Eye Motifs And The Theme Of Surveillance I Love You Eye Motifs And The Theme Of Surveillance

I know I take Jason too seriously but there is just something about like. Being the ultimate image of a voiceless victim: a murdered child. Being something that everyone in the family was able to project their tragedy and beliefs onto, a glass case mirroring their thoughts.

And then to come back, furious and sharp and nothing like the silent grave. To have a voice again and be screaming.

this especially hurts in aus where jason is found by the bats after he climbs out of his grave and before he’s taken by the league. there is nothing but the suit he died in to remind jason that he’s home and that his past life was truly real.

i’m thinking of the ramifications of bruce throwing out all traces of jason’s existence in the manor. do you think he threw away the box of belongings from his parents? what about his adoption certificate? is all that remained of jason peter todd police records of a horrific accidental death overseas, of an overdosed mother and murdered criminal father, school records of a bright yet overlooked boy, and memorials of a dead boy and a dead robin?

This is your canon reminder for the day that Dick is a nerdy li’l Shakespeare buff. <3

Scans from Batman #216 (1969), Gotham Knights #42 (2003), Teen Titans #36 (1971), and Batman #682 (2009).

Swift-footed Achilles, son of Peleus 🏹

Prints

Star Sapphire Jason Todd, but the ring shows up after the Batarang Incident as his people are dragging him to Leslie’s clinic, which results in

Ring: Jason Todd of Ear-

Goon 1: Dude, you can’t just say that, don’t you know ANYTHING about vigilantes?

Goon 2: Yeah, when he’s in the suit he’s Red Hood, get it right

Ring:

Ring: Red Hood of Earth,

Goon 3: “Of Earth?” That’s weird, man

Goon 1: Yeah, if anything he’s “of Gotham”

Goon 2: Nah, Hood’s “of Crime Alley”

And Jason is sitting there trying not to laugh as his people bully a fucking Lantern Ring, because he’s still bleeding and Leslie would genuinely eviscerate him for moving before she’s done with his stitches. Eventually they end up forcing the ring to explicitly lay out everything that accepting the ring would entail like it’s a work contract, and he’s actually kind of proud of them because it meant they were listening, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell them he already knows what a Star Sapphire is (though he did technically learn a few details he hadn’t known before, so it was probably good they did it anyway).

Anyway, the ring eventually makes its offer (calling him Red Hood of Crime Alley in a bid to not be interrupted), and Jason waits as his goons debate the pros and cons, wondering when the ring will realize he can’t actually give verbal consent at the moment due to the, y’know, recently slit throat.

He eventually does accept the ring, once it’s determined that he can choose his outfit and won’t draw too much attention to himself by glowing. It’s probably pretty good timing, since even though Leslie did a good job putting him back together (while all of this was going on, the ring refused to leave him and his people were adamant on fighting for his legal rights against the cosmic entity, which she tolerated as long as they helped and stayed physically out of the way), his throat still hurts like a bitch and the healing magic that rushes through him is pure relief. Anyway, due to the way they had the ring word the proposal, the newest Star Sapphire is logged officially as “Red Hood of Crime Alley,” and Hal immediately starts sweating, absolutely dreading having to tell Spooky that his Crime Lord Problem just got significantly more complicated.

Leslie bargains to have Jason use healing magic on more severe cases, and they set up a schedule for him to work shifts at the clinic, and then she immediately goes to beat Batman’s ass for what happened since she is well aware of who Jason Todd is, and the goons may have already forcefully ejected his name from their minds in respect, but she still hasn’t forgiven Bruce for forcing her to perform an honestly pretty irrelevant autopsy on the kid. She can ask him how he came back later.

Jason is just trying to see how accurately he can form construct versions of his guns. The pink is a bit much, but the unlimited ammo is pretty sweet

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say "man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies" but you also want to make it clear you don't think anyone should be put in charge of the 'hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

Comic characters are both so entertaining and so frustrating to analyse because as someone who usually likes to have all my bases covered before I type something out on the Internet it's like:

Batman is misogynistic.*

*Note 1: I am referring to the late 90s to 2000s version of Batman primarily his treatment of Helena Bertinelli and Stephanie Brown as these are the two women I've read most of however he also treats women terribly on a consistent basis no matter which era I'm reading**.

*Note 2: I am aware that he was written by many different writers over decades and it's hard to pin down the real batman however even his creators wrote him as misogynistic due to how acceptable that misogyny was in USA culture at the time he was created.

**I'm also aware that modern batman tends to no longer be written so plainly misogynistic however I find that instead the misogyny has been transferred over to the narrative, what with the erasure and flattening of some female characters and the flanderising of others all attempting to paper over his past treatment of them so that they can pretend he always treated women normally like he does nowadays, which often downplays their history and what they went through because of him

*Note 3: If batman is your favourite character of all time and the version that lives in your head is actually a champion of women's rights then this is not a personal attack on you and your version of him. This is just me analysing the comics I've read

*Note 4: "But Batman's a hero it doesn't make sense for him to be sexist." Yeah in a perfect world DCs flagship hero would not be a child abuser with a history of bigotry unfortunately Batman is a product of his writers and his company and DC has been pretty shit at this stuff since the beginning. I don't think ignoring and denying it helps either it just minimises what the victims actually go through in canon. They write him badly a lot. It's a problem.