Saturday, November 19, 2011

Great Moments :: Robin Dies


It turned out that the most lethal enemy the Boy Wonder had was not The Joker, it was the readers.  Becoming increasingly unpopular among fans, Jason Todd, the second Robin, was going to be stripped of his uniform and title by DC editorial in 1988.  In order to involve fans in the decision-making process -and maybe to wash their hands off the whole matter- DC set up two 1-900 lines so callers could vote for or against Robin's death.  With over 10,000 votes, 5,343 of them were for Jason to die, while 5,271 were for him to make it alive; and so the dice were rolled. 

Batman finds the body of Robin, the Boy Wonder

The name of the story was "A Death in the Family", and it ran in Batman #426 to #429 (1988) written by Jim Starlin and pencilled by Jim Aparo.  After being betrayed by his own mother, and suffering a brutal beating at the hands of the Joker, Robin was caught in an explosion caused by the clown prince of crime just seconds before Batman could rescue him.  The event changed Batman in many ways, turning him into a haunted, darker hero.  Although this was not the end of Jason Todd's story, the death of Robin, the Boy Wonder was certainly one of the most shocking moments in comics' history.

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