Scans_Daily

Why do some people -- and I say some, not all -- cling to the idea that Jason "got himself killed"? Because just as in real life, it's easier to blame the victim than to look at the whole mess that led up to A Death in the Family head on. The "kill number" was, I think, something a lot of people didn't take seriously, or thought of as a joke. Until it actually happened, imagining the death of Robin was simply an amusing way for people who didn't care for the character to blow off steam.

The horror that was the death of a fifteen year old boy didn't seem to hit home until Jason was getting beaten with a crowbar and subsequently blown up. After the fact, Batman readers actually had to think about what they'd been party to. And DC had to deal with the fallout of its ill-advised actions.

As I recall, DC took a lot of flak, much of it not from the comics community, for not only Jason's death, but also the manner in which they went about bringing it about. Nicieza got it just about right. Distasteful is the nicest thing I can think of to say about the kill vote. I found it frankly tacky and incredibly insensitive while it was happening, and I was still a kid at the time. As an adult I can only think, what the hell were DC's editors thinking? I mean, it seems like such a blatantly bad idea that you'd think killing it at the inception would be a no-brainer, right? Well...

Frank Miller said: "To me the whole killing of Robin thing was probably the ugliest thing I've seen in comics, and the most cynical."

Now see, why does that not ring true? Maybe because Frank killed the hell out of a Robin, no less than Dick Grayson, in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and did it in the most tasteless way possible. As well, his fait accompli killing of Jason in The Dark Knight Returns in '86 set the stage for Jason's death in canon continuity in January '89. Dude framed the bloody Case and coined "a good soldier". He built Robin's death into the common comics reader's consciousness. Hypocritical much, Mr. Miller?

As for A Death in the Family itself... tacky and OOC don't begin to cover it. Starlin wanted to get rid of Robin. In the interests of covering his ass, he created the flimsy excuse of Jason's "bad seed" tendencies -- and hoo boy were they flimsy, and also insulting and badly written. But then, the whole storyline is a straw hut waiting to get blown down. That's comics for you.

These days, I think the consensus view places the lion's share of blame for Jason's death on Batman's head, when in fact, the blame within the context of the story lies where it always has done: on the Joker and on Sheila Haywood. Jason was their victim, as was Bruce (if only indirectly). Bruce's failure, if you can call it that, was the failure of being human and fallible, and not omnipotent. Did he blame himself? Of course he did. Bruce blames himself for every death he isn't able to stop; that's why he's Batman. But was he truly at fault? No, I don't think he was. Jason wasn't guilty of anything more than wanting first to find his mom and then to help/save her, and even he doesn't blame Bruce for his death. He blames Bruce for leaving him unavenged, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

So, who really bears the blame for Jason's death, aside from his mom and Joker? Well, I guess you could say a lot of the comics community at the time it happened does. Miller, who initially glorified the idea; Starlin, who wanted Robin gone; the editors who gave the idea the go ahead; whoever came up with that stupid kill vote; everyone who voted for the kid's death; everyone else who thought they didn't care and ignored the proceedings until whoa! Robin's dead! What the fuck?

What the fuck, indeed?