#jason's backstory (which I really thought was going to be more complicated than he steals tires and bruce immediately adopts him)

[melonpond]

I've gone down a rabbithole of batman and robin comic books and I will make that everyone else's problem

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

What was wrong with the annual people ( some Jason fans) are saying it was pretty good?

This is a fairly complicated issue of context and characterization, so I’m going to do my best to answer as fully as possible. 

As a single event, the annual is no better or worse than I would have expected, but put into the proper context, it becomes pretty infuriating. To understand that context, we’re going to have to go back to 2011, the beginning of the n52.

A brief recap: We are currently living in a comic renaissance, but back in 2011, comic sales in general were low. DC responded to the loss of profit by rebooting its entire universe, hoping that the reboot would simplify the timeline and make it more accessible for new readers. The resulting universe, the New 52, crashed and burned by 2015 for a variety of reasons, some of which we’re about to address. 

At the very beginning of the n52, all the titles got an issue #0 which either restated or rewrote the origin stories of the characters. The relevant titles for this discussion are Red Hood and the Outlaws and Teen Titans, which deal with Jason and Tim respectively. Both #0 issues were written by the author of the annual that came out today, Scott Lobdell. That’s the important bit.

Lobdell rewrote both backstories, meaning that Jason and Tim have different origins in the n52 than they did before 2011. 

A quick summary of Jason’s (post-flashpoint) origin story (1985-2011): Both Jason’s father and adoptive mother died, leaving him to fend for himself on the streets. As part of the “fending for himself” thing, Jason tried to steal the wheels off of the batmobile, but Bruce caught him, temporarily sent him to boarding school, fostered him, and then adopted him as his son. While he was living with Bruce, Jason became the second Robin.

In 1986, during an arc called A Death in the Family, Jason discovered that his birth mother was still alive. His attempt to find her led to a series of events that ended with Jason’s death at the hands of the Joker. 

A brief summary of Lobdell’s re-write: Jason’s father and mother (the birth and adoptive mothers conflated) died. He met Bruce while he was trying to steal prescription drugs from Leslie’s clinic. Bruce fostered him until Jason discovered that his mother, who he thought had died of a drug overdose, was still alive. His attempt to find her led to a series of events that ended with Jason’s death at the hands of the Joker.

The second half of the issue is told from the Joker’s point of view. Joker claims that he engineered Jason’s entire career as Robin by putting him into Batman’s path, arranging the fake-death and return of Jason’s mother, and finally killing him.

None of that is strictly necessary to the context of the annual, except where it proves that Lobdell doesn’t hesitate to dramatically alter characterization. The Joker-engineered origin has been retconned by Lobdell himself since that time, as part of the Rebirth soft-reboot, so it doesn’t really factor in anymore.

The truly relevant issue is Teen Titans #0 (2011), which completely rewrites Tim’s origin story.

A brief summary of Tim’s pre-n52 origin (1989-2011): When he was a small child, Tim visited Haly’s circus with his family. He met Dick and Dick’s parents and then witnessed the parents’ deaths. Years later, Tim saw Robin (Dick) perform the same signature move that he had performed that night at Haly’s, and from that fact, Tim was able to extrapolate both Batman and Robin’s secret identities. 

Tim didn’t come forward with his knowledge until after Jason’s death. He noticed that Batman was acting erratically and correctly guessed the cause of Bruce’s behavior (grief over Jason’s death). Tim became so worried about Bruce that he approached Dick and asked him to go back to Bruce and become Robin again. Dick declined to do so, because that chapter of his life was over. Since Tim was convinced that Bruce would not recover without Robin by his side, Tim volunteered to take the position himself. His birth parents were still alive at the time, but both died during his Robin tenure. After their deaths, Bruce adopted Tim as his son.

Some things to keep in mind about this origin story

The entire thing is based in Tim and Dick’s relationship. Dick was Tim’s #1 hero and inspiration from the time they met at the circus until the day the n52 took effect. Tim and Dick’s relationship was well-developed and longstanding, and it played a very important role in Tim’s introduction to vigilantism and general character development.

The thing that makes Tim special among comic book characters is that he figured out Batman and Robin’s secret identities by himself. Like Bruce, Tim has always been written as The Detective, the one that figures things out.

A brief summary of Tim’s n52 origin (2011), written by Scott Lobdell: After Jason’s death, Tim, a child who had previously been uninterested in Batman, noticed a change in behavior. Curiosity aroused, Tim tried to uncover Batman’s secret identity, but was unable to do so; Bruce was aware of Tim and his attempts, so he foiled them accordingly. Eventually, Tim gave up and decided to pursue hacktivism instead. He stole money from the Penguin and donated it. Penguin found out and ordered a hit on Tim’s house. Tim and his parents almost died, but Bruce showed up and saved the day.

After their near-deaths, Tim’s parents chose to go into witness protection, while encouraging Tim to stay behind and fulfill a greater purpose with Bruce. After Bruce began to foster Tim, he revealed that he was Batman, and Tim became Red Robin (not Robin, because he didn’t want to disrespect Jason’s memory).

Some things to notice

Lobdell’s origin for Tim completely bypasses Dick, who doesn’t factor into the story at all. As a result, Tim and Dick have no apparent relationship in the n52. That fact is reflected in their characterizations post-reboot. They barely know each other at all.

In this version, Tim did not do the thing that previously defined him: discovering Batman’s secret identity. By eliminating the Dick-Tim relationship, Lobdell removed the circumstances that led to the reveal (Haly’s circus, signature move, discovery that Dick was Robin, deduction that if Dick was Robin, Bruce must be Batman).

Teen Titans #0 has not, unlike RHATO #0, been retconned, so Tim in both the n52 and Rebirth still has the origin story that Lobdell wrote. It would be hard to overstate the difference between preboot Tim’s characterization and n52/rebirth Tim’s characterization, and that comes down to TT #0. In rewriting Tim’s origin (and then writing Tim’s series until he was removed from the title) Lobdell removed everything that made Tim unique or likable among the batfamily. Every relationship that had been deep and well-established disappeared, and since Lobdell had control of both TT and RHATO at the time, he was able to dramatically change Tim and Jason’s interactions and relationship. That’s a separate subject that I won’t address just now.

So. Back to the annual:

In 2011, Lobdell deleted the iconic scene where Tim sees Dick perform at Haly’s Circus– the scene that directly led to Tim’s discovery of Batman’s secret identity and his subsequent incorporation into the batfamily– from Tim’s origin, thereby flattening a previously dynamic character to the width of a sheet of paper. Today, he stuck that same scene– again, the one that belongs to Tim– into Jason’s origin, specifically as a means to develop Dick and Jason’s relationship. Remember that Lobdell, the same author, previously cut out Dick and Tim’s relationship entirely.

In that context, the annual is incredibly frustrating. Inside the DC universe it’s totally possible that both Tim and Jason saw Dick perform when they were all children. It’s not that it couldn’t logically happen, because it could. The issue is that a single author deleted the scene from one character, greatly to the detriment of that character’s history and characterization, and casually tacked it on to another character’s story.