Jason Todd killed a bunch of people and put a duffle bag of heads on Bruce's doorstep READ THE FUCKING COMICS!!!! He is not being lobotomised by them, he shot Tim and shot Damian
He did not put the duffle bag full of eight heads on Bruce’s doorstep. He threw it in front of the eight drug lords who were bosses of the people whose heads Jason cut off. (Source: Batman #635, Under the Red Hood, which I have read.)
I have not read any comic in which Jason shoots Tim, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have happened at some point. Would you mind providing the name or number of the issue where he does so? Jason absolutely does shoot AT Tim in Battle For the Cowl (which I have read), after Tim hunts Jason down to his underground lair and attacks him. Tim initiates the fight, Jason shoots at Tim several times, Tim beats him in the head (with a crowbar, of course), and Jason stabs Tim with a batarang, incapacitating him. Again, I haven’t read every single Batman comic, so it’s possible that you’re thinking of a different issue—would you mind providing the issue # where Jason shoots Tim? Because in BFtC #3, Tim shows up to ambush Jason, and Jason responds with self-defense.
To my knowledge, the only time Jason shoots Damian is also in Battle For the Cowl, after Jason rescues Dick — who is badly injured— and Damian from gunmen who have them cornered. Dick tells Damian to hide, then tries to draw the gunmen’s attention because he’s too injured to run away. Just as the gunmen are preparing to fire at Dick, Jason arrives on the scene and kills the gunmen; Dick and Damian then attack Jason, and Damian threatens to kill him, telling him “the hole in the ground should fit you just fine!” At which point Jason shoots Damian in the shoulder and quickly leaves. Again, maybe there’s a different time when Jason shoots Damian that I haven’t read; but in this case Jason shot a whole bunch of people to SAVE DICK AND DAMIAN’S LIVES, they responded by attacking him, and he defended himself.
I will admit the “lobotomy” is not literal: in Gotham War (which I have read), Bruce purposefully alters Jason’s brain chemistry with fear toxin, removing his free will and leaving him virtually incapacitated. Jason can literally not even stand up, making him a sitting duck. In a way, it was worse than a lobotomy — it was a death sentence, in the current world of Gotham. Indeed, Jason is almost immediately at the mercy of Scarecrow and the Joker, and the only reason he survives is due to the latter’s perverse sense of humor.
Do you remember the time that Bruce killed Jason? Because I do.
Frankly, I’d ask you to actually read the fucking comics, anon. Because it doesn’t seem like you have.
@ruiniscrazy: “No, Jason was killing whoever he wanted, which was anyone who got in his way collateral damage be damned (yes that includes civilians), because BftC was one of the most OOC pieces of nonsense I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Jason was purposely being written as psychotic because the writers needed a villain, spitting in the face of any prior characterization or redemption attempts.”
No, he wasn’t, actually. In Vol #1 of Battle For the Cowl, Gotham has gone to absolute shit in the absence of Batman. Multiple people comment that they’re losing control of the city, and Black Mask busts a bunch of villains out of Arkham then blows up Blackgate. Dick refuses to take up the mantle, but calls up a ton of allies to help out.
Tim, working with Squire, is pursuing some Joker henchmen who are shooting at him. He bursts into a room and finds the henchmen already tied up and left behind by Jason, who has taken up the mantle — and the henchmen are alive. Meaning that Jason isn’t killing indiscriminately. He is not, in fact, killing civilians.
(I should really do a whole series on Jason’s actual kills in the comics, because there are way fewer than people attribute to him.)
Anyway, continued. Shortly after, Tim muses internally about how the city is in a downward spiral and is looking for Batman, “or a Batman.” The last sentence is accompanied by a pane showing three bodies hanging from a highway overpass, hooded and with signs on their chests. The signs read: “RAPIST,” I can’t read the middle one, and “KILLER.” It’s not stated outright that these people were killed by Jason, but considering one of them is labeled a rapist and he has a long history of hating sex abusers, I’m gonna say it’s strongly implied. Again: not innocent civilians.
The next time we see Jason in BFtC, he’s in silhouette fighting criminals as Batman - NON-LETHALLY. He’s using his hands, non-lethally using batarangs, and again leaving people tied up. Dick comments, “The three suspects he apprehended on Monday swore up and down that it was Batman.” Meaning that they lived, meaning that Jason didn’t kill them and in fact turned them over to the police.
Is that the work of a psychotic person? Because that sounds a lot like what Bruce does as Batman.
Now. Jason does kill people in BFtC. He kills rapists and killers. He kills the gunmen who have an injured Dick cornered and are about to shoot him, as noted above. Later, in pursuit of Black Mask — who is behind the surge in violence — Jason non-lethally shoots an armed henchmen about to shoot him then questions him by shooting him some more in his limbs. It’s unclear if this guy dies but it’s likely. He stabs Tim in the chest with a batarang while Tim is hitting Jason in the head with a crowbar, also a potentially fatal injury (blunt force trauma to the head kills people, guys) in a fight that Tim tracked him down to initiate.
Dick then also shows up in Jason’s lair to fight him, rescue Tim, and reveal that he knows Jason is a survivor of child sexual abuse, a fact that he learned from a private recording that Bruce made for Jason. Dick and Jason fight — with their hands. Jason is shown to have his guns but never once shoots them at Dick, even after Dick plays the recording, badly triggering Jason. The two fight, Dick gets the upper hand, and Jason chooses to fall off a speeding train into the water, apparently dying.
And in the end of the fucking comic, Dick becomes Batman after all. Because he decides Gotham needs Batman. WHICH WAS JASON’S WHOLE POINT ALL ALONG!!! His whole point was that he became Batman because someone had to, and Dick was refusing to do it even when Tim and Alfred asked him to, so Jason stepped up.
It is INFURIATING to me that people think Jason was acting like a villain in this arc. He wasn’t killing indiscriminately! He killed when attacked. He killed when Dick was threatened. He is implied to have killed rapists and killers, though we don’t see the circumstances of the killing. Other than that, he ties up and leaves the goons and criminals behind. He never once is shown to kill civilians. He never once is shown to kill without a good goddamned reason.
He was being Batman. A lethal Batman, yeah…but lethal only under specific circumstances.
