Thread:SforHope/@comment-27892537-20181117162947/@comment-18172179-20181117185721

From the get-go, you should know a couple of things:
 * The Batman switch from Earth-One to New Earth was not as clean as you'd expect.
 * Jason Todd was a character who was living on borrowed time from the beginning of Pre-Crisis continuity.

Let me elaborate:

Unlike Superman's instant continuity reboot after the Crisis, the Batman books had to "make it up as they went along". That is why there are "fillers" between the end of Earth-One and Batman: Year One (-). Basically, issues, and  don't really feel like a different continuity from the previous one.

After Year One, DC officially rebooted Jason's origin in issue and everything that comes afterwards in the Batman comic is "officially" New Earth. But the issue doesn't end there...

Over in Detective Comics, things were much more complicated. That series didn't really have a send-off like Batman #400. is the closest thing but it's still a moot point what continuity that book takes place in. So, let's just say that New Earth officially starts in. Because that book is part of the Legends crossover, it has to be New Earth... but in terms of character and continuity is still not clear. Not with Batman nor Robin. A very generic story.

And then come the first six issues of Detective by Mike W. Barr, starting in. If you go to the Notes section of that issue, you'll see that there's an extensive note about the strange continuity of these issues. Basically, Mike Barr had no intentior or editorial guidance about the continuity change and things were pretty much the same as Earth-One continuity. And that includes Jason. Unlike New Earth Jason, the boy featured in Barr's stories was still the same Earth-One boy, but he existed in the New Earth continuity because his origin had not been rebooted yet and his personality had not been reshaped.

In other words, Jason didn't really became "New Earth Jason" until at least. That book marks his first appearance in Detective after his reboot.

Now the confusion comes because his first appearance is said to be in, right? Well, that's because in the, there are Profile Pages that include Jason Todd and it says his first appearance is Batman #408. Basically, DC officially considered that Jason's first New Earth appearance and all previous stories prior to that and after the Crisis were now apocryphal.

And that's what I mean when I say Jason was living on borrowed time. With the continuity switch and the changing creative teams, there are not that many stories focusing on Jason as a character. Most of the time he is just a supporting character featured in the Batman books because he has to be. The writer who most developed New Earth Jason was Max Allan Collins, who rebooted his origin, so the best Jason stories of this era are from Batman. In Detective he was just the usual sidekick and I can't tell you much about the other titles he appeared in, but I'm guessing he has even less relevance there.

Basically, if you really want to read Jason's appearances chronologically, do it separately between Batman and Detective Comics because there is no cross-continuity and overall the stories are not heavy in character development for the most part.

This is what I did (and worked well enough):
 * Batman #401
 * Detective #568
 * Batman #402-#403
 * Detective #569-#574
 * Batman #408-#413
 * Batman Annual #11
 * Detective #579-#581

After that there's a creative team switch and Jason's minutes are counted. Let me know if you want a detailed reading order of that...