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 Willis and Catherine Todd came, it seems, from a relatively stable world. A photograph taken when their son Jason Peter was very young shows the family as being at least moderately well-off. Though Willis was born and raised in Crime Alley, the couple owned a bit of property in Virginia. Then things fell apart, and Willis had at least one stay in jail. Catherine fell deeply ill. Willis dropped out of the picture. Jason, assuming his father had been arrested again, did his best to take care of his ailing mother the only way he knew how: stealing tires and selling them. When Jason's mother died of a drug overdose, juvenile authorities tried to put him in a state home. He ran away and ended up living in an abandoned building, supporting himself through petty theft. Then, one night, Jason stole the tires off the Batmobile. He was caught in the act by the car's owner and, after an attempted escape and a brief scuffle, agreed to give the tires back. He wouldn't, however, allow himself to be put into the social services system. Jason and Batman reached a compromise: Jason would attend Ma Gunn's school for boys, recently opened on Crime Alley. The school turned out to be a training ground for criminals, so Jason ran away and went back to boosting tires. Batman tracked him down again and, after Jason ended up helping him take care of the crooked school, took the boy on as the new Robin. Six months of intensive training later, Batman presented Jason with a Robin costume. Not the original - this one had slight improvements and modifications - but in the same style as the one which had been worn by Dick Grayson. A short time later, Jason discovered that his father had been murdered by Two-Face and, perhaps more upsettingly, Bruce had known this all along. Jason stayed in bed for a day and acted petulantly towards his guardian that night, acting out violently towards Two-Face when the duo were faced with him that night. Batman and the new Robin argued over how Jason had handled himself, the conversation ending with Batman warning him that unchecked rage can end up costing a battle. When Jason found himself up against Two-Face once again not much later, he overcame his personal fury and desire for revenge and allowed the police to take Two-Face away. Jason continued to help on various cases. A serial killer was preying on women and even Batman seemed at a loss as to how to catch the attacker. Sometimes Jason's impulsiveness and propensity towards violence caused him to slip up; on one occasion Dick had to extricate him from trouble. Dick did his best to offer Jason support in the difficult task of being Robin, but the still-tense atmosphere between Dick and Bruce seemed to severely hamper the possibility of closeness between Dick and Jason. Despite his young age, Jason was already a smoker when he first met Batman. He did not give up the habit entirely once he entered his new life, nor did he relinquish his fondness for chili dogs despite their poor nutritional value. Before becoming Robin his education had ended in the fifth grade but, upon returning to school, Jason showed an enthusiasm for learning. Batman managed to discover the identity of the serial killer terrorizing Gotham. However, as a vigilante, his involvement in the case rendered key evidence inadmissable. The killer walked free. Furious with the outcome of the trial, Jason beat up a bullying pimp; his rage at violence towards women was a wellspring of violence itself. Meanwhile, the serial killer was killed himself, by the sister of one of his victims. Judy Koslosky, whose sister Linda had been brutally murdered, felt no remorse for taking a life, saying "I put down a mad dog. It might not have been legal, but it was right." Batman explained to Jason that Judy was wrong and that the law must be upheld, but then admitted that some small part of him wished that this was not the case. When Felipe Garzonas, a diplomat's son, avoided punishment for assaulting a young woman, Jason was horrified. When he and Batman caught Garzonas in the middle of a drug deal, Jason tried to goad Garzonas into resisting arrest so that Jason had an excuse to hit him. Garzonas didn't, and when they took him back to the station Garzonas took the opportunity to make a threatening, taunting call to the same young woman he brutalized. She committed suicide, and Jason was the one who discovered the body. Jason went to Garzonas' high-rise apartment. Batman followed, arriving just in time to see Garzonas fall to his death from the balcony. When asked what had happened, Jason answered "I guess I spooked him. He slipped." It has never been established conclusively whether this version of events is true or not. Felipe Garzonas' father, however, had no doubt as to where the blame lay for his son's death. He kidnapped Jim Gordon in an attempt to draw Batman and Robin out. Garzonas' father, along with several other men, died in the resulting fracas. Batman explained to Jason that there's never a way to escape consequences. Jason walked off without a word. Jason's behavior became more erratic and careless. When Batman accused him of treating dangerous situations like a game, Jason retorted "all life's a game". Batman decided to take Jason off active duty. Infuriated and upset, Jason went walking through his old neighbourhood, Crime Alley. There, he was recognised by a friend of his parents. She gave him a box full of papers and photographs which had belonged to them before their deaths. Amongst the mementoes, Jason made a surprising discovery: the woman he had thought to be his mother, Catherine, was in fact his stepmother. His real mother's name began with an 'S', the rest of her name obscured by water damage on his birth certificate. Using his father's address book and the computer in the Batcave, Jason narrowed the list of women who might have been his mother down to three. Taking several credit cards, Jason ran away to search for them. Batman, who was pursuing the Joker, ended up in Beirut at the same time as Jason. Together, they checked out the first two women on Jason's list. Neither were his mother. The third and final candidate, Sheila Haywood, was working in Ethiopia, her medical career in the States having been cut short by a botched operation she had assisted on. Bruce knew as soon as he saw her that she was Jason's mother; they had the same eyes. The Joker was blackmailing Sheila, however, and she herself was stealing from the medical funds. She betrayed Jason to the Joker, who broke half the bones in Jason's body with a crowbar before locking him, and Sheila, in a warehouse with a bomb. By the time Batman got to the scene of the explosion, Jason's body was already cold. Bruce Wayne took his ward back to the United States, where Jason was buried in an out-of-the-way cemetary. The grave has since been desecrated, Jason's remains stolen. Jason's Robin suit hangs in a glass case in the backcave with a plaque bearing the inscription 'Jason Todd - a good soldier'. Jason's death has been, in many ways, as much a defining event in Batman's history as the deaths of Martha and Thomas Wayne were.  |