It's Jason Todd vs. The Joker in DC's KO Series

HERE BE SPOILERS.
​
If I had to choose two DC characters to battle it out in a no-holds-barred contest, my choices would be Jason Todd / Red Hood versus the psychopath who murdered him — The Joker. Talk about a grudge match! Fortunately, the DC KO series just provided this. 

So what is the DC KO series? Following the events of the "DC All In" saga, Darkseid created a new reality called the "Absolute Universe," and plans to conquer the main DC universe. The only way for the DC heroes to stop him is through gladiatorial "death tournaments" held across a five-level arena. DC Comic fans can participate in an online challenge to predict the winner of each tournament for a chance to win prizes, including being drawn into a future comic.

The Joker officially killed Jason Todd in Batman #428, released in 1988. I won’t rehash the complicated developments that saw Jason rise from the grave and recast himself as Red Hood, but you can read about it in-depth here: Jason Todd's Empty Grave. Suffice to say, that Joker’s actions have haunted Jason ever since. As Jason describes in the opening panels of the comic: 

The contestants battle for three rounds. The Joker wins the first round when he lures Jason into a facsimile of the Ace Chemical factory and succeeds in dunking the young man in a vat of the same chemical compound that mutated him. The chemical kills Jason, but in Round Two, he chooses to reform as Robin, the Boy Wonder. But The Joker gets to choose the arena, and he chooses the warehouse where he originally killed Jason in the 1988 comic. The circumstances are identical as well... There’s a bomb set to go off in thirty seconds, giving Jason precious little time to defeat his opponent in the space where he suffered his greatest defeat. As a further homage to the 1988 comics, artist Giuseppe Camuncoli recreates images originally drawn by Jim Aparo, George Perez, and Tom Grummett for the warehouse sequence. In an immensely satisfying moment, Jason wrestles the infamous crowbar from The Joker’s hands and beats him unconscious. The bomb explodes, but this time it’s Jason who survives and carries out the dead body of the supervillain.

But there’s still Round 3...

In this round, Jason and The Joker both take the form of the Red Hood. You have to remember that Red Hood was The Joker’s identity before he became the Clown Prince of Crime. As Jason explains:

“Sure, Joker was Red Hood once. But there were so many others. There were older gangs that used the name. Because “The Red Hood” has always been a Gotham phrase. Slang in the bad parts of town where kids like me grew up... Red Hood was the guy who did the thing... the bad guy in the shadows.”

In a sense, this means that Round 3 has Jason and Joker playing the role of each other’s bogeyman, fighting it out in the open grave that Jason escaped during his resurrection. Jason wins again, but not so much based on physical strength as on the realization that he is not defined by what Joker once did to him. 

This comic book was released in late December 2025. See your local comic book store about obtaining a copy. ​

RELATED FEATURES: Red Hood Collection | Jason Todd's Empty Grave | When Jason Todd Helped Save Superman | Batman Collection