#corpses

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

BOUNTY HUNTER

by Franck Besançon

[nihilism-0]

A few feet of ground couldn't separate you from me.

[thatsbelievable]

[avayarising]

Deaths of Jason Todd

Part of the Batfam Death Project.

Jason has died five times. There are also a further three times when he might have arguably died. I have not found any instances of Jason visiting the afterlife without being dead.

Total time dead: 6 months, give or take a few days.

Verifiable deaths

1. Killed by the Joker in Ethiopia (Batman 1:427–428, 1988)

As we all know, Jason was killed by the Joker (Batman 1:427–428, 1988).

He went to Heaven (Green Arrow 3:7, 2001).

He woke up in his coffin six months later because something something Superboy Prime (Batman Annual 25, 2006),

and was restored from catatonia by Talia via the Lazarus Pit (also Batman Annual 25).

Time dead: probably around six months, but it’s complicated.

2. Killed by Batman to release him from demonic possession (Trinity 2:15, 2017)

Circe and Ra’s al Ghul worked together to get the Outlaws (Jason, Artemis, and Bizzaro) possessed by demons from the Pandora Pits intent on sacrificing Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. Bruce injected a possessed Jason with potassium chloride to kill him, forcing the demon out, then restarted his heart by defibrillation.

(This comic also features Superman and Constantine climbing through a portal to hell in possessed!Jason’s mouth.)

Time dead: a minute or so.

3. Beaten to death by groblins (Dark Nights: Death Metal 7, 2021)

Jason, along with other members of the Batfamily, was overwhelmed by a swarm of ‘groblins’: mindless evil Jokerised Robins invading from the Dark Multiverse, led by the Robin King (an evil child Bruce Robin).

Shortly after that he was raised as a zombie (missing an arm) by Black Lantern Batman to continue the fight.

Jason was restored to proper life when Wonder Woman, powered by the determination of her friends, defeated the evil Batman Who Laughs and persuaded the gods to remake the multiverse as it was before the evil universes invaded the good ones.

Time dead: somewhere from quarter of an hour to an hour? Or perhaps a lot longer, if it took longer to rebuild the world. It’s always a little tricky to be sure when world remakes are involved.

4. Shot in the back by zombie Deadshot (Task Force Z 3–4, 2022)

Jason joined a team of zombies called Task Force Z, an organisation run by Harvey Dent with questionably legitimate government backing and copious quantities of Lazarus resin to bring them back every time they died. He was sent to recruit Deadshot by raising him from the dead. Apparently some fool buried Deadshot’s wrist guns with him, because the first thing Deadshot did on being resurrected was to shoot Jason in the back.

Jason was rushed back to the organisation’s facility but flatlined on the operating table.

He was revived by an injection of Lazarus resin into the brain (or possibly just the outer ear? picture is unclear), administered by one of the staff of the questionably legitimate facility.

Time dead: less than a minute.

5. Killed by the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh (Batman 3:148, 2024)

Batman’s dissociation backup personality, called Zur-En-Arrh, turned evil and downloaded itself into a robot. It fought Batman and Jason jumped in to save him; Zur took him out with a stong uppercut to the jaw, smashing his facemask, and threw him down hard, which broke his neck and killed him.

This was a setup by Bruce and Jason: Jason was wearing a special suit that injected him with Lazarus resin, so he was revived almost instantly, while having killed someone caused Zur-En-Arrh to crash.

Time dead: a few seconds.

Inferrable and arguable deaths

1. Arguably died when Joker takes over the world (Emperor Joker, 2000)

After the Joker stole reality-altering powers from Mxyzptlk and remade the universe to his liking, he placed Jason’s rotting corpse alongside Dick’s and Tim’s for a macabre poker game.

Emperor Joker was published in 2000, well before Jason was revealed to be alive in the Under the Hood storyline, published in 2006 (and later retconned to have been present in the Hush storyline in 2003), and absolutely before any writer had conceived of bringing him back to life. But given that he is supposed to have been shambling around as a zombie and then getting assassin training for a long while before that, taking the retcons into account he ought to have been alive at the time of Emperor Joker.

So while at the time of writing Jason was intended to be continuously dead, after the retcons we have to say that Joker killed Jason again, perhaps even unknowingly, to put him in his poker game.

After Joker was defeated, Mr Mxyzptlk, with Spectre!Hal’s guidance, restored the world to its previous state, which presumably also involved restoring Jason to life again.

Time dead: it’s complicated.

2. Perhaps dies in the confrontation with Bruce involving the Joker (Batman 1:650, 2006)

When he returned to Gotham as the Red Hood, Jason engineered a confrontation between himself, Batman, and the Joker. Batman ended up throwing a batarang which clipped his shoulder. (Jason had previously in this story monologued about how shoulder wounds can kill quickly from blood loss but are easily treated if you’re quick.) Then the Joker shot the explosives Jason had set and the building blew up.

Batman presumably assumes Jason is dead (Jason and Joker were right on top of a large pile of explosives – in fact, it’s pretty amazing even Bruce, who was standing a few feet away, managed to get out). So no-one is around to rescue and treat Jason. But Jason returns later with no explanation of how he survived. Either he’s returned from the dead again or he is supernaturally good at not dying.

Then again, the Joker survived too, so who knows?

Time dead: unknown, if any.

3. Perhaps dies when Dick throws him off a bridge into Gotham River (Batman: Battle for the Cowl 3, 2009)

After Jason nearly killed both Tim and Damian, during the Battle for the Cowl while Bruce was lost in time, Dick confronted him in a battle which ended up on top of a train going over a high bridge. Dick knocked Jason off the train, and they ended up on the bridge with Jason dangling off the edge.

Dick did the whole ‘Take my hand’ thing and Jason said “I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think,” before letting go and dropping into the water from a great height.

This suggests either Jason knows he’s going to come back from the dead or Jason thinks Dick is going to die soon. Dick definitely reacts as if he thinks Jason is dead, and Dick probably has a pretty generous idea of what’s survivable when it comes to heights.

Again, Jason returns later with no explanation.

Time dead: unknown, if any.

Batfam Death Project Masterpost

[ho1000c]

House of 1000 Corpses

[danny-moll]

i was always the one drawing the weird dead bodies

[morbidcute666]