Red Hood Comes to Batman: The Animated Series

Batman: The Adventures Continue has been like a warm blanket amidst the cold horror of ::waves at everything::, giving Paul Dini, Alan Burnett, and Ty Templeton the chance to come home to the universe they tended for years and build on ideas and relationships from the old show. And now, a big name from the comics is making his way into animated continuity for the first time.

Chapter nine of Batman: The Adventures Continue is titled “Red Son Rising, Part 1,” and introduces Red Hood to the world of the cartoon. It’s the start of what DC is calling “the home stretch” of Dini, Burnett, Templeton, colorist Monica Kubina, and letterer Josh Reed’s run, and it looks like, from the preview art, Joker is going to force the issue with the Red Hood, who has been hunting him for a while.

Of course, Jason Todd (the Red Hood) and the Joker have a long history in the mainstream DCU. Jason, the second Robin, was nearly beaten to death by the Joker, who then blew up the warehouse he was in, killing Jason and his birth mother. He was then resurrected and reintroduced by Judd Winick in the classic “Under the Red Hood” storyline. His actual resurrection was via a genuinely ridiculous (even for comic books) method, so let’s just agree he was…uh…dropped in a Lazarus Pit and leave it there.

Ok, so in Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime punched the walls of reality so hard Jason came back to life. He spent some time wandering as an amnesiac and also in a coma for a minute before he was found by Talia al-Ghul, confirmed as the deceased Robin, and dropped in a Lazarus Pit to restore his mind and I told you it was silly. Lazarus Pit. Leave it there.

Anyway, upon his return to Gotham, Jason turned himself into a brutal vigilante, closer to the Punisher than to Batman, and started a revenge list against the people who wronged him prior to his death. On that list was the Joker, of course, but also Batman himself.

This story was roughly adapted into the surprisingly good animated feature, Batman: Under the Red Hood, and has become generally accepted canon across multiple different alternate realities – notably also in the Injustice fighting games, where Red Hood was a shockingly fun character to play with. And now he’s coming to the Animated continuity.

For more preview art from this chapter, including yet another note perfect title card, keep scrolling. For more on Batman: The Animated Series or Injustice or the animated features or anything else Batman related, stick with Den of Geek!