I’ve heard DitF compared to TKJ, as a flawed story which ended up in a positive change for the involved character (Jason to Red Hood and Babs to Oracle.) As someone who loves both Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon, I think this is an unfair comparison, because while TKJ was deeply flawed in its fridging of Barbara Gordon, it was at least otherwise a good story.
I haaaate DitF. Hate hate hate. I love Red Hood Jason (Jason is my favorite character), but DitF was a disaster of a story and if it hadn’t had such an impact on Batman canon then it would have been rightly forgotten except in occasional “what were they thinking?” retrospectives.
I’d like to be clear on something: this isn’t a sour grapes thing. DitF happened before I was born. My first introduction to Jason happened when he was the Red Hood, and I only sought out his Robin stuff after I became intrigued enough to hunt down more. I went in to Death in the Family fully prepared to appreciate it as a difficult, hard-hitting and groundbreaking story that set my favorite character down the path that lead to Under the Hood.
But it sucked. It sucked when I read it and it kept sucking harder and harder the more I learned about it, until it coalesced into a giant black hole of suckiness that somehow manages to get billed as a classic Batman story without so much as a disclaimer about any of its suckery.
Every part of this story was a gross and cynical stunt. I loathe how Starlin decided he wanted to kill off Robin and then intentionally tried to make him more unlikable in preparation for the vote. I hate how Starlin wrote a storyline where an actual real leader of a real foreign country allied with an American child murderer in order to gas the UN. I hate how they decided Jason’s fate via a 900 number phone line so that the character’s primary fanbase of children were limited in their ability to call into the 900 line which charged money for each call, while a bunch of grown-ass men rigged their phone to vote multiple times and gleefully celebrated the violent and horrific death of a teenager because the child who grew up living on the streets was too ‘whiny’ and ‘rebellious’ because he lost his temper on… checks notes the man who killed his father, a pimp who was abusing one of the women who worked for him, a group of drug dealers and a group of child pornographers. Oh, and he may or may not have killed… checks notes again a serial rapist who, moments before being confronted by Jason, had checks notes gotten off scott free because of diplomatic immunity and then called the woman he brutalized in order to taunt her, provoking her into doing something I can’t actually even say without running afoul of the board’s automatic filters. (Anyone notice a pattern? Anyone put that into unfortunate context with the fact that Starlin was originally toying with the idea of Jason dying from AIDS? Okay.)
But you know what? Apart from ALL OF THAT, it was just a bad ■■■■■■■ story with plot holes big enough to drive an aircraft carrier through.
First of all, the entire thing with his mother is ridiculous. Bruce adopted him, or at the very least legally took him on as a ward. How did he not know that the name on Jason’s birth certificate wasn’t Catherine Todd? He knew her name; he specifically looked her up when he and Jason met. But even if Bruce somehow missed that, what kind of premise is “The mother’s name on this birth certificate starts with an S, but it’s too damaged to read the rest of the name! How will I ever find who it was? I guess I’ll just have to check my father’s old address book and find all the women whose names start with S, then go find their information in the Bat computer and ask each of them in person if they’re my real mom!” Like… because I guess Gotham has no vital records office or copies of birth certificates on record or anything? Even if we go with the idea that Jason just genuinely didn’t think of that, why didn’t Bruce suggest it when they met back up?
But okay. Let’s put a pin in that. It’s kind of dumb, but Jason and Bruce did run into a lead on Sharmin Rosen immediately after meeting back up and were both working more or less the same case after that. And, uh, I guess Bruce didn’t suggest just looking it up after they confirmed it wasn’t Rosen, when the next candidate on the list was Lady freaking Shiva, because… reasons. So let’s call it an oversight.
Let’s further gloss by the fact that this entire story is completely and utterly mired in extremely dated and Islamophobia-flavored international politics that somewhat prevent it from being the timeless classic that such a momentous storyline should really be, and pretend that the editor shouldn’t have thought better of approving this storyline as a result.
(Side note: Man remember that time in DitF when the Joker all but stated that Sheila Haywood had to flee the country because she performed a botched abortion? I honestly don’t even mind that part… I have no problem with comics getting dark, just with bad writing. But just like, wow, that happened.)
Jason’s actual death scene is… okay? I mean, it’s graphic and the context of it was unpleasant, but from a craft perspective, it’s the best written sequence in the arc, which is probably in large part why it’s the only part that really gets remembered and referenced anymore. Jason rushing in to save his mother is believable, his mother betraying him is heartbreaking, the Joker brutally beating him was difficult to read but well orchestrated, and Jason’s last ditch effort to save his mother at the cost of his own life was heartbreaking. For a moment, the writing is actually good, and I can’t fault its execution even if I complain about its context and content.
Then the Joker becomes the Ambassador for Iran.
Like. Let’s take a moment to reflect on this. The Joker becomes the U.N. ambassador for Iran. The Ayatollah himself shows up to talk to the Joker in person to ask him to do this. Jim Starlin wrote this plot, went “this is a great idea” and submitted it. Dennis O’Neil, editor of this comic, read this proposal and went “Sold! Let’s do this!” DC Comics published this.
Why, incidentally? Why, so that the Joker can gas the U.N., of course.
But you see, it means that Batman can’t bring the Joker to justice, because he has DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY! They are POWERLESS to stop him from walking into the U.N. unchallenged! (Is that how diplomatic immunity actually works? No.. Couldn’t the U.N. just vote to expel him? One might imagine, yes. Does anyone involved in this comic care? Apparently not. Wasn’t that a plot point in the last arc? In fact, isn’t this at least the third time in Starlin’s Batman run that diplomatic immunity has been a plot point? JIM STARLIN HAS NO TIME FOR CRITICISMS ABOUT REUSED PLOT POINTS, HE’S BUSY WRITING HARD-HITTING LAUGH LINES ABOUT THE AYATOLLAH AND THE JOKER BOTH LOVING FISH.)
And no, setting up an absolutely absurd situation where the U.S. just HAS to go along with this because of DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN and then having Batman point out that it’s ridiculous doesn’t excuse it. Don’t lampshade how bad the plotline you are currently writing is, just write better plot.
Oh, and not to mention that now, SUPERMAN has to get involved! Because we haven’t already violated enough of the rules for timeless classic storylines by making Robin’s death completely subservient to a bad attempt to comment on issues with terrorism in the 80s via the hard-hitting approach of saying that it exists and it’s bad, we’re gonna bring Superman into this standalone Batman story! Great! Fantastic!
I don’t like DitF.
But hey, I gotta give it SOME credit, because at least it had Jason dying to save his mother and some acknowledgement that Bruce was in the wrong for bringing a child out to fight crime, unlike the several subsequent decades of comics which retconned Jason as being a ‘bad’ Robin, blamed him for his own death, and portrayed the results of an extremely close fan poll where most of the character’s biggest fans couldn’t vote as “everyone hating Jason.”
Look. My glibness aside? It’s bad enough that they decided to kill off a kid as a publicity stunt. They could have at least made a story that would stand the test of time, or even the test of the next six months. Jason Todd was a good Robin and he deserved a better sendoff than this.