SL: How do you perceive Jason Todd’s relationships with each of the Batkids, from his perspective?
JW: Jason. Jason and his relationships. Starting at the bottom, the most recent, I think Jason kind of likes him (Damian).
TG: After he tried shooting him…
JW: Whatever. Jason is psychotic and a scoundrel and changes as the wind does. He’s a bit nuts, but I think what he likes about Damian is that he fights back, he’s an egotistical aristocrat, a 10-year-old man-child and I can’t imagine Jason doesn’t respect the talking back aspect of him, that he’s a little tough guy.
He hates Tim Drake more than any of them because Tim came after him. I never got to tell the Tim Drake-Jason Todd story and I probably won’t in this fashion. Or we’ll see. We’ll see. In my view, he hates Tim without even knowing him, without knowing anything about him or ever fighting him or being alongside him, he hates just the idea of him. He’s the one who came after him.
Dick, he also hates, but for entirely different reasons. That’s sort of like he’s (Dick) the good son. I think Jason feels superiority to Dick Grayson. It’s behind that Dick’s the goody-two-shoes. That’s an understatement of how he feels. He also understands that Dick Grayson’s never going to be Batman. That’s where the condescension comes in. You’re never going to be Batman, you don’t have that thing, that flaw in your character that makes Batman Batman. He’s like, I know I have that. He thinks he can do better than Batman. I think he looks down at Dick.
TG: I just want to go on record and say I don’t like the red hair/dying his hair thing. I remember Jason Todd stealing the Batmobile’s hubcaps or tires, he had black hair, he wasn’t dying his hair and the whole thing with Batman dying his hair — I don’t like it.
JW: Grant was doing this thing where he wanted to make all the continuity work and that was one of the facets of it. Come September, black hair again. So, don’t worry. I’ve gone out there, it’s black hair again. There’s a spoiler.
There’s LOTS more if you go under the cut, including Winick talking about Jason and Talia’s sex scene, Jason’s sexuality, the construction of the animated movie, Under the Red Hood, Jason’s mask fetish and where he’d like to see Jason in the future!
SL: Why did you decide to write the romantic scene between Jason and Talia in Lost Days?
JW: For those playing at home, Jason Todd, at the end of Red Hood: Lost Days, and Talia slept together. I did that because it was really disturbing and to shine a light on the fact that these are not really well people. A lot of people didn’t like that, which was correct. You weren’t supposed to like that. That was supposed to be, ‘oh God, stop that, what are you doing?’ It really was. That was grudge sex all the way around. As well as, for Talia, her reasons, being that Bruce had wound up inadvertently killing her father and she was ragingly angry with him and went from love to pure hate and still loving him at the same time. And Jason, given the opportunity to have sex with just about the only woman who Bruce has had sex with or really cares about, ‘Yeah, I’ll go there.’
SL: He’s like, ‘yeah, cause I hate that guy.’
JW: Yeah! ‘I hate that guy!’ And I think that Jason probably had the hots for Talia. She’s hot, he doesn’t exactly have a lot of relationships going on — It’s not a good thing for either of them. These are two people who murder people, two people who are screwed up, screwed up emotionally. There’s this question that why would he do that and Talia only loves Bruce. She might only love Bruce, but she does have sex with other people because that’s just sex. And we’re all grown-ups here. I think those who shake their fist and get angry at this kind of thing might be some of our older readers. I’m an older reader, but I acknowledge the fact that people aren’t that chaste and grow up: people have sex. That’s why I ended it like that; It was messed up.
SL: Is he (Jason) a little bisexual?
JW: That was the first time we’ve ever saw him mess around with anybody. Truth is, I haven’t really thought about it. I think about Jason in a lot of other ways. You might put him in bed, I don’t do that. That was the only time I thought about him having sex because she wanted to.
SL: Oh, I put him in bed! No, really —-
JW: I’m totally dodging the question. This is me ducking the question. There’s things we can talk about and there’s things we can’t talk about, there’s things that DC Comics doesn’t like me talking about and they don’t like us talking about things like that, so I don’t want to answer that, thank you.
SL: Why did you choose to give Jason the Red Hood identity?
JW: Probably because of the same reason why he had sex with Talia: because it was going to piss off Bruce. Jason was in touch of the irony of it all; the Red Hood had been many, many people, including the Joker, and had been a villain, and it just worked. It was one of those happy accidents. I would be lying to you to say that I thought it through, that this would be great, this will go on for awhile. It’s one of those things you’re working on and you think, he should come back as the Red Hood, that would be pretty cool!
C: That sort of plays into my other question. Was it easier when you were working on the Under the Red Hood movie that you didn’t have to queue as closely to the continuity of DC, that you didn’t have to integrate Hush or Infinite Crisis stuff, that you could just tell your Under the Red Hood story in the Batman more limited universe?
JW: Yeah, even paring it down from that, it was before the Under the Red Hood DVD, it was two years of comics. We just got down to the core characters. We just got down to the Red Hood, Batman, the Joker and Black Mask. And that’s the story we’re going to tell over 80 minutes. … When I did the first outline, I didn’t even look back at the trade, I was doing it all from memory, just to sort of like, ‘what were the big moments’ and banged it together. It was right there, the beginning, middle and end were right there.
C: I’m sorry to gush, but his whole revelation of, ‘Bruce, I’m not mad at you, I’m mad because Joker’s still alive. Why didn’t you kill him — he killed me!’ That in the movie — what an amazing part.
SL: It was brilliant. That movie was so good.
JW: Thank you. That moment is what gave birth to the character and the arc. Back when I was first kicking it around with Dan Didio and company about what I wanted to do, I told them the last scene, which was that last scene in the arc. Basically, what it all comes down to is not that he didn’t save him, it’s that he
didn’t murder Joker. Everyone was like oh jeez, that’s great. I know, it’s fun right? Let’s write this thing! 18 issues later, we got there. Stories play out and a great ending can make up for so much crap. This is not one of those things, because it’s all gold, every single minute. It’s a strong ending so thank you. It not only gave birth to the movie, but Jason Todd in general.
TG: I do have to ask, so when Jason Todd was wearing the Red Hood helmet, when he removes it, he’s wearing another mask?
JW: I made a joke about that once. So, yes, back when he was Hush, he whipped off his Hush bandages and he had a domino mask on. At one point, I think it was in Green Arrow, in an issue where he was fighting Speedy, Mia, and his helmet comes off and she makes the comment, ‘why do you wear a mask under your helmet,’ and he says, ‘I did it once for effect and it just became a habit.’ There was a point in the script where he was not wearing the domino mask, meaning the script for the movie. I don’t know why the powers that be were like, ‘no, he’s gotta wear the domino mask.’
TG: How does he keep the helmet on? Is it like some sort of latch system?
JW: I have it like some weird almost vacuum seal, practically.
TG: Yeah, there’s gotta be some way to keep it on when he’s running and jumping around and punching people.
JW: If you notice when he pops it off, it’s like a vacuum seal.
SL: Who are your top three characters you love to write?
JW: … Who do I love writing, gets me going? I love writing Batman, I adore writing Mimic from the Exiles … and I still love writing Jason Todd. I’m not going to be writing him for September, ‘cause I’m written him a lot. I’m not going to say I’m tired of writing him, but I’ve written a lot of Jason Todd.
SL: Would you like to have been the writer on the upcoming Capt. Atom?
JW: Yes and no. There’s lots of books I would have liked to do. … There’s a lot of characters I would have liked to have done. Batman would have been interesting, doing the Red Hood would have been interesting, Capt. Atom would have been interesting, the JLI. But with both of those, Red Hood and JLI, I’ve done a lot of Red Hood stories, and I just did 24 comics of JLI — which is like in dog years, two years of comics, so I don’t feel like necessary I’m missing it.
SL: You’ve written a lot of Jason Todd and The Crowbar wants to know who is Jason Todd now — oh, the crowbar and Jason Todd, I get it! — and how is he different to you from when he was first introduced and where would you like to see him go?
TG: He’s the leader of the Outlaws.
JW: Where he’s going in the future is up to others; where he is now as far as Batman and Robin 24, the finale of the Red Hood arc on Batman and Robin*, he’s escaped from Arkham and he’s out there. We could get into this, but this becomes things that are ‘what if’ territory and what would happen if we were continuing with the DCU as we have been and we’re not. He’s gonna be Jason Todd and the Outlaws and that’s going to be very, very interesting. I’ve been a very big fan of Scott Lobdell for a very long time. Talk about a dude who was doing progressive stuff long before I was. I’d love to see Jason on a team. From what I’ve seen, it’s going to be very, very fun.
*Batman and Robin 25 is the finale, it’s out in stores July 6.
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