Jason Todd is a comic book character appearing in stories by DC Comics. He first appeared in Batman #357 in March 1983 and became the second person to the mantle of the Robin, replacing Dick Grayson.
His Pre-Crisis origin story was originally identical to Grayson's, with him being the son of two circus acrobats that are eventually killed by a criminal (in Todd's case, his parents were fed to crocodiles by the Batman villain Killer Croc) and him being adopted by Bruce Wayne, the alter ego of Batman. Following the relaunching of DC's mainline comic continuity, Jason's origin was rewritten where he was rewritten to become a street urchin who was adopted by Batman after the latter found him attempting to swipe the tiles from the Batmobile and became the second Robin. Jason was somewhat controversial among Batman fans and following a call-in poll, he was killed off in the 1988 story A Death in the Family, where he was killed by the Joker. Jason was brought back in 2005 during the ''Under the Hood'' story as the masked figure known as Red Hood, with his identity being revealed by the story's conclusion. Following this, Jason would spent the next few years as an antagonist to his adoptive father and the rest of the Batfamily but following the rebooting of the DC Universe to the Post-Flashpoint or Prime-Earth continuity, Jason eventually reconciled with the Batfamily and became more of an anti-hero as opposed to his Pre-Flashpoint characterization to eventually returning to being a full-on hero.
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In his Pre-Crisis version, Jason was the biological son of circus acrobats Joseph and Trina Todd, who were killed by the villain Killer Croc. Following their deaths, Bruce Wayne took him in and adopted him, with Jason being the first child Bruce had legally adopted, though Dick Grayson was Bruce's first ward. Bruce legally adopted Jason due to not wanting to lose custody of his newest son after Natalia Night, a woman whom had forged a mother-son relationship with Jason, attempted to adopt Jason as her son. In his Pre-Crisis iteration, Jason was hand-picked and approved by Dick for the mantle of Robin and the two had a stable, brotherly relationship, which would be changed in later iterations.
In his Post-Crisis version, Jason's parents were now Willis and Catherine, Willis having died pulling a job for Two-Face and Catherine having a drug-related death, leaving Jason an orphan when Bruce found him living as a street urchin. With Dick and Bruce's relationship in Post-Crisis continuity having soured, Jason was made Robin by Bruce without Dick's approval. Like in Pre-Crisis, Jason was the first child Bruce would legally adopt, which further soured Dick and Bruce's relationship, though years later, Bruce would officially adopt Dick in Post-Crisis continuity after their relationship mended in the years following Dick's departure from Gotham and the role of Robin. In many ways, Bruce brought in Jason and too-quickly made him Robin to replicate his relationship with Dick as both a replacement son and sidekick and somewhat foolhardishly believing that being Robin would benefit Jason in the same way it would Dick, despite the different personalities, backgrounds, and needs of his two different sons. Dick and Jason's relationship was also nowhere near as close as it was in Pre-Crisis, but they were more amicable than Bruce and Dick. When Jason returned, he revealed that the anger he harbored towards Bruce wasn't because the latter couldn't save him from Joker but because he hadn't killed the Joker after all he'd done, including for killing his own son. Jason was equally antagonistic with the rest of the Batfamily and was often as much an antagonist to Dick, who had reconciled his relationship with Bruce by this point, and his successors as Robin, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne, whom he viewed as Bruce's replacements.
In Prime Earth continuity, Jason and the rest of the Batfamily's history was largely left the same, in comparison to the rebooting of a majority of the rest of DC's history, but his time as an antagonist to the Batfamily post-resurrection is shortened and he eventually reconciles with them. Bruce and Jason maintain an up-and-down relationship where they occasionally clash over Jason's harsher methods of dealing with crime but eventually reconcile to generally become closer to one another, with Chip Zdarsky's Batman run seeing Bruce finally apologize for his years of poor treatment to Jason and the two seemingly strengthening their relationship beyond pettier squabbles. Jason also has far more positive relationships with Bruce's other children in comparison to his Post-Crisis counterpart, namely Dick Grayson and Tim Drake (Bruce adopted Tim after Tim had become Robin and Tim's father was killed by Captain Boomerang), to the point where Jason has stated he has "four brothers", referencing Dick, Tim, Damian Wayne (Bruce's biological son), and Duke Thomas (who despite not being a legal child of Bruce, is viewed by Bruce as a surrogate son and has a familial connection to Bruce's legal children).