Disclaimer: This article contains content that may not be suitable for younger students. It may also have spoilers!
Taking a step back from the summary we must look at the cover of this comic issue: “Robin finds his mother, and waiting is the Joker, planning a revenge that is swift, violent, terrible. Can Robin survive? You will decide. Details on inside back cover.” Looking into how the fans made the choice, we see that in 1988 DC held a telephone poll asking whether or not they should kill off this new robin after hearing the fans’ distaste for him. In total, there were 10,614 votes. 5,271 voted for him to live, while 5,343 voted for his demise. Rumors persist that this poll was rigged by a fan who set his phone to repeatedly dial the poll number and vote for his death, however this was never proven. Even then there was only a 72-vote difference. Most people think they would never actually kill off a main character, especially a child like Robin. Well, DC surprises many with their writing.
Continuing on with the plot, Todd ends up telling his mother that he is Robin and that he wants to help her escape the Joker’s grasp. His mother, Sheila Haywood, leads him to a warehouse while he is in his robin uniform to show him something relating to her issue with the Joker and his men. He turns the corner and is face to face with the Joker! Haywood has crossed her own son, she explains that if Todd were to “save her” from the Joker that the “ensuing investigation would certainly uncover [her] embezzling.” She lets the Joker have her son to save her own skin. Todd gets attacked by the joker and his men, and thus comes the famous scene where Robin gets beaten by the Joker with a crowbar. Haywood is shown to have little to no reaction. She winces then merely lights a cigarette before turning around and walking around.
Later, after the Joker is covered in Todd’s blood and he is laying half dead on the ground, Haywood asks about what will happen to Batman’s “little friend,” and he decides it will be best just to not leave any trace it was him that hurt Robin. He leaves a bomb in the warehouse but before he goes… He’s tied Haywood up in the warehouse! The backstabber becomes backstabbed. Haywood struggles and attempts to bargain with the Joker but he is already gone. There are 10 minutes on the timer of the bomb. Finally, with only three minutes remaining Todd manages to get up, after being tormented and beaten half to death he stands up, not just to run, but to save his mother. To save the woman who sold him out to the Joker. Now less than a minute left and Haywood becomes untied, she darts towards the door, dragging her bloodied and nearly dead son with her. The door was locked. The bomb goes off, and Todd does his best to jump in front of her while outside Batman arrives seconds too late and witnesses the warehouse explode. Batman frantically scavenges the rubble and finds Haywood but she’s too far gone. She gets to praise her son for the first and last time before passing away. When Batman finds Robin, “he’s already getting cold to the touch. [He’s] gone” Wayne has to take it from this point on, he decides that the world can’t know Robin has died, but they know Jason Todd has. Contrary to popular belief it wasn’t actually the crowbar that killed Todd, it was the explosion, and in his final moments he chose to jump in front of a bomb to save someone who sent him to the slaughter. The 72 votes have won, and the newest Robin has died, in a heart-wrenching and heroic way.
Returning to Gotham ,Batman wants to stop at nothing to avenge his son’s life. It goes so far that Superman is forced to step in. Some comics show that it was the American government that had to send Superman to stop Wayne from killing the Joker. Batman is so fueled by anger and vengeance that he punches Superman in anger… and well, punching “The Man of Steel” is never a good idea. While Batman is clutching his hand the Joker appears and informs both of the men that he is now the “Iranian ambassador to the UN,” which makes him untouchable under the law. This causes Superman to continue to hold Batman away from the Joker because they have no proof that he was the one who killed Jason Todd. This story ends up continuing on to another comic issue, but this is the end of A Death in the Family. It’s an unsatisfying and shocking ending. Especially because of how brutal a child’s death was portrayed in a story where the main character, Batman, refuses to kill. It’s also shocking how DC also wrote the ending of this story to where it feels like the voter’s fault. Even though there was only a reported 72 count difference they wanted to show how people’s choices really do make an impact in life. They wrote it to show Batman’s morals on killing and how even if they are merely characters, killing someone is not the answer.
This is a not so short but still rather vague summary of Jason Todd’s death, but this is not the end of his story. It continues on through other comics, and he has his stories before his death as well. So in many ways this was not the story of Jason Todd, it was of him as a Robin. People disliked his version of robin but they didn’t necessarily dislike the boy who needed Bruce Wayne as a father figure. The boy who would help the family butler Alfred Pennyworth in the kitchen. The boy who wanted to become an English major and read Jane Austen in his free time. They disliked the robin who was a little too violent for their taste, but they killed both. That is why this story is called A Death In the Family because to Wayne he was family, was his son adopted or not he cared for the young Jason Todd, and most people fail to realize this.
Image courtesy of Holly Garrett ’25.
