Gives us the optimistic result thousands of us wanted…
How did you vote?
In September 1988 — 35 years ago — DC put Jason Todd’s Robin in mortal peril and, at the end of Batman #427, asked readers to call a 900-number to decide his fate.
I was all of 21 and I knew the idea of a dead Robin, any dead Robin, was ripe for dramatic exploration. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to kill him off. I voted for him to live.
I, and others like me, lost. Robin was murdered and in many respects, comics, as a whole, lost their innocence. It’s a promotion that remains divisive to this day. (The final vote tally was 5,343 votes to 5,271, a slim 72-vote margin.)
But now, DC, which has an especially clever Facsimile Edition program, is taking us down the road not traveled with a special “Faux-simile Edition” of Batman #428 — that instead runs the alternate ending, where Jason survived. The move was announced at New York Comic Con on Saturday.
The page where Batman discovered Robin alive was repurposed for 2006’s Batman Annual #25.
The book, by writer Jim Starlin, artist Jim Aparo, colorist Adrienne Roy, inker Mike DeCarlo, and letterer John Costanza, is due to hit shops Dec. 12, 2o23.
It may not fix what never should have happened, but it’s a nice, uplifting alternative that I, for one, cannot wait to read.
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MORE
— The TOP 13 Most Iconic BATMAN AND ROBIN Images — RANKED. Click here.
— JIM APARO: THE ARTIST’S ARTIST — A Birthday Tribute. Click here.
October 14, 2023
Wow. That’s cool. Looking forward to this.
October 15, 2023
It’s interesting. I wonder if they ever considered having a less significant “family” death tee-ed up, in the event that readers voted to save Robin, so that the title of the story still worked.
October 15, 2023
The plan was that Jason’s mom would did if he lived IIRC
October 15, 2023
His birth mother also died so had Jason lived I’m sure she would have died
October 15, 2023
Jason Todd needed to go. Until the ‘80s we had forty some years of BATMAN and Robin. Now not only do we have a second Robin (imaginary tales penned by Alfred aside) he’s had two very different origins. Makes Jason the second and third in someways.
He was written obnoxiously and was easy to hate. To me, it was BATMAN comic’s “jumping the shark” moment. Soon there’d be a third/fourth Robin. I’ve lost track at this point. It became all too unbelievable.
But the hardest part of that story was to see the Joker depicted killing with a sledgehammer. Joker killed with terror, poison and sometimes simple fish. It all seemed a bit too crude.
October 15, 2023
It was a crowbar.
October 15, 2023
He also didn’t kill him with a crowbar, he killed him with an explosion
October 15, 2023
That too.
October 17, 2023
Yes, it was a crowbar. A problem with some WordPress type sites is whether the ability to edit is turned on or off. I couldn’t go back and fix the obvious error. I still stand, however, by the imagery I was trying to invoke. Whether it was a crowbar, a sledgehammer, or a screwdriver, it wasn’t how I saw the Joker kill someone. And, yes, the building ultimately blew up putting to rest the issue of Jason’s life I argue he would have died from the injuries a crowbar would have cause received before the explosion.
October 20, 2023
Jason lives = No Tim Drake, no Red Hood. Hmm… Personally, I would love to see Jason v1.0 somehow make a comeback and maybe take his revenge on the entire DC universe for so sadly “erasing” him. Bet Grant Morrison could get this going…!