Red Hood
24 years ago - Jean-Paul Valley is born & begins his conditioning for the Order of St. Dumas.
5 years ago - 19-year-old Jean-Paul Valley's father is fatally injured while on a mission to kill 42-year-old Mark Shaw, and reveals his role as Azrael to his son, who takes over his mission. Batman frees him from the Order of St. Dumas & he attempts to live without his conditioning.
4 years ago - 20-year-old Jean-Paul Valley is asked to take over as Batman while Bruce Wayne recovers from his broken back. He slowly rebuilds Batman into a reflection of Azrael. He overwhelms Jonathan Crane and defeats Bane, but after he kills Rupert Thorne, Bruce has to battle him to retake the Batman mantle.
1 year ago - 23-year-old Jean-Paul Valley returns to Gotham and begins to battle it's criminals as Red Hood, trying to adapt a new identity without his conditioning. Batman, dosed with Jonathan Crane's toxin, fears that Red Hood is a returned Jason Todd, but is able to learn his identity with the help of Talia Al Ghul.
I'm sure that it comes as a surprise to no one who has seen any of our project that Jason Todd is still dead in our timeline. We go into greater depth on his page, but it does present an interesting question when we decided that it could be worthwhile to consider how we might go about including Red Hood in our continuity.
The answer we came up with is actually one of my all time favorite innovations in our whole project. It gives us a version of this character that is very much it's own thing, but seems to really get to the core of who they are meant to be. I would love to get your opinions on what we've done here.
The answer we came up with is actually one of my all time favorite innovations in our whole project. It gives us a version of this character that is very much it's own thing, but seems to really get to the core of who they are meant to be. I would love to get your opinions on what we've done here.
Red Hood's Comic HistoryThe first appearance of the first Red Hood was in Detective Comics #168 in 1951, right in the middle of the Bob Kane era. It's actually a really fun issue, with Batman teaching a criminology course as a guest lecturer, including lots of cool little crime-solving techniques and a legitimate new mystery as a figure from an early unsolved case of Batman's comes back to torment them. There are enough clues in the book as to the identity of the masked figure that you could legitimately call this comic a mystery in and of itself. Of course, the big reveal is that the Red Hood is none other than the Joker himself. That unsolved case of Batman's was actually part of Joker's origin, leading to him falling into his infamous vat of chemicals.
This idea was brought back in Alan Moore's Killing Joke, where we get an expanded version of this origin for the Joker. We also learn that the he wasn't the first Red Hood; that it was a title used by lots of different Gotham criminals when they wanted to hide their identity. But of course, this usually isn't the version of Red Hood people are looking for. |
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Hush was a major Batman story arc from 2002 by Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee in his heralded return to a monthly comic. It was basically just a big epic tour across the landscape of Batman stories, and one of it's biggest moments was the cliffhanger ending of #617, where it's revealed that the villain of the whole arc is actually a returned Jason Todd. The next issue revealed that this was a ruse, but I distinctly remember that month as we all were on baited breath waiting to see what was going to happen. This huge response must have been noticed, because it was only a few years later that Judd Winick wrote his fantastic story Under the Hood.
A new Red Hood arrives in Gotham; a slick, modern vigilante who is openly taking over crime territory even as he brutally murders the criminals of the city. He's notably prepared for Batman, and has knowledge about how he operates and why he does what he does. As the series goes on it becomes clear that this is definitely Jason Todd, but the reveal is almost beside the point. The story is much more about who this new returned Jason is, and about his new tactics and approach to Gotham. |
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Unfortunately, the story being told by Winnick was clearly rushed to make room for the One Year Later crossover that followed 2005's Infinite Crisis, although he did go on to pitch it as a standalone animated movie that I would argue did an even better job of telling his story.
In the meantime, Jason started to appear regularly in Dick Grayson's stories, particularly as a really innovative new arch nemesis when Dick took over as Batman during Grant Morrison's run. When the New 52 came around, he was given his own book Red Hood and the Outlaws, the series that gave us the worst Starfire costume in history and Roy Harper in a trucker cap, but it also created a subtly redesigned take on Jason's Red Hood costume. In a series that was really carried by the stellar artwork by Kenneth Rocafort, his slick new look set him up to become a modern gunslinging antihero vigilante that would continue to carry his own series for years, and become one of the most popular new additions to the Bat Family. There is absolutely a version of Red Hood that can work in our timeline, but unfortunately, the role Jason Todd plays as Batman's single greatest failure is far to strong a part of the Batman mythos to cast aside. Jason simply has to stay dead. How do we craft this character while still retaining the death of Jason Todd? |
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Jean Paul Valley's Comic HistoryThe 1992 miniseries Batman: Sword of Azrael by Denny O'Neal first introduced Azrael, the assassin of the Order of St Dumas, a splinter faction of the Knights Templar. Jean Paul Valley is the son of the current Azrael, upon whose death he is tasked to begin his training, triggering the subliminal hypnotic programming planted in his mind by his father since birth, allowing him to to take up the mantle as the newest Azrael. He comes into conflict with Batman as he attempts to kill his targets, until Bruce helps him overcome his programming and frees him from the control of the Order. It's a dense story like all the best work by O'Neal, and it's a great Batman yarn, but it was clearly also written to set up an even bigger crossover event.
The following year marked the beginning of Knightfall, in which Bruce's back was broken by Bane, and Jean Paul Valley stepped in as the new Batman. This was written as a self-contained story even though it wasn't marketed that way, and for a time, it was understood that this simply was the new Batman. In the end, Valley changed Batman into more and more of a mirror of Azrael (creating the now infamous 'Azbat'), and Bruce would have to fight him to retake the cowl. Valley would continue to be counted among the Bat Family, starring in his own series, but his role in the mythology was pretty much done after this huge story. He was eventually killed in the final issue in 2003. |
Our Red Hood StoryFirst of all, we really want to establish exactly what version of Red Hood we're looking to incorporate here. As slick and popular as the modern version of the character is, it doesn't really work for us to include him as part of the Bat Family. He's a killer, which isn't necessarily a dealbreaker. but his whole schtick is entirely gun-themed, which would be like Superman working with a guy whose whole thing is blowing up planets.
What we're much more interested in is the original version of Red Hood as introduced by Judd Winnick; a violent vigilante taking over territory in Gotham using his intimate knowledge of Batman's methods. This character wasn't being set up to be the bad-boy big brother of the younger Robins, he was too busy filling duffle bags with gangbanger heads and firing rocket launchers into skyscrapers. We also absolutely think it works for Bruce to wonder at first if this might be Jason Todd come back from the dead, especially if he's dosed with Scarecrow toxin, but this less connected, more vicious take on the character absolutely works if he is revealed to be Jean Paul Valley instead of Jason. He knows Batman's secrets, techniques and weaknesses, has lethal tenancies that have brought him into conflict with Bruce in the past, and like Jason, is the result of Bruce's own hubris. He's the ideal Red Hood. |
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