Ducra and the others. There was some other nefarious plot at work. (I like the word "nefarious", okay?)

On their flight back, Jason, Roy, and Kori were confronted by Essence. She told Jason the origin of the All-Caste and that both Ducra and Essence were once members of the Untitled (oh, also it's revealed that Essence is Ducra's daughter.) A battled ensued aboard Koriand'r's ship and Essence was either killed or sent to a far away galaxy (It's ambiguous. Jason shot her with some kind of Tamaranian beam-gun-thing. It's comics, she could come back.), and the Outlaws continued on their way to where ever.

And this is where our story gets completely and totally derailed. Or at least, the derailing begins.

Before returning to their revenge-quest, the Outlaws (Well, Jason specifically) was called upon by Batman, Inc. to help fight the Parliament Court of Owls. They did and Gotham was saved (yaaaay). It was all just a meaningless crossover story meant to help sell you on the other Batbooks tbh. Nothing was lost and nothing was gained. It did establish Jason's willingness to assist with the Batclan, though and I guess that's why it even merited a mention here. Now our heroes could return to their quest right? Right?

Haha, nope.

Whilst traveling through Asia, Jason had acquired the phone number of a flight attendant named Isabel. Hoping for a little rest and relaxation after the ridiculousness in Gotham, Jason called her up and took her out for a date. What was supposed to be a typical and boring courting ritual that could possibly have ended in some tail for Jason was ruined however, when all of the Outlaws (and Isabel) were abducted by Koriand'r's old space crew and transported millions of light years from Earth. Thus the plotline as we know it was abandoned and because the book gets really stupid really fast right around here, this is where he's being pulled from. I can take a bad Karate Kid rip off, but Star Wars is sacred.

In the Games
COMING SOON

Abilities

 * THIS WILL BE A LIST
 * OF ALL THE GREAT THINGS
 * JASON CAN DO!

Miscellaneous

 * LA LA LA
 * TRIVIA