Since Under the Red Hood comes out on Tuesday, a few of us fans decided to get together and write a few essays, look at scans and even perfect moments of Jason Todd (yeah, they happen!)
For starters, I wanted to revisit A Death in The Family.
I posted my full essay, with scans over here on
Scans_Daily as I didn't want to bog the main post down with too much text.
Some of the questions I'm asking are:
Does A Death in the Family warrant such a high ranking as a graphic novel? It's listed at #15 on IGN's
Greatest Batman Graphic Novels. It's considered seminal for two reasons: one, it involves the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, at the hands of the Joker and at the hands of the fans: nearly 11,000 fans called a 1-900 number to vote whether to kill Jason. The death vote won by a margin of 72 votes: 5,343 to 5271.
It came out around the same time as The Killing Joke (just after as Barbara is in a wheelchair in the funeral scene) and three years after seminal graphic novels like the futuristic Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One and The Watchmen. What are your thoughts on the original story quality-wise and the ensuing fallout/controversy? Did you vote to save or kill him? Why or why not?
Over the years, it seems as though it's accepted truth that Jason's death was his fault. That he blundered into the situation and got himself killed. That he failed, rather than fell victim to the Joker. What happens is this: In A Death in the Family,
Jason recognizes the Joker and sees him go into his biological mother's tent. The Joker
threatens to reveal that she had been involved in a botched abortion back in the day and attempts to blackmail her for supplies.
Jason overhears this and follows the Joker and his kidnapped/blackmailed mother. Jason recognizes there’s more trouble than he can handle on his own and tells Bruce.
Bruce gives Jason a direct order: to take no action against the Joker until he returns. However, Jason
decides to protect his mother instead. He tells her he's Robin and
she betrays him and hands him over to the Joker. She tells him "I can't afford to have you stirring up trouble. I’ve been dipping into the medical funds myself.
If you blow the whistle on the Joker, the ensuing investigation would certainly uncover my embezzling."
So Jason gives a couple punches to the Joker,
but is overwhelmed by the henchmen and then the Joker starts beating him with the crowbar. He tells her to run for it, save herself. It's a scene that's echoed in Grant Morrison's
Batman and Robin #6, when Jason
tells Scarlet to run away, save herself and demands the Flamingo come after him -- showing once again, he'd rather die than let someone he cares about be hurt.
Why do you think there is now this idea out there that Jason was the one who "got himself killed"?
It's been hypothesized by the amazing
Weekly Robin blogger, it wasn't the event of Jason possibly pushing a serial rapist to his death in Batman 424, but the meeting between Jason and Nightwing that may have pushed readers to dislike Jason much more, especially since this particular issue (with Felipe Garzonas, not the meeting between Jason and Nightwing) came out only two months before the start of A Death in the Family (Batman 426). What do you think? And just what (or who) made Jason so "unlikeable"? Was he really that unlikeable as it's been put forward?
What do other creators who frequent these message boards on here think about the death in general? Do they have an opinion on the use of the poll?
General thoughts?
Lego Batman: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)•Walkthrough — Thorough walkthroughs for the 15 hero and the 15 villain missions even for Freeplay Mode!
