Anne's Reviews > Batman: A Death in the Family
Batman: A Death in the Family
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Anne's review
bookshelves: kindle-app, prime-reading, comics, classics, graphic-novels, read-in-2019
Jul 28, 2019
bookshelves: kindle-app, prime-reading, comics, classics, graphic-novels, read-in-2019
Finally!
I've been wanting to read this one forever, but I've never been able to find it anywhere (free). But Amazon has kindly included it in their Prime reading section, so I snatched it up and here we are.
Ok, while I did know the basic gist of the story, there were several surprises in here that made it well worth reading, especially since I'm a big fan of Red Hood.

Readers actually paid (50 cents) to kill off Jason Todd!
Wow. The hatred was real.
I knew they voted him off, I just didn't realize they had to fork over money for the privilege. Ok, well more likely, they had to ask their parents if they would let them call a 900 number. But I remember landline phones, long-distance telephone numbers, and how parents felt about paying for calls they didn't make.
Kids today have no idea how brutal the Dark Ages were.
Plus, there was such a small window of time to make the call to save/kill The Toddster.
Dedication, thy name is Comic Fan.

However, after reading this, I can see why Jason lost his little cartoon life.
The kid was annoying.

Still...ouch.
I think most people will agree that the crowbar has become a pretty iconic part of Red Hood's origin story. But what's been forgotten was the last few panels of that page.
You know, the part where it was actually his fucking birth mother who turned him over to the Joker.
Holy Twat Tacos, Batman!
Ok, Batman notices that Jason is a bit out of control, so he attempts to bench him and get him some help. Jason simultaneously tells Bruce to piss off and begins an ill-fated search for this real mother. <--these things rarely end well
Meanwhile, Batman goes off in search of Joker, who is attempting to sell weapons to some bad guys in the Middle East.
At some point, the two meet, team up, and discover which one of Jason's Maybe Moms is the one who pushed him out of her womb.

Oh, Jason.
Another surprise (for me) was that Joker blackmailed his mother (Dr. Shelia Haywood) into turning Jason over to him with the threat of exposing her part in an illegal abortion that caused the death of a teenage girl. The fact that she was painted as evil for performing abortions seemed really weird and dated to me. I mean, she was also embezzling from the refugee camp she was working in, but even that doesn't seem like the level of villainy needed to have a smoke while your son is getting beaten to death by a psycho. Robin's Mom & her actions were off-putting and strange, and I actually agree with the subsequent writers who decided to gloss over that whole part of the story. Good riddance to Dr. Haywood.

The big questions of the day were, of course, whether or not Batman shows up in time to save Jason, or whether or not Jason survives the bomb going off.
Well, we all know how it turned out.
R.I.P., Jason Todd - world's douchiest Robin.
2006 - Enter Winnick's Under the Red Hood & one of DC's best anti-heroes.


Another thing I loved was the alternate ending panel. Batman is smiling?! That's worth the price of admission, right there.

But wait! There's more!
I'm sure you're all wondering why the hell Batman didn't just go after the Joker and kill the fuck out of him. Right?
Welcome to the second part of this wacko story:

The old diplomatic immunity trope.

Superman (ever the government stooge) stops Bruce from going after Iran's newest ambassador.
I can't even...

Anyhoo.
The truth is that I thought the story itself was kind of stupid, and it doesn't really hold up over the years - if it ever did. Just sort of felt slapped together and weird. But it's become a linchpin in not only Red Hood's origin story but Batman's, as well. Yeah, it's dumb, but you really need to see this shit for yourself.
Required Reading for Batfans.
PS- In the edition I had, it included a whole bunch of issues that had the introduction of Tim Drake and (maybe) some other stuff. I was struggling to finish the main story, so this was a definite no-go for me. I skimmed it and I skipped it. But for those of you who are interested..?
I've been wanting to read this one forever, but I've never been able to find it anywhere (free). But Amazon has kindly included it in their Prime reading section, so I snatched it up and here we are.
Ok, while I did know the basic gist of the story, there were several surprises in here that made it well worth reading, especially since I'm a big fan of Red Hood.

Readers actually paid (50 cents) to kill off Jason Todd!
Wow. The hatred was real.
I knew they voted him off, I just didn't realize they had to fork over money for the privilege. Ok, well more likely, they had to ask their parents if they would let them call a 900 number. But I remember landline phones, long-distance telephone numbers, and how parents felt about paying for calls they didn't make.
Kids today have no idea how brutal the Dark Ages were.
Plus, there was such a small window of time to make the call to save/kill The Toddster.
Dedication, thy name is Comic Fan.

However, after reading this, I can see why Jason lost his little cartoon life.
The kid was annoying.

Still...ouch.

I think most people will agree that the crowbar has become a pretty iconic part of Red Hood's origin story. But what's been forgotten was the last few panels of that page.
You know, the part where it was actually his fucking birth mother who turned him over to the Joker.
Holy Twat Tacos, Batman!

Ok, Batman notices that Jason is a bit out of control, so he attempts to bench him and get him some help. Jason simultaneously tells Bruce to piss off and begins an ill-fated search for this real mother. <--these things rarely end well
Meanwhile, Batman goes off in search of Joker, who is attempting to sell weapons to some bad guys in the Middle East.
At some point, the two meet, team up, and discover which one of Jason's Maybe Moms is the one who pushed him out of her womb.

Oh, Jason.
Another surprise (for me) was that Joker blackmailed his mother (Dr. Shelia Haywood) into turning Jason over to him with the threat of exposing her part in an illegal abortion that caused the death of a teenage girl. The fact that she was painted as evil for performing abortions seemed really weird and dated to me. I mean, she was also embezzling from the refugee camp she was working in, but even that doesn't seem like the level of villainy needed to have a smoke while your son is getting beaten to death by a psycho. Robin's Mom & her actions were off-putting and strange, and I actually agree with the subsequent writers who decided to gloss over that whole part of the story. Good riddance to Dr. Haywood.

The big questions of the day were, of course, whether or not Batman shows up in time to save Jason, or whether or not Jason survives the bomb going off.
Well, we all know how it turned out.
R.I.P., Jason Todd - world's douchiest Robin.
2006 - Enter Winnick's Under the Red Hood & one of DC's best anti-heroes.


Another thing I loved was the alternate ending panel. Batman is smiling?! That's worth the price of admission, right there.

But wait! There's more!
I'm sure you're all wondering why the hell Batman didn't just go after the Joker and kill the fuck out of him. Right?
Welcome to the second part of this wacko story:

The old diplomatic immunity trope.

Superman (ever the government stooge) stops Bruce from going after Iran's newest ambassador.
I can't even...

Anyhoo.
The truth is that I thought the story itself was kind of stupid, and it doesn't really hold up over the years - if it ever did. Just sort of felt slapped together and weird. But it's become a linchpin in not only Red Hood's origin story but Batman's, as well. Yeah, it's dumb, but you really need to see this shit for yourself.
Required Reading for Batfans.
PS- In the edition I had, it included a whole bunch of issues that had the introduction of Tim Drake and (maybe) some other stuff. I was struggling to finish the main story, so this was a definite no-go for me. I skimmed it and I skipped it. But for those of you who are interested..?
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Reading Progress
November 24, 2009
– Shelved
July 28, 2019
–
Started Reading
August 16, 2019
–
Finished Reading
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Hahaha! Just kidding. I would have done the same thing in your shoes. Plus, we got Red Hood out of it.


Hahaha! Just kidding. I would have done the same thing in your shoes. Plus, we got Red Hood out of it."
Yeah, ya know....I struggle with my monsterhood. I may have even voted to kill him more than once.....I remember giving my Aunt a few bucks to cover the calls.
I have this collection in my stacks, so I'm not sure if/how it holds up, but regardless, I'll always consider Jim Aparo to be THE Batman artist. I freakin' LOVE his work on the Batman titles.



Tha facial expressions were spot-on.

Crazy, right? I was thinking it was just a Joker vs Robin thing. I never realized it was tied to arms sales or a search for Todd's bio-mom!

..."
WHOA! That's hilarious!

Moon Knight is my Batman.

I have this collection in my stacks, so I'm not sure if/how it holds up, but regardless, I'll always consider Jim Aparo to be THE Batman artist. I freakin' LOVE his work on the Batman titles."
Yeah, the art was surprisingly good. The colors were what really dated it, but that can't be helped. I think it holds up quite well.

Batman in Space sounds terrible. I think you're right about Starlin being the king of cosmic, though. I've enjoyed some of his older stuff in that genre quite a lot.
message 15:
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Your_Average_Magical_Girls_Fan
(last edited Aug 17, 2019 08:10AM)
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rated it 1 star


..."
I'm not sure that I buy this story, as much as I'd like to. I vividly remember the news stories, and there were not over 10,000 calls made....I think it was more like 2,000-3,000, and Denny O'Neill, the Editor cited in the story, has been wracked with guilt for decades over his part in the "murder". He went along with it assuming that fans would save Robin. So it might be a way to assuage a guilty conscience to blame it on some mystery person who made 350 calls. I think history has greatly inflated the numbers of voters, and I'm not even sure if this computer-programmed-to-call would even have been possible in 1988.

Get out of here with your silver age rules! ;)
Although, I suppose even opinions that aren't mine do count just as much...lol
I honestly haven't read Batman from Planet X, so I can't actually disagree with that. How do you like all the different Batmen that Snyder has in the Metal stuff?

I wondered about that, too. If he did, then he was leaps and bounds above the regular person, at that point. I still couldn't do something like that with my computer. I mean personal computers weren't much of a thing in '88. I still remember all of my friends getting the big gift of a word processor instead of a typewriter when they went to college and that was mid-90's

message 20:
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(last edited Aug 18, 2019 07:38AM)
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Anyway, I don't recall DC having a "One call per household" caveat on the voting, so...even if it IS true, which I doubt, the guy was certainly allowed to call as much as he wanted.

I just read the first two Omnibus editions of Morrison's Batman, and that prompted me to seek out THE BLACK CASEBOOK, which seems to be out of print and fetching high prices. High enough for me to pass, at least.
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Jesus! You're scaring me!

Chad?! No! You seem so sweet! lol
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(last edited Aug 20, 2019 05:16AM)
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Silver age comics are a drug that once you taste you cannot stop eating or searching...

You do it like this < img src="url to gif"> Just remove the space before img.





Then I felt guilty when I saw the results of the vote on the news. (Yes, this was covered on network and cable news!) I think I just voted to kill him because I didn't think they'd really go through with it.