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DC was initially hesitant to turn Grayson into Nightwing and to replace him with a new Robin.

To minimize the change, they made the new Robin, Jason Peter Todd, who first appeared in Batman # 357 ( 1983 ), similar to a young Grayson.

Like Dick Grayson, Jason Todd was the son of circus acrobats murdered by a criminal ( this time the Batman adversary Killer Croc ), and then adopted by Bruce Wayne.

In this incarnation, he was red-haired and unfailingly cheerful, and wore his circus costume to fight crime until Dick Grayson presented him with a Robin suit of his own.

At that point, he dyed his hair black.

After the mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths, much of DC Comics continuity was redone.

Dick Grayson's origin, years with Batman, and growth into Nightwing remained mostly unchanged ; but Todd's character was completely revised.

He was now a black-haired street orphan who first encountered Batman when he attempted to steal tires from the Batmobile.

Batman saw to it that he was placed in a school for troubled youths.

Weeks later, after Dick Grayson became Nightwing and Todd proved his crime-fighting worth by helping Batman catch a gang of robbers, Batman offered Todd the position as Robin.

Readers never truly bonded with Todd and, in 1988, DC made the controversial decision to poll readers using a 1-900 number as to whether or not Todd should be killed.

The event received more attention in the mainstream media than any other comic book event before it.

Some outside the comic book community mistakenly thought that DC was considering killing Dick Grayson, not realizing he had been replaced.

Readers voted " yes " by a small margin ( 5, 343 to 5, 271 ) and Todd was subsequently murdered by the Joker in the storyline, A Death in the Family, in which the psychopath beat the youngster severely with a crowbar, and left him in a warehouse rigged with a bomb.

Jason Todd later returned as the new Red Hood ( the original alias of the Joker ) when he was brought back to life due to reality being altered.

A year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Todd appeared posing as Nightwing, but subsequently returned to his Red Hood persona.

In the Countdown to Final Crisis series, he briefly returned to his Robin persona as the Red Robin after meeting an Earth 51 version of Batman during his journey throughout the multiverse with Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and a Monitor.

After returning to his own dimension, he abandoned the Red Robin mantle and returned to his role as a ruthless vigilante.

After Bruce Wayne's apparent death during Final Crisis, Todd attempted to usurp the Mantle of the Bat by battling Tim Drake and Dick Grayson during Battle for the Cowl as a brutal and murderous version of Batman.

He ended Tim Drake's run as Robin after he severely injured him, but was later defeated by Grayson who assumed the role of Batman with his former mentor's biological son, Damian, as the new Robin.

Todd later returns as the Red Hood once more, with his own sidekick, Scarlett, by his side.

They began a public campaign to discredit Batman and Robin, but Jason was ultimately unmasked and apprehended by the GCPD after a fight with the mercenary Flamingo.