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pluckyredhead · 2 years

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Character Profile: Jennifer-Lynn Hayden and Todd Rice (Jade and Obsidian)

It’s time for another character profile, just in time for HankTodd Weekend! This time it’s a twofer, because Jennie-Lynn and Todd are twins, and doing two separate profiles for them would get really repetitive. Which means this is gonna be a long one. Sorry...or you’re welcome?

CONTENT WARNING: Child abuse, sexual assault, ableism, self-harm, and suicide.

Like Todd’s bestie Al Rothstein, Jen and Todd first appeared as members of Infinity, Inc., a team made up of the children and proteges of the original Justice Society of America. Specifically, they barge into a JSA meeting and announce themselves to be the children of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. His reaction will never stop being hilarious to me:

“I seem to dimly remember having sex once...but I can’t quite...”

In fact, none of the three are sure exactly how this happened. Neither Jen nor Todd knew they were adopted or had superpowers until recently. Jen had an idyllic childhood in a middle class suburban home until one day the weird green birthmark on her palm started to glow:

Then she abruptly turned green, at which point her parents confessed that she was adopted - and oh yeah, she’d had a twin brother in the orphanage, but they couldn’t afford to adopt two babies, so...sorry, Todd.

[Side note: it was later retconned in that Jen actually lived in an orphanage until middle school-ish and her powers manifested when she was molested by the janitor, but we’re going to ignore that because it makes absolutely no sense with the rest of her backstory and was just added to be gratuitously edgy.]

Todd, meanwhile, had a significantly less idyllic childhood, growing up in a working class family with an abusive alcoholic for a father. Eventually his mother walked out on them, taking Todd’s younger brother and leaving Todd behind in an act of truly phenomenal cruelty. Todd became the only available target for his father’s anger, but lucky for him, his powers manifested just in time:

Yeah, his dad kind of left him alone after that.

Jen and Todd are opposites in pretty much every way: she is bubbly and extroverted, and everyone she meets likes her immediately, while Todd is painfully introverted, pessimistic, and paranoid, with a tendency to lash out defensively at the slightest provocation. They adore each other instantly despite this. (There is a LOT to say about the frankly classist and ableist assumptions being made about what kind of upbringings lead to what kind of personalities, and even some good old-fashioned anti-Catholicism - Jennie’s idyllic family is Protestant, Todd’s abusive alcoholic father is Catholic - but we don’t have time to unpack all that dot gif.)

Their powers are also opposites: Jen is essentially a Green Lantern without a ring, and if you’re keeping track, YES, that DOES make her one of the most powerful characters in the entire DCU, and NO, DC has never noticed, because she’s a girl! It’s fucking infuriating!

Todd’s powers are a bit more complicated: he can turn into a shadow form, above, which can change shape, pass through walls, and fly. He’s connected to a realm called the Shadowlands (more on that later). He can also sense evil and force a person to see the evil side of their soul, which fucks them (and Todd) up severely and can even drive them insane.

Jennie and Todd also have a low-level psychic connection, which they use to find each other upon discovering that they adopted. Due to Jennie’s powers, they assume (correctly) that their father is Alan Scott. But who is their mother?

Well. Oof.

Their mother is a woman named Rose Canton, who has an evil personality that she can’t control called the Thorn. Rose fell in love with Alan and married him under a third alias, but when Thorn emerged and tried to kill him, Rose realized he would never be safe while married to her, and fled into the night. When she discovered she was pregnant, she ultimately gave the twins up for adoption.

She finally reconnects with them after they’ve joined Infinity, Inc. Thorn emerges and tries to murder Alan, Jen, and Todd:

(Yes, Todd’s costume is in fact HILARIOUSLY SKIMPY when he is powered down.)

Rose manages to kill herself in order to protect her loved ones from Thorn. It’s extremely upsetting.

But for Jennie, there are compensations: early in the II run, she starts dating her teammate Hank, aka Brainwave, Jr., the psychic son of a supervillain. They’re very cute. Todd, um. Doesn’t handle it well:

HI, THAT’S WEIRD. YOU’RE ALL BEING WEIRD. PLEASE STOP BEING SO WEIRD ABOUT THIS.

I TOLD YOU TO STOP BEING WEIRD!!!

Okay yeah, that’s not Jen, that’s Todd’s girlfriend Marcie, who is secretly a supervillain who can cast illusions. But like...why did she think this was the move? The vibes in Infinity, Inc. headquarters must have been so yikesy.

Anyway, Marcie eventually manages to cause the death of the team’s leader, Skyman, and Infinity, Inc. disbands. It’s all extremely sad.

Jennie and Todd disappear for a few years outside of the occasional cameo, but then Todd and his II teammate Al join the Justice League! I’ve written about this relationship in depth before, but basically: this is where Todd started to be written as very clearly queer, even if it’s not stated in so many words. (Though looking at letter columns from the 80s shows that fans had been asking for this for years.) He is actively, visibly, canonically pining over Al, but when Al asks him about it outright, he reacts angrily and defensively:

(No, Al doesn’t need him to put a label on it. They hug it out. It’s nice.)

This is also when Todd starts struggling with his mental health, although it’s couched in extremely over-the-top, comic book-y ways:

Al, I recognize that you are an optimist, but that isn’t depression. Bless your big dumb heart.

This all comes to a head when Al finds Todd attempting suicide, although luckily (?) Todd is so disconnected from reality at this point that he’s attempting to stab his shadow form to death, which...isn’t possible. Al insists that Todd see a therapist, but Todd freaks out when the therapist turns out to be female and refuses. Luckily (again, ?), Todd’s extreme decline in mental health turns out to be largely due to a crossover even in which the legions of Hell have been unleashed on Earth and the presence of so much evil is basically doing literal psychic damage to him thanks to his powers. Once the demons are vanquished, he goes back to his usual pessimistic but manageable equilibrium, at least for a few years.

During this era, Jen was appearing in a book called Blood Pack where she was training a team of superheroes called Blood Pack who were starring on a reality show called Blood Pack. It was exactly as awful as that description sounds.

Anyway, both books ended, leaving the twins without a publishing home, though Jen quickly became a supporting player in Kyle Rayner’s Green Lantern book. Basically, she gives up on acting and decides to become a photographer instead, inexplicably, and also decides to move to New York, so Alan suggests she move in with Kyle. Because the Scott family is all lightly unhinged, neither of them says anything to Kyle about it, which means he arrives home to find a strange green woman in his shower:

Kyle, being an enormous pushover, lets her stay. Even though Todd shows up a few minutes later and attacks Kyle for “taking advantage” of his sister. Again, the Scott family? Not normal.

Further proof of this comes a little bit later, in the godawful Green Lantern/Sentinel: Heart of Darkness miniseries, when Jennie abruptly vanishes. Kyle tells Alan, who attacks Kyle about it (SCOTTS, WHY) before taking him to the...private asylum where he’s been incarcerating and basically torturing Jennie’s ex-boyfriend Hank??? I mean, Hank has become a villain since the Infinity, Inc. days, but it’s still a grotesque human rights violation which we’ll get into in the Hank profile, but which Kyle takes in stride for some bonkers reason.

Alan suspects Hank has abducted Jen, but Kyle’s like “No no, he’s obviously very busy being tortured, let’s go.” At which point Todd shows up to murder Hank, like you do.

“Medical torture is fine, but killing? I’m mildly disappointed in you, Todd!”

Todd’s erratic behavior turns out to stem from the same thing as Jennie’s abduction: the Starheart, which is basically a powerful sentient meteorite that’s the source of Alan’s powers, and thus, indirectly, Jennie and Todd’s. Todd, Alan, and Kyle are transported to what’s basically a Starheart dimension, where the Starheart, speaking through a possessed Todd, is like “These twins are my kids and I want them, fuck you Alan”:

The Starheart drains Alan of power, which leaves him suddenly dying of old age (even though running the numbers on this makes him about 80 here, which is elderly but not “you immediately DIE” old). In order to save her father and brother, Jennie accepts the Starheart’s offer of power - but then pumps that power into Alan, saving him and breaking its control over all of them. This also leaves her without any superpowers, because women should always have to sacrifice their power to save the men in their lives! Also she and Kyle are going to start dating soon, and he obviously couldn’t date a woman who was his equal. BARF. This miniseries is sexist and ableist and makes every character in it unbearable - Alan is medically abusing Hank, and none of the others care??? Throw the whole comic away.

Anyway. Kyle and Jen start dating. They’re cute!

Cute!

They date for a brief time, then break up, then get back together for a much longer time (a good three or four years). He gives her a spare Green Lantern ring for a few issues, then it disappears, then he tries proposing with a second GL ring like four seconds after they get back together, and she’s like “You’re so sweet. No. Gimme the ring, though.” Both times she has a ring, Kyle proceeds to extremely condescendingly train her on how to use it, as if she hadn’t had those exact powers for a decade before he debuted. ARGH.

Meanwhile, things were...less rosy for Todd. In that he was lured to the dark side (literally) by the Golden Age villain Ian Karkull and covered Milwaukee in darkness. You know, like you do.

Todd is specifically gunning for both his adoptive father, Jim Rice, and Alan, blaming them both for his troubles. He eventually winds up killing both Karkull and Jim Rice before vanishing into the Shadowlands, much to Alan’s dismay.

This storyline is also the first time Todd is given a specific, real world diagnosis: Alan says that Todd “inherited his mother’s schizophrenia.” I am absolutely not qualified to judge whether or not someone, even a fictional character, is displaying symptoms of schizophrenia, but from the (admittedly minor) research I’ve done, they include paranoia, delusions, irritability, and depression, all of which Todd has demonstrated almost since his debut. The symptoms would also have manifested right on track with the typical timeline for men, in Todd’s early to mid 20s. However, I suspect that’s just a lucky coincidence, and Geoff Johns chose schizophrenia because it was a “scary dangerous” mental illness and because of Rose’s multiple personas. Sigh.

A little while later, Todd teams up with more supervillains (Eclipso, Mordru, it’s a whole thing) and tries to destroy the world. This time Alan manages to talk him down:

(Please note Alan describing Jay and Joan’s inability to have children as “failing.” ALAN IS A TERRIBLE FRIEND.)

Anyway, Todd swoons into Alan’s arms at this mediocre profession of fatherly love, and the threat is over. And luckily, none of it was Todd’s fault at all, apparently!

“He was possessed so it’s fine I guess” - how Geoff Johns has resolved every heel turn he’s ever written. It’s still better than “his mental illness made him evil.”

Over in Green Lantern, Kyle briefly became the godlike entity Ion, which enabled him to reignite Jennie’s natural powers:

She’s Jade again! Hooray!

Shortly after this (and after Kyle gives up the Ion powers), Kyle’s teenage assistant Terry is beaten severely by gay bashers. Kyle is so deeply upset by this that he decides to leave the planet for a while until he hates humans less, and Jen agrees to go with him.

However, after a few months in space, Jen gets homesick and decides she wants to go home. Kyle stays in space, and is basically completely incommunicado, and Jen, desperately lonely, eventually starts dating another guy. Kyle’s...not thrilled when he gets back, to say the least:

This is complete character assassination meant to make us feel bad for poor betrayed Kyle, but like...he abandoned Jen for months. Even if she’d wanted to break up with him before dating this other dude, how could she? She had no means of contacting him! I’m not saying this is Jen at her best, but I am saying that it’s sexist writing and I hate it.

Anyway, they break up, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Jen is without a book, because she promptly joins the Outsiders! She doesn’t get to do a lot, plotwise, but she does eventually kick Nightwing out of the leadership position and take over for reasons of he’s being a dick:

Fuck yeah! (Roy continues to be the actual leader because he’s Judd Winick’s favorite, but it’s a nice thought.)

Meanwhile, Todd shows up in the supporting cast of Manhunter, dating a Los Angeles ADA named Damon Matthews:

Todd suddenly coming out in this very sweet, low-key way was a very big deal - queer characters were still extremely rare in the 2000s, and fans had been asking for this for 20 years. And look how happy he is!!! Yay Todd!!!

Of course, said happiness literally only lasted for a single issue, because the very next month, Jen was killed in the Rann-Thanagar War Infinite Crisis Special, of all things. You could not pay me to care about the plot of this but basically she goes to space and is zapped to death by giant hands made out of energy. IT’S DUMB, and this is even dumber:

The power was Kyle’s all along! Girls don’t get to have power, even if they’re born with it! They get to die tragically in their ex-boyfriend’s arms and then be cradled by their sad dad while the power that wasn’t really theirs is used to turn Kyle back into fucking Ion again! I hate everything about this, I hate it so so much.

Todd, of course, is very sad. Then he turns into an egg. Really:

That’s Alan holding him. The JSA doesn’t know it’s Todd, they’re just like “What’s up with this egg?” It turns out to be part of a convoluted supervillain plot to use Egg Todd to power a doomsday device and the whole storyline is idiotic, but this aspect is very funny to me so I’m sharing it with you. Todd later refers to it as “the crucible of my egg time.” It’s incredible

Anyway, Jennie came back about four years later at the end of Blackest Night, when a bunch of random dead heroes are resurrected for...reasons. She idles around in space for a bit before inexplicably crashing to Earth encased in part of the Starheart. This causes the Starheart to take control of Alan and turn him evil, and also merge Jennie and Todd into one being:

The JSA and JLA team up to defeat the Starheart and Jennie and Todd are...de-merged...but they can’t be in close proximity to each other or they will merge again, which Todd is extremely histrionic about. I don’t know how DC managed to bring back the weird incestuous vibes with these two when Todd doesn’t even like girls, but they did! Also, this had something to do with Swamp Thing somehow? Sure.

Anyway, Jennie winds up joining the JLA after all of this, while Todd stays with the JSA/Alan’s new alien kingdom he built on the moon (don’t ask), but it’s all moot because shortly afterwards, the New 52 came along, and Jennie and Todd were wiped out of existence.

See, the New 52 JSA was young and sexy (and garbage), which meant Alan was too young to have adult children. So presumably to make up for erasing a gay character, DC made Alan gay instead! And then LITERALLY IMMEDIATELY killed his fiancé! Truly a shit sandwich all around.

(There is a version of Obsidian in the New 52, who shows up only briefly. We never learn his real name, so we don’t know if he’s still called Todd Rice, or if he has any connection to Alan. He’s now Black (and a professional criminal, because no one at DC in the early 2010s thought about the problematic implications of anything for even two seconds before they wrote it down)...at least in his first appearance, because he is miscolored as white in every subsequent appearance. And he’s definitely supposed to be Black, because someone is racist to him in that first issue, so...yeah. The New 52 has so much to answer for.)

The version of the JSA people actually like was restored at the beginning of last year, which means that Jennie, Todd, and the crusty old version of Alan returned pretty much exactly as we left them a decade before, with Todd still dating Damon and everything. DC was smart enough to keep Alan gay, and we got a lovely scene of him coming out to his kids (well, officially - he’s clearly already discussed it with Todd before this):

Awwww I love them.

And that’s pretty much it! The whole family appears in Infinite Frontier, but nothing that happened there was super significant for them, and they recently showed up with the rest of the JSA as part of Dark Crisis. Hopefully DC will continue to use them, but it’s hard to say when they have SO many characters to choose from. For example, Alan and Todd had a very sweet story in the 2021 Pride anthology, but didn’t even appear in 2022′s because there are so many newer and/or more prominent queer characters to feature instead. Which is a good thing, mostly, but...I want to see this messed up family more!

Anyway, that's Jennie and Todd! Stay tuned for a Hank profile very shortly, and some HankTodd fic from me this weekend!

#todd rice #obsidian #jennifer lynn hayden #jade #character profiles #meta

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waveblazer · 1 year

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dares you to do johnwes and hanktodd

Here's JohnWes, but hanktodd is gonna take a minute

General:

How long will they last? - Until Death Do They Part

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - For John it was love at first sight/very quick, for Wes it took a little while because mourning

How was their first kiss? - spontaneous, tender, intimate

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Wes

Who is the best man/men? - For Wes: Sandy, for John: idk maybe Johnny Quick because I like their dynamic

Who did the most planning? - Both

Who stressed the most? - Neither

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Was a small and intimate affair at the Dodds Brownstone with their closest friends

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - unfortunately John’s parents because they got “married” in the 40’s and it would not have gone over well. By the time they were able to marry legally, his parents were dead.

Sex:

Who is on top? - Wes

Who is the one to instigate things? - John

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head

How long do they normally last? - You don’t find success as a mystery man without building up stamina

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - Usually, yes

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

Honestly all of the above but it depends

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - 0

How many children will they adopt? - Wes already adopted Sandy when they got together so at least 1

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - N/A

Who is the stricter parent? - Honestly they both spoiled Sandy quite a bit, but maybe Wes because John doesn’t wanna overstep as Stepdad, so if he was unsure he deferred to Wes’ call. But neither of them let him run wild.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - Sandy was a preteen sidekick to his adoptive father. Most stunts were encouraged. But for the more dangerous stuff, I guess whichever one was there.

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - When Sandy was in school, Olga and Mr. Humphries still worked for his parents, so them. But if they were to adopt another child, John simply because John cooks more often.

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? Wes

Who cried the most at graduation? - Wes

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - N/A

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - in the 40’s Olga was the main cook in their house but after she retired John took over.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - Neither

Who does the grocery shopping? - Both

How often do they bake desserts? -

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? -

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - Wes because John cooks more often normally so he likes to take over and cook for his husband for the occasion.

Who is more likely to suggest going out? -

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - Neither, but Wes is less skilled than John in the kitchen so if it were to happen it was probably when Wes was trying to teach himself how to cook

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - Wes?

Who is really against chores? - Neither

Who cleans up after the pets? - The only pets they have are John’s spiders so I guess John

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Neither

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - John because he’s cooking

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Sandy

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - John, but they do shower/bathe together relatively often so there’s that.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - If they had a dog, idk Wes maybe. More likely Sandy would be the one walking the dog.

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - Major holidays only. And they keep it relatively simple, but when Sandy was a kid they used to do more.

What are their goals for the relationship? - They just wanna spend the rest of their lives together with mutual love, respect, and support.

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - John

Who plays the most pranks? - Neither

#Jonathan Law #Wesley Dodds #Ship meme

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