Originally Posted by
ZeroBG82
Well, the biggest difference is that Jason Todd's return was well written. *rimshot* I kid, I kid!
Seriously though, they aren't that similar. Jason was an obviously tragic antagonist. That story never wavered from the tragedy of Jason's fall from grace, and the pain that he was still in, even then. It was clear from the moment of the reveal right through the end of the tale. Because at a fundamental level, that story was Jason's story. It was as much about him, and his relationship to Bruce, as it was about Batman himself. We never thought Jason was mad, in the crazy sense, just angry and in pain. Even before we got to the heart of his motivations as Jason, we understood the Red Hood's motivation to clean up Gotham in a way Batman was unwilling. It all fell into place with the identity reveal, and it became increasingly clear how we got to this place. It fit with what we knew of Post-Crisis Jason Todd, and built upon some of the same ideas that had been in play before he was killed off. Yes, there was some uncertainty left at the end of that first story as to whether or not he would remain a villian, but the door was just as clearly left open for the anti-hero angle DC ended up going with (correctly, to my mind).
This story hasn't actually laid any groundwork that makes this revelation worthwhile. We don't understand anything of the Jackal's motivations, so we can't see how a twisted version of Ben's psyche fits this character. There is no reason for Ben to have the apparent skill with cloning or reanimation or whatever that he now has that makes you go "ahh, I get what they're going for now." It's just a shocking cliffhanger for the sake of a shocking cliffhanger. Whether or not Slott can earn this reveal after the fact is now the question. Put another way, again, Under the Red Hood was a story ABOUT Jason from the very beginning, it built to the reveal and made it feel inevitable. What followed was an examination of why the reveal makes sense, and how and why it works moving forward. This story is not a story about Ben. Anybody could have been under that Jackal mask and it changes nothing thus far. Slott can still land the aftermath, and this can still go down as a classic Spidey story, I'm not prejudging. But this is absolutely not (so far) a story about Ben, or his relationship with Peter. It's an adventure set piece for Peter, and anybody could have kicked off the story in much the same way. So far, both the Jackal and "Ben" have been trappings of the story, not characters in the story. I'm hoping that changes, and that Slott has a direction for this character to go that isn't Evil or Dead, but we'll see.