It is very strange, especially with DC putting out a Deluxe Edition of Starlin’s Batman: The Cult at about the time this mini is slated to end.

But then again, there is not a current Batman group editor at the moment, so there could be several factors.

I'm pretty pumped for it myself. I love "What if...?" stories in general and have always wondered in particular how Jason might have matured as Robin after nearly dieing at the Joker's hands.

I would have had Jason recover and then murder the Joker in revenge for beating him and for killing his mother. Since the clown is such an integral part of the Batman mythos, his demise would have justified the title (even if it would apply to, shall we say, an extended family).

That would of course have caused a major rift between Jason and Bruce, with the latter insisting that his ward surrender himself to the police and with Jason going rogue. Would Batman hunt him down? Would Jason be driven to become a vilain out of self-preservation? Would he turn to someone like Deathstroke as a new mentor? Would he decide to stay on the side of the angels but become a more violent vigilante?

Then Bruce would have to face hard truths about himself, perhaps after a chat with a very indignant Dick Grayson. It's all well and nice to scold teenaged Jason for taking the law into his own hands and killing the Joker, but who was it who coached the new Robin into becoming a vigilante? Who failed to perceive and control the boy's violent tendencies? Who, in effect, is the adult responsible for Jason turning bad? Does it even make sense for a guy dressed as a bat to train children to beat up criminals?

Starlin hated the idea of kid sidekicks and fought very hard for the right to kill off Jason.



Under the Red Hood remains one of my favorite Batman films of all time, animated or otherwise. Winnick was essentially given the green light to tell the story he'd always intended to tell in the pages of Batman, without the major editorial interferences/disruptions of first Infinite Crisis (which forced Winnick to change how Jason came back from the dead), and then the One Year Later event (which abruptly handed the title off to a new creative team in the middle of the climax Winnick had spent ages building towards).

That's certainly the hindsight perception they wanted you to have, but it was actually a lot messier than that and fueled more by creative team demands than organic character progression. What really happened was that Paul Levitz wanted Robin back as Batman's sidekick for licensing purposes (Batman & Robin was one of DC's hottest selling licenses) while Marv Wolfman wanted Dick leading the Titans (DC's hottest selling title), leading to a ton of inter-office confusion and indecision until it was finally decided to just take Dick out of the Robin uniform and give it to someone new so that both offices could be happy. As a result, Dick's characterization flipflops all over the place during this time period, as does his relationship with Bruce. this is still happening up to the point that the Pre-Crisis Jason Todd dons the costume, and it continues to be portrayed inconsistently and confusingly once we get to the Post-Crisis and keep getting revised Post-Crisis depictions of how their relationship changed over the years.

If this sort of thing intrigues you, I explored it all in a LOT more detail in The Batman Family and beyond: 1975-1991.




In 1988, DC still felt strongly about keeping things status quo for the purposes of licensing, which is why Starlin was ultimately fired for killing Jason (allegedly, Denny O'Neil threw him under the bus even though he approved the story). Even O'Neil was conflicted. It was really just Starlin pushing for this. Max Allen Collins used his earlier Post-Crisis depiction of Jason Todd to assuage concerns about child endangerment by giving us a kid who was in greater danger without Batman. It wasn't until Starlin started really playing up Jason's rough-around-the-edges traits that fans started wanting Jason dead. Of course, Dark Knight Returns had foreshadowed the death of Jason, and Year One helped to popularize a Batman who was more compelling without a Robin.

Eventually, Jason's death was inevitable in a post-Watchmen deconstructionalist/realist comic book climate (perhaps as early as 1989, when a solo Batman film took the world by storm), but Starlin definitely cheated his way to an early finish line and (I fully agree) showed a total lack of imagination in doing so.

I love Starlin, but I still don't understand what the hell he was doing writing Batman.

Appreciate all that detailed context, and actually, I've read some of that thread you mentioned (great read) and specifically the parts about Dick flipflopping. Despite having read much of that content back in the day, I sort of reflected how it's funny at the time it never bothered me that I could pivot between the titles and not be too bothered by the inconsistencies. I wonder how much actual reader confusion/dislike there was versus the editors and creative talent obsessing over continuity (even more broadly than this specific Robin topic). I suspect probably a mix of both.

And yeah, I had Dark Knight on the brain as well when I was thinking about that time. It's funny how as an out-of-continuity story I could appreciate it a lot more, but as we all know and as you mentioned about Watchmen as well, Pandora's box was effectively opened and the old school of mainstream superhero titles would never be the same. And honestly, not that I'm opposed to comics evolving and deaths and other tragedies occurring, but that Joker scene was just too brutal for me. I guess it's just relative where the line gets crossed for each of us, but that scene, the infamous Cerebus scene in Church and State, the Superman/Barda issues Byrne did, all examples of stuff I personally just don't want to read ever.