It had to be one that DC editorial genuinely wanted reader input on, and - since each phone call would cost a reader all of 50 cents - it had to be one that fans genuinely cared about. “In effect,” O’Neil said in 1988, “extend our policy of heeding the opinions fans express in letters and conversations at conventions and comic shops.”īut the poll couldn’t be just any question. Staff at the company had been toying with the idea of using a then-cutting edge phone-polling system to allow DC readership real input on a story. Why would DC editorial leave the decision to kill a major character to readers? The answer is a mix of new technology and tradition. In the first line of his postscript in the first collected edition of that story, Batman editor Denny O’Neil protested his own culpability in Robin’s death with one quote, “We didn’t kill the Boy Wonder. The readers did.’Ī Death in the Family originally ran through Batman #426-429. On the 80th anniversary of Robin’s first appearance, Polygon is excited to present a look at some of that unfinished issue, including a high-resolution scan of rarely seen work from writer Jim Starlin, penciller Jim Aparo, and inker Mike DeCarlo straight from DC Comics’ archives. The tragic ending was the one chiseled into comic history. To meet the publishing schedule, the creative team prepared for either eventuality by writing, and partially illustrating, a comic which Jason survived the Joker’s attempted murder and one in which he died. In 1988, DC Comics left the decision to off the character in the four-issue storyline A Death in the Family up to an incredibly close-running reader poll. Out of all the characters who have put on the Robin suit, Jason is the one who died in it. But it’ll be quite some time before Jason manages to eclipse the story he’s most famous for. He’s appeared in movies, TV shows, and video games, while even his comic book self became the leader of his own team of antiheroes. The last decade has been a renaissance for Jason Todd, the second character to fill the role of Robin, the world’s most famous superhero sidekick.

Shadows by Robin Todd