NEAR-MYTHS: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS,THE LAST CRUSADE (2016)

LAST CRUSADE was a one-shot comic from some of the same collaborators that produced the previous year's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS: MASTER RACE. This time out, co-creators Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello partner with John Romita Jr to produce a much shorter take on one aspect of the Dark Knight universe: the events leading up to the Joker's capture and murder of The Jason Todd Robin.

To be sure, the creators aren't bothering to synch up their story with the well-known "Death in the Family" events, but instead produced a new narrative spun off from a brief reference to Jason's death in the 1986 DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. The Joker's act of slaying Todd-Robin was not mentioned in DKR, but not surprisingly in CRUSADE the Clown Prince is still the culprit, albeit under different circumstances.

The Joker and Batman actually don't square off at all here, for the villain spends most of his time in Arkham Asylum, telling quixotic stories and eventually breaking free. Batman and Todd-Robin spend most of their time investigating a plot set up by Poison Ivy and abetted by Killer Croc. Oh, and a de-costumed Catwoman has a few scenes. (Guess one could take that two ways.)

CRUSADE's only notable element is how Miller and Azzarello address that frequent that bete noir of realistically-minded comics-fans, the moral queasiness over under-age kids becoming the sidekicks of adult heroes. Of course when the kid-sidekick trope began in comics' Golden Age, it was nothing more than a transparent attempt to appeal to kids who wanted to fantasize about being heroes close to their own ages, rather than identifying only with adult crusaders. It's therefore ridiculous to treat a simple wish-fulfillment fantasy as if it were subject to moralistic evaluations.

To be sure, Miller et al don't pursue the "black beast" all that much. Rather, because Batman is getting old, he begins to worry about Jason Todd taking chances-- and, in addition, whether or not he's become increasingly ruthless. The problem with these two intertwined elements is that they work against one another, and against the expressed idea that kids in general shouldn't be exposed to dangerous activities. I suppose the authors might have formulated the argument that Jason's faults, as seen through Batman's eyes, were tied to his youth, but they didn't precisely do so. 

In fact, I speculate that the main reason Miller et al build up Jason Todd's penchant for violence is not because of anything in Todd-Robin's original career. IMO it's more likely that the authors were responding to the developments of "Reborn Robin" in 2005, in which Jason re-appeared as a bloodthirsty vigilante, The Red Hood. Later narratives redeemed the Hood so that he became a virtuous hero again. But CRUSADE suggests that even in his "innocent youth" Todd-Robin had somewhat sadistic tendencies-- which is ironic, since this was a mental quirk Miller imputed to his version of Batman in the classic DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN

 So, Batman. He spends about a year fighting crime on his lonesome. According to my system of interordination, he's the sole superordinate icon, and everyone in his orbit, whether allies like Commissioner Gordon or adversaries like Doctor Death (the crusader's first super-villain), are subordinate icons, aligned to his cosmos and that of no one else.

Then Robin appears in early 1940, and for whatever reason, the creators behind the comics also begin churning out many of the important adversaries-- Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Scarecrow-- and at least one of the most important allies, a tubby butler named Alfred. Now, because Batman and Robin have become the two members of a bonded ensemble, all of the icons in Batman's cosmos are also icons in Robin's cosmos. This state of affairs persists until about 1970, when the original Batman-and-Robin team is essentially terminated, perhaps to help scrub the comic-book features from lingering associations with the 1966 teleseries.

A fine point of this shared cosmos, though, is that Robin, by virtue of being in a bonded ensemble with Batman, also shares all the icons he never actually encounters, and the same is true of Batman.

For instance, Robin does not meet the aforementioned Doctor Death in either of the villain's two 1939 exploits. Dick Grayson doesn't meet a villain of that name until the 1970s. Nevertheless, by the transitive effect I've outlined elsewhere, Doctor Death is a "Robin villain" as much as he is a "Batman villain," even though Robin never meets him.

On a similar theme, Robin had his own stand-alone series in STAR-SPANGLED COMICS, beginning in 1947. Batman occasionally guest-starred in some stories but in general Robin handled each story's conflict on his own, such as the Boy Wonder's first encounter with a recurring, generally unimpressive criminal called The Clock. Nevertheless, by the same transitive property, The Clock is also in Batman's alignment-cosmos even if Batman never meets the evildoer.

All that said, the bonded ensemble of the Dynamic Duo comes to an end in the 1970s, For the remainder of that decade, Robin either operates alone, or in two other forms of ensembles: 

--the "unbonded" ensemble in which he has brief, semi-regular teamups with Batgirl II--

 --or the semi-bonded ensemble, in which he gravitates to two different iterations of the TEEN TITANS: one iteration a huge successful, the other a pathetic flop.

During this time, when he's no longer in an ensemble with Batman, no subsequent Bat-villains are within Robin's cosmos. So, even though Original Doctor Death is in the Batman-and-Robin cosmos even though Robin never meets him, Ra's Al Ghul is not in Robin's separate cosmos even though Robin DOES meet the villain when he Robin is guest-starring in one of Batman's stories. 

Robin-on-his-own does not lose his alignment with any earlier B& R villains, like Poison Ivy. Second Robin Jason Todd is immediately aligned with all previous Bat-villains as soon as he's part of the official Bat-ensemble, of course, because Jason inherits the transitive effect of the bonded ensemble through his relationship with Batman. But any villain encountered first by the Bruce-and-Jason team in the eighties, such as Black Mask, is outside the cosmos of Dick Grayson, who by that time takes on the distinct identity of Nightwing.

Now, this gets amusingly complicated with respect to those allies who weren't designed to be part of the bonded ensemble. The Barbara Gordon Batgirl is an ally, and a subordinate icon, to the Batman-Robin team for roughly the first five years of her comic-book existence. Because the character receives an ongoing series within five years of her last peripatetic appearance, all of her appearances in any BATMAN features, or in titles like JUSTICE LEAGUE or BRAVE AND BOLD, can be deemed "stature-crossovers" between her, the Batman-Robin team, and any other stature-character, because the Gordon-girl does get a clear path to the stature of a featured character. 

Because Batgirl Number Two exists in her own separate cosmos, and is not part of the bonded ensemble,a Batman-and-Robin villain like Killer Moth is in no way aligned with the Batgirl cosmos as it eventually develops, even though he's the first costumed villain Gordon-girl literally encounters. Even when Killer Moth eventually encounters the "Dominoed Dare-Doll" in a story within her own feature, the Moth remains unaligned with Batgirl and remains a "guest villain."

HOWEVER, in the 1967-68 season of the BATMAN teleseries, Batgirl becomes part of the bonded ensemble with the season's first episode, and within that separate media-cosmos, the "Dynamic Duo" becomes "the Terrific Trio." I have deemed the initiating episode of that series to be a stature-crossover, based on the separate status of the characters in the comics, but after that every subsequent episode is a non-crossover because Batgirl *has* joined a bonded ensemble within the context of the TV show. Thus, when Batgirl meets, say, Catwoman for the first time, Catwoman is immediately just as much Batgirl's foe as she is that of Batman and Robin-- and so there is no villain-meeting-unaligned-hero vibe present.

NEAR MYTHS: UNDER THE RED HOOD (2005), RED HOOD THE LOST DAYS (2010)

Jason Todd, the second Robin, never did anything noteworthy in the first phase of his career until he died-- and even then, his death didn't take on any real resonance until he arose from the world of the dead.

Or rather, the IDEA of his resurrection began to take on said resonance before DC Comics finally decided to bring Todd back for the first time since he was murdered by the Joker in BATMAN #357 (1983). After his overblown termination, Jason was left in dead-guy limbo for the next twenty years, until there was the SUGGESTION that he had been resusciated in the 2003 series HUSH. The HUSH storyline teased Jason's return, only to back off and say that the "Jason" who appeared was a clone-like entity constructed from living matter taken from the metamorphic villain Clayface.

I'm going to guess that "Phony Jason's Return" grabbed regular readers enough that writer Judd Winick successfully pitched a BATMAN continuity in which Jason was miraculously returned to life, only using a new identity. The former Robin now called himself The Red Hood, a name taken from an early identity of the villain who callously murdered Jason with a crowbar. As if imitating the coarse, un-Joker-like method of Jason's execution, the former hero's new modus operandi is to callously murder as many of Gotham's hardcore criminals as possible. Jason does so specifically to twist Bruce Wayne's tail; to reject Batman's credo of extending mercy to even the worst felon. 

This 2005 continuity rambles quite a bit, as Winnick works in over a half dozen familiar faces from DC history, most of whom are extraneous to the main story. (Amazo? Captain Nazi? In the same comic as down-and-dirty scuzzballs as Black Mask?) The core of the story ranges from Batman's initial disbelief regarding the apparent resurrection to his gradual acceptance that for reasons that are never too clear, Jason has indeed come back and is seeking to contravene Batman's ethos. Jason's motivation smacks of personal affront: he doesn't resent having been killed, but he's angry that Batman didn't decide to end the Joker's life after the villain committed such an enormity. The story would have been quite a bit better cut in half and focused only on the Bat-family.

UNDER THE RED HOOD blames Jason's resurrection on the arcane phenomenon known as "Hypertime." As for the question as to what happened to Jason following his resurrection, Winick rings in familiar Batman-luminaries Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia. The two villains stumble across Jason, initially believing him to be a hoax, possibly perpetrated by Batman. Eventually, Ra's loses interest in the undead Jason, but Talia-- who presumably has not yet conceived her own child by Bruce Wayne-- becomes a surrogate mother to the memory-stricken young man. She betrays her father by giving Jason access to a Lazarus Pit, which brings back Jason's lost memories, and thus causes him to lust for vengeance against his surrogate father. 

But before sending the future Red Hood forth to become Batman's new bane, Talia takes a curious action: initiating a quickie romance with Jason. Winick doesn't give the reader access to the thoughts of either participant. However, earlier in the continuity Ra's has lectured his daughter, telling her "the detective" will never truly love her. In the scene above, Talia encourages Jason to "punish" Batman for having brought about the (temporary) demise of Talia's father. But it would be fair to suspect that she might really want to punish the hero for not fully returning her love, by making love to his surrogate son. I don't know if this quasi-incestuous encounter was utilized in later stories, but I find it interesting in that it showed Winick's willingness to take risks with the Talia character. I confess I have no idea how well this version of the DC character dovetails with Grant Morrison's version, who unsurprisingly gets killed at the end of his opus but is resuscitated by some other raconteur. I also have not tried to follow what has happened with Red Hood since these two series, but I have the impression that his massive slaughter of Gotham gangsters was pretty much forgotten so that he could become a regular ally to the Bat-family.