I don't think he was really all that hated, for one Jason only lost by 72 votes and 320 of those came from a single person and O'Neil said he had met the person who supposedly had set up the auto vote and he didn't even know there was a different Robin, he just hated the character as a kid watching the Adam West show. And that guy wasn't alone as Dick Giordano has said he had met all kinds of fans who said they voted to kill Robin and thought it was the original, and on top of that they were flooded with more hate mail after killing Jason than they had ever received  regular mail in the previous five years before the event combined. Again, some of that could have come from casual fans who thought Dick Grayson was dead but still it's not as if he was universally hated.

I see what you mean, but it still isn't playing fair. 

Having already regressed Jason to the unlikable persona he had matured out of in an effort to encourage readers to hate him, Starlin went a step further by offering less of an enticement for those wanting Robin to live to vote than he did for those wanting him to die. 

With Jason already on the brink of death after that crowbar scene voters knew that regardless of how the vote went, Robin wasn't going to be part of the titles for a considerable while.  Those wanting him dead merely had to call that number to give him the nudge they needed to ensure that this came to pass in the next issue.  Those who wanted him to live would be hoping that a year from now, they might see Jason take his first few faltering steps out of a hospital bed.  Sort of like having the option of voting either for a candidate to decisively win a race the next day or voting for him to go on to the next round in a year's time.  It's still a win or lose situation but one side is hardly being given much incentive to consider their path that much of a victory.

Having been there when this happened, a major concern we all had was whether or not it would "stick". If Jason simply retired, someone was eventually going to bring him back. To repeatedly whack him with a crowbard and then blow him up? That MIGHT stick.

...and it ultimately didn't.

There is a Mignola variant for that issue...



I picked up the Mignola variant, I have not had a chance to read it yet.

-M

Well then, let's get this show on the road...

The Curious Case of Qurac (re: A Death in the Family)

I've spent the last two days falling deeper and deeper down this rabbithole, and at this point I'm never probably coming back up until I've well and truly exhausted every lead. (So what if half of Comics eBay thinks I'm a weirdo now?)

Per Comics.org — which I know is only as reliable as its editorbase, but nobody can say this story isn't a well-documented one — there are 14 pre-digital printings of the ADitF trade in English, plus a couple of oddities (more on those below). Altogether, I think they span from 1988/89 to 2006/7-ish. If the edits I'm looking for (changing of Iran to a fictional country, removal of the Khomeini panel) exist in any print, I expect they're least likely to be in any of the especially early (Starlin got away with the original script for a reason!) or especially late (War on Terror and all) ones.

As I touch base with every seller I can find on eBay and beyond, I'll be crossing off the dead-ends one by one. Eventually, one truth will prevail. Or I'll find myself on a one-way trip to Arkham. Either's good.



So here's the design for the first round of trades. DC got cute the same way they did with The Killing Joke — color-coded titles for the first five prints.

• 1st Print (Red): Nope
• 2nd Print (Blue)
• 3rd Print (Green): Nada (Year given as 1989)
• 4th Print (Yellow)
• 5th Print (Orange)
• 6th Print (Grey): Wa-wa-waaaah (Year given as 1992)
• 7th Print (Grey)
• 8th Print (Grey)
• 9th Print (Grey): Bupkis

Now here's the design for the second round:



I don't have solid data on when these first started coming out, but I know that the oldest of them still have Jenette Kahn listed in the indicia, putting them at 2002 or earlier. I think that all of them also also hawk DC's website on the back cover, putting them after 1997(ish?). Also of note, these straddle DC's "bullet" and "swoosh" logos, so at least some of them came out after mid-2005.

• 10th Print
• 11th Print: Ix-nay
• 12th Print: Duhhh
• 13th Print: Pbbbbt
• 14th Print

Then there's the British version(s?) printed under Titan. Comics.org says there's only two distinct versions, which I'm not sure whether to take at face-value (more likely nobody bothered logging later ones?). Weirdly enough I actually have higher-than-normal hopes when it comes to these, because looking back, one of the major reasons I believe there's a censored print at all is that a Malaysian friend of mine talked about his dad owning a copy with "Syraq" substituted for Iran. Granted he could be misremembering, or maybe that copy was some special locally-edited version, etc...

• Blue-letter: Sorry, mate
• Yellow-letter

And finally there's the Classics Library collection. I think this one only ever had one printing, and its only significance is being the first time ADitF got bundled together with "A Lonely Place of Dying" — which, of course, became the default for every collection thereon. I remember finding this one a dead-end on eBay, but I can't find that specific listing anymore... maybe I'll look into it again...