With only slight reservations, I actually think Judd Winick did a rather fantastic job with what, on the surface, seemed like a fairly terrible idea: resurrecting the second Robin, Jason Todd, killed off by the Joker in 1988. For DC Comics, a company trying to put the "shocking" back in shocking deaths with a little bit of permanence, it would seem like a great time to to keep the two deadest characters in comics, Jason Todd and the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen, six feet under, but right now it doesn't seem to be the case with, well, either of them.

As far as Jason's concerned, I thought I knew the whole story - Jason was dead, then an other-dimensional Superboy-Prime banged on the walls of reality in DC's Infinite Crisis and what we thought happened was erased, and Jason secretly crawled out of the wreckage. Instead, Winick tempers Infinite Crisis' science-fiction mojo with gritty Batman sensibilities, and what surfaces is incredibly digestible - an explanation for Jason Todd's return that both preserves what we know so far, and moves us forward into the future.

Batman: Under the Hood, Volume 2 opens as Batman investigates the return of Jason Todd, while Jason, as the Red Hood, continues to take apart Gotham ganster Black Mask's hold on the city. When Black Mask accepts help from the assassin Deathstroke, Batman fights beside Jason, but when Jason kills the villain Captain Nazi, Batman realizes he has to stop his former partner. Black Mask seemingly kills Jason, but it's only a decoy; Batman is lured to Crime Alley, where Jason holds the Joker prisoner. As the Secret Society decimates the neighboring town of Bludhaven with the villain Chemo in Infinite Crisis, Jason makes Batman choose between killing him or killing the Joker; Batman wounds Jason, and then loses him in the ensuing explosion.

The new policy at DC appears to be one of immediate, rather than retroactive continuity. As with character Donna Troy's new origin, Green Lantern Hal Jordan's possession by an alien being as an explanation of a controversial storyline, new Flash Bart Allen's powers of information retention in Teen Titans, and others, it seems that writers have a greater ability to tweak facts as they go along - which isn't necessarily a bad thing.