In Batman: The Killing Joke, writer Alan Moore added the new detail that the future Joker, at that time a cash-strapped, unsuccessful comedian, had been made to adopt the Red Hood guise by a gang of criminals so that he could play the patsy for them. A decade later, the Joker resumes the guise, while another criminal attempts to adopt the identity, too. Driven insane by his change of appearance, he recreates himself as the Joker. While chased, he fell into a catch basin full of chemicals, which disfigured him, then escaped by swimming to safety (a breathing apparatus inside the hood preventing him from drowning).

In this original continuity, he became the future Joker a flashback reveals that a criminal, who at that time called himself the Red Hood after the (seemingly) eyeless red dome-shaped hood worn by him, attempted to rob a playing card factory. The Red Hood first appeared in Detective Comics #168 (February 1951), in the story ' The Man Behind the Red Hood!'. In The New 52, a 2011 reboot of the DC Comics universe, one storyline introduces a criminal organization called the Red Hood Gang, and retroactively establishes the Joker (prior to his transformation) as its former leader, and Jason as a former member.īoth the Joker and Jason Todd incarnations of the Red Hood, as well as the Red Hood Gang, have been adapted into several forms of media outside of comics, such as films, television series, and video games.įictional character biography The Joker Since his return, Jason operates as the Red Hood in the main DC Comics continuity. The storyline depicts an unnamed criminal wearing a red dome-shaped hood who, after a chance encounter with Batman, is disfigured by chemicals and becomes insane, giving birth to his future Joker persona.įive decades later, the identity was used again in the 2005–2006 story arc, Batman: Under the Hood, in which Jason Todd, Batman's second crime-fighting partner who had been killed by the Joker, comes back to life as a violent vigilante, using his killer's former alias. The identity was first used in the 1951 storyline ' The Man Behind the Red Hood!', which provides the earliest origin story for the Joker. The Red Hood is an alias used by multiple characters appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Jason Todd as Red Hood on the cover of Red Hood/Arsenal #10 (May 2016).

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