For the past two decades I have been low key, on and off fascinated with Jason Todd. Not enough to follow all of the books he’s been in. His resurrection and ascension to a character that DC has some investment in and my own stepping away from the weekly grind of new comics were hand and hand, so it’s not like I’ve been studying him or anything. This is definitely a “from the outside looking in” sort of fascination. Jason has been “a thing over the past two decades. He has a fan base. He’s big in the cosplay community. He’s also been back from the dead longer than when he was beaten with a crowbar and blown-up dead.

And because of how I got to know the character and where he sits in my development as a reader and fan, that will always be weird.

Back in the summer and fall of 1987 I was in the process of finding my feet as a comic reader and collector. The Superman titles were “have to get” books but I was also looking around at the other comics that were on the spinner racks at the Super Fresh and Waldenbooks and 7-11 or the rack racks of the newsstand next to Carvel Ice Cream. Everything looked interesting but it was kind of overwhelming. I couldn’t articulate this at the time but basically, I was overstimulated and felt like I didn’t know anything. All of these books had been around forever, and I was coming in late to the game.

Intimidated isn’t the right word to use to describe it, but it wasn’t far off. I was doing all this on my own. I didn’t have any friends that were into comics that could show me around. I didn’t have an older sibling or uncle or aunt or dad or cousin or mom or grandparent to show me the ropes. It was just me, my very slight background reading random comics, a lifetime of watching super heroes on television, and the comics that were available to me through the vagaries of newsstand distribution.

Sometimes I went for something new. Sometimes I went for what seemed like the safe bet.

Like Batman.

Back in March of 2026 I wrote about getting Batman Annual #11 after getting mildly hurt at my dad’s company picnic. In that post I mentioned that the other book I got that morning was Batman #410.

This is where I met Jason Todd for the first time.

For me, as a brand-new reader, this book was a great introduction to this new Robin. I got to see Jason’s training and then the moment Bruce gave him the Robin uniform. Batman and Robin take on Two-Face and even though he gets away at the end Batman is still proud of his new partner. The twist came on the final page when Jason learns that Two-Face was responsible for the death of his father.

(Play dramatic music sting here)

Another early book that I grabbed off the rack was Batman #416. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would become one of those pivotal books to me in terms of understanding the world of comics that existed at the time. The cover grabbed eleven-year-old me in a big way. Robin was on the ground. A hood was pointing a gun at him. Some guy with a weird collar that I vaguely knew was called Nightwing was coming into the frame. What the heck was going on?

I had to buy this book.

If you’ve never read Batman #416 (and I really think you should) it features the first post-Crisis meeting between Jason Todd and Dick Grayson. Again, I had no idea who Jason Todd was beyond his entry in Who’s Who Update ’87 #5 and that copy of Batman #410 I got earlier that year. Academically (and through the flashbacks in this issue) I knew that this kid was the second Robin and that Batman had brought him in after he caught him boosting the tires off of the Batmobile. I had no idea that there was this whole other version of the character from before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. That he was the child of circus acrobats that were killed by Croc and Batman took him in and there was this whole thing with someone named Nocturna and hair powder to make him look like Dick and a lot of other things that went into Jason Todd circa 1983to 1986.

I also didn’t know that Dick Grayson pretty much got Jason’s parents killed, but that’s a whole other post.

All of that knowledge was in my future. In late 1987, I had the Who’s Who entry, Batman #410, and this Batman book that I just bought that showed me how Dick and Jason met and because it was so early in my collecting career it imprinted on me in a big way. I loved that book. I loved learning what happened between Dick and Bruce to cause Dick to leave. I loved the art. I loved watching Dick reach out to Jason at the end. It was such a formative comic for me.

And then I didn’t read another issue until Batman #424.

I never said I was consistent back then.

I found Batman #424 at a Waldenbooks located in the mall that had the first optometrist my mom took me to when my vision started getting wonky. I would find out that I was far sighted in one eye and near sighted in the other, which meant my brain was constantly fighting to keep things in focus. This explained why one of my eyes was going “lazy” and in addition to glasses when I read (that eventually ended up being glasses to function in life) I had to do these things called pencil pushups to strengthen my eyeballs.

It was a whole thing. I was actually stoked to get glasses because Clark Kent had glasses.

Batman #424 was another one of those early comics that stuck with me. In the story, Robin hears a woman screaming in an apartment and goes in to save her. Things get complicated when it turns out that the person making the woman scream was the son of a diplomat, which gave him immunity from his crimes. The woman ends up killing herself and Batman and Robin find a way to get this scumbag sent back to his home country. Before the man leaves Robin confronts him on his balcony and the man ends up falling to his death. When Batman arrives, Robin says the man slipped and leaves.

This was heavy stuff for a twelve-year-old to deal with. It’s heavy stuff in general. Diplomatic immunity. Suicide. The fact that (despite saying he slipped) Jason Tod DEFINITELY pushed that guy off of his balcony. It was a lot for me to process but I really, REALLY liked it.

And that was what I knew about Jason Todd in the late summer of 1988. He was a kid that Batman took in, trained to be the new Robin, had some serious problems with Two-Face, formed a kinship with Dick Grayson, had anger issues, and killed a guy…maybe.

Definitely, but maybe.

I had no idea that the next story I read would be where he died.

More to follow…