Following the Crisis on Infinite Earths event and the rebooting of DC's main comics universe, Jason's origin was changed to being a pre-teen street urchin and petty thief who Bruce adopted and mentored after finding the boy attempting to steal the tires off of the Batmobile.
Years later, O'Neil said hundreds of votes in the "Jason Dies" line might have come from a single person, adding a large degree of uncertainty to the honesty of results regarding a poll designed to determine the character's popularity.
"I heard it was one guy, who programmed his computer to dial the thumbs down number every ninety seconds for eight hours, who made the difference", O'Neil said in a Newsarama interview conducted alongside writer Judd Winick during the "Under The Hood" arc.
A lot of adventures occurred post-Crisis which fit with the circus acrobat era and in some cases ran simultaneously in Detective as the street kid origin was being laid out in Batman.
It's crystal clear now that he is on the dark side.Timothy Drake eventually takes up the bat mantle when Dick Grayson refuses to and sets off to fight Todd, who easily defeats him.
Catwoman would be a frequent guest star during this era as she wrestled with the role of hero and as a love interest for Batman which led to clashes with the boy feeling left out.
The son of Catherine and Willis Todd, Jason lives on the east end of Gotham City in the Park Row district called Crime Alley.
After following several leads, including an Israeli Mossad agent and Shiva Woo-San, Todd finally tracks his biological mother Sheila Haywood to Ethiopia, where she works as an aid worker.
However, when Superboy-Prime alters reality from the paradise dimension in which he is trapped—his punches against the barrier keeping him from the rest of the universe causing temporal ripples that create an overlap of parallel timelines (Hypertime)—Jason Todd is restored to life (as he was meant to survive the Joker's assaults), breaks out of his coffin, and is eventually hospitalized; because he wandered so far from his grave before his discovery, no connection was ever drawn between the two events.
Todd instead decides to kill Batman directly by traveling across the globe in search of a similar, but the deadlier type of training to Bruce Wayne's own to prepare for that day.
[1][34] For years, Todd learns various skills from various masters, assassins, mercenaries, and aviators around the globe, including guns, poisons and antitoxins, martial arts, acrobatics, and bomb-making.
He also learns that the man teaching him bomb-making is involved in a Russian mafia-backed deal meant to push the resources of British law-enforcement away from mob crime and onto Islamic extremist terrorism with a framed bombing plot.
After she initiated a takeover of Kord Industries for him, Talia gifts Jason the flame dagger (a replica of the one Ra's al Ghul often carried) and the red motorcycle-helmet based hood which become his signature weapon and mask.
Red Hood assumes control over several gangs in Gotham City and starts a one-man war against Black Mask's criminal empire, who himself had recently allegedly murdered a Robin (Stephanie Brown).
After several confrontations, Batman becomes obsessed with the possibility of resurrection from the dead, suspecting that it was Jason he fought, and seeks advice from allies such as Superman and Green Arrow, both of whom have died and returned to life.
After a series of tests confirmed that it is Jason, Batman continues to keep his Robin costume in its memorial display case in the Batcave regardless; when Alfred Pennyworth asks if he wants the costume removed, Batman sadly replies that the return of Todd "doesn't change anything at all" because he wants to remember Jason as the good kid he was when they first met and blames himself over how violent he has become by letting him assume the Robin mantle.
However, Jason shows no intention of giving up the Nightwing persona when confronted by Dick Grayson and continues to taunt his predecessor by wearing the costume and suggesting that the two become a crime-fighting team.
[44] Jason Todd resumes his persona as the Red Hood and appears in several issues of Green Arrow alongside Brick as part of a gun-running organization, which brings Batman to Star City.
Jason's true motives are shown in the third part as he kidnaps Mia Dearden to dissolve her partnership with Green Arrow, feeling that they are kindred spirits, cast down by society and at odds with their mentors.
He knows that both he and Donna Troy have come back from the dead, even already deducing that his resurrection has something to do with Alexander Luthor Jr.'s plans during Infinite Crisis, and wonders which of them is next on the Monitor's hit list.
Jason seems to have a romantic interest in Donna and is shown to be visibly disgruntled when her old boyfriend Kyle Rayner joins their group as they take their tour to the 52 Earths which comprise the Multiverse.
A teaser image released to promote Countdown showed a figure resembling Red Robin among assembled heroes in poses symbolic of their roles in the series.
Todd is booked under a pseudonym (John Doe), due to there being no identifiable prints on file for any member of the main bat heroes as well as Jason is still legally dead.
To make the very concept of Batman obsolete, he puts a lot of effort into public relations: he drastically alters his Red Hood costume to look more like a traditional superhero outfit and recruits his sidekick Scarlet.
As Gordon leads him away, Todd tauntingly asks Grayson why he has not put Wayne's corpse into a Lazarus Pit to bring him back, citing his resurrection from its bath.
In this new timeline, Jason's new origin is revealed in a special Red Hood and the Outlaws #0 (November 2012) issue, which changes how Batman first met Todd (stealing medicine from Leslie Thompkins, after she had treated him from a brutal beating).
The backup introduces a massive retcon in which the Joker is responsible for orchestrating the major moments of Todd's life such as his father's imprisonment and death, his mother's overdose, his introduction to Thompkins, and his adoption of the Robin identity.
Jason Todd eventually led his own Suicide Squad which consisted of a zombified Bane, Arkham Knight, Hannah Hobart, Man-Bat, and Mister Bloom until he disbanded them at the series finale.
Jason Todd helped console Roy Harper during Beast Boy's injury against Deathstroke during Dark Crisis and was affected by Insomnia's spell during Knight Terrors.
[74] To hone this ability, he went a step further than Batman on his journey around the world to learn from masters how to kill a target with different types of guns, possess considerable "street smarts", and is remarked to be a natural leader.