Batman #635-641

Batman #635-641

Originally released in 2004

Written by Judd Winick

Art by Doug Mahnke (#635-639, 641), Paul Lee (#640)

I've seen the story of the Red Hood through the animated movie "Batman: Under the Red Hood", so I wanted to check out the comic to see how it compares. The Black Mask has become the criminal kingpin of Gotham, but there's a new vigilante in town going by the Red Hood, who uses lethal force and is looking to make a name for himself. While trying to stop the Red Hood, Batman discovers the disturbing secret about his identity.

The person under the Red Hood's mask had recently appeared in the Hush storyline - it was revealed to be Clayface at the end of the fight, but it's retconned here that it was originally the Red Hood and he switched with Clayface mid-fight.  It's a weird way to handle it, and makes the reveal a bit less effective, but maybe the Clayface fake-out was used to test the waters, or it caused the people at DC to realize just how popular the idea of resurrecting the character was.

The comic has some subplots that weren't included in the movie, such as Wayne Industries being bought out, a new crime fighter called Onyx operating in Gotham with Batman's permission, and Black Mask hiring Mister Freeze to act as muscle. (Though it doesn't help their partnership that Mister Freeze keeps killing Black Mask's employees on a whim)

Black Mask is entertainingly out of his league as a criminal mastermind in Gotham, trying to seriously run a criminal empire while the rest of Gotham's rogues remain as unpredictable and insane as ever. His conversations with his henchmen adds some humour to the proceedings as Batman tries to stop Red Hood and, once he begins to suspect the man's identity, go to friends to ask about life, death, and coming back from death.

Batman turns to Green Arrow, Zatanna, and Superman for advice, among others.  He suspects that he knows who is under the Red Hood, and he's trying to rationalize that idea with what he knows about death. It should be permanent, but maybe the Lazarus Pits can restore people from the dead as well as rejuvenating the living. (This wound up being the explanation that the movie used.  The comics explanation is much stupider - Superboy-Prime punched a hole in reality, making it so the person came back to life)

I think I've hidden the reveal for long enough - it seems to be common knowledge at this point, and when the Red Hood tracks the Joker down, what he does to the clown is a bit of a giveaway.

The Red Hood is Jason Todd, the second Robin, back from the dead.  I'm curious about how well-known Jason was at the time that this comic was released - he had died sixteen years beforehand, though his death is briefly mentioned in this story as one of several losses that Batman had gone through. (a famous saying in comics was that "nobody stays dead except for Uncle Ben, Jason Todd, and Bucky Barnes" - in what was either a coincidence or an intentional reaction to this storyline, Bucky would be brought back from the dead less than a year later in Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America)

This group of issues doesn't cover the full storyline from the movie - the storyline starts with Bruce (but not the audience) seeing the Red Hood unmasked before jumping back several weeks to show how we got here - the Red Hood's stand-off with Batman and the Joker is about eight to ten issues later, with other plots happening in between.  Still, the movie wound up being a fairly direct translation, aside from Batman figuring out who the Red Hood is in a different way, along with the method of Jason's resurrection and the involvement of Ra's al Ghul. (as far as I know, he's not included in the comic version; the movie simplifies A Death In The Family by having Ra's hire the Joker only for the clown to be uncontrollable, whereas the comic has the Joker gaining diplomatic immunity through Iran)

While the twist surrounding the Red Hood's identity is well-known by this point, and I already had a good idea of the plot going into this thanks to the movie, it's a well-written story, and I can see why the movie adaptation is fairly direct.  I don't know how "fair" of a mystery the Red Hood's identity is, seeing as it turns out to be someone who died before some of the readers would have been born, but there are some clues prior to his unmasking, and the Hush story from a year or two earlier planted the seeds.  It's an interesting reimagining of a character who was divisive at best (there was a phone poll to determine if Jason would live or die), and it expands on his darker aspects from when he was Robin and uses them to reframe him as a villain, or at least a very dark anti-hero.