itās a couple of different things, but where i think it stems from is the idea that some jason fans have of jason being turned into āthe angry robinā as only a recent development, and that winick returning to the writerās mantle would fix that issue, as if he didnāt ascribe to this version of jason in his own writing of under the red hood, and that influenced so many of the versions of jason thereafter. as much as i hate starlin and what he ultimately did to jason, i think thereās a distinction that has to be made about his writing. he didnāt think jason was a generally angry kid. in quite a few of his stories, jason is bright, nervous, insightful. heās still very much a good kid. the central aspect to his writing of jason and how that eventually leads to a death in the family is his depiction of jason as reckless due to emotional involvement or naĆÆvetĆ©, sometimes both (as can be seen in the case with sheila). and while thatās a bit annoying given the earlier issues collins wrote, where jason was capable of exercising restraint and patience, the part about him getting too emotionally involved at times is at least not all that far fetched given the issue where he learns two-face is responsible for killing his father. but thatās about as far as the portrayal goes, and even in aditf (which is immediately subsequent to the garzonas issues, the content of which obv deeply upset jason and that he also got emotionally involved in), the concern from bruce is that jason hasnāt had enough time to properly cope with his parentsā death, and that if bruce can help him then maybe heāll be able to patrol normally. thereās never the idea that jasonās some angry kid with a mean streak, and while the thing about his āmean streakā is only a single throwaway line in under the red hood as a whole, i think it exposes the problem with winick and jason writers in general. they donāt want to acknowledge the fact that his issues pre-death were specific. he wasnāt hurling himself like an infuriated ballistic at every criminal. truly there were only two cases where that happened, and one involved his fatherās murderer, obv a sore point, and the other a woman who hanged herself bc she couldnāt escape her rapist. (ig if you wanted you could also count him going overkill on the drug bust at the start of aditf, but that was the kind of temporary mental place starlin was leading jason to with the garzonas issues, rather than something that necessarily spoke on his character as a whole.) ascribing all of that to him having a mean streak and not justā¦ the fact that he was a deeply empathetic person who was upset by these things that happened to good people is kind of bizarre to me. and yeah, i know winick writes jason killing people who harm children, but itās the way he goes about writing jasonās attitude that bothers me bc it feels purely driven by rage as if jasonās feelings about certain criminals didnāt stem from a deep compassion for and personal connection to their victims. when you center so much of jasonās post-resurrection motivation around the joker and little else, you forget what drove jason to get emotionally involved with cases to begin with. more than self righteousness about what criminals deserved, it was compassion, and i think winick really missed the mark on that.
on another end, i also think ignoring the case with his father specifically has spelled a kind of disaster for his character. jasonās father worked as a lackey for one of gothamās biggest crime bosses, and jason initially thought heād been abandoned by willis until he learned two-face killed him. i think itās crazy that his philosophy regarding who deserves to die and who doesnāt wouldnāt account for that deeply personal experience, esp since he loved his father. thatās not to say that every person heās ever killed is suddenly in possession of a conscience and that every head, lackey, etc. was as sincere of intentions as his father was, but i think what winickās vision lacks is the idea of jason having to contend with difficult questions. what is the definition of ābadā? how do you get to decide who lives or dies? what marks the point of no return for a criminal? itās that lack of specificity that to me has harmed the character as a whole, not bc i think drug lords and rapists donāt deserve the absolute worst, but bc i think jason should come across situations where heās forced to ask himself what gives him the right to play god, esp since a part of his philosophy is that heās unperturbed with killing people who get in the way of him exacting what he calls justice (also this is not to say i agree with how urban legends handled this; while i enjoyed the premise i think the execution was lacking). people like to say there is a lot of nuance to jasonās introduction as the red hood but i donāt really think there is. the film version of the comic marginally improves on things but itās still far from a genuine analysis on crime or the question of what criminals deserve what punishment, and how one would actually decide on that or on their right to decide to begin with
ultimately, i just donāt see how people believe subsequent writers are what drove jason to end up as the resident batfam psycho by the end of preboot, or as the angry robin in more recent years, when i very much think itās a direct consequence of winickās writing. so long as people hold that writing on a pedestal devoid of any criticism whatsoever, jasonās never going to improve as a character, and iām still going to be of the belief he hasnāt been written well since before he died
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