Robin Lives! #4 Wraps Up Jason Todd's Reimagined Story

As the year winds down, so does the comic book series I looked forward to the most in 2024 — Death in the Family: Robin Lives! The October edition concluded the four-part limited run.

The series is based on 1988's Batman: Death in the Family, in which fans made a seminal choice to kill off Jason Todd’s Robin. Robin Lives! is a reimagining of that storyline where we find out what would have happened if fans had voted to let Jason live. (See my previous entries on this series here  and here.)

​In Issue #3, Jason was transformed (thanks to some illicit pharmaceuticals) into The Joker's sidekick, Jokey, The Boy Lackey. As #4 opens, The Joker insists that Jokey beat a former psychiatrist to death. But Jason hesitates... he still has a moral compass, after all . He's subsequently discarded by The Joker — another humiliation on top of another humiliation. 

Pursuing the supervillain, Jason discovers that The Joker plans to poison Gotham with the same toxin he used on him. In order to stop the mass killing, Jason puts a bullet through the supervillain's skull. In doing so, he performs the one act Batman never could — ending The Joker for good.

​Bruce is initially appalled by the murder, but later he and Dick Grayson decide to cover it up. They decide that The Joker's death did indeed serve a greater good and would allow Jason to finally escape his tormentor. We see that this works. Jason goes onto college, earning advanced degrees in sociology, psychology and psychiatry. 

The narrator (Dr. Dev) tells us: "We were so proud of [Jason]. He'd faced so much, come so far — and we knew, beyond a doubt, that Jason Todd had a good, a valuable, life ahead of him. That like Bruce and Dick... he'd leave a positive imprint on this world."

​That's good new, right? Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.

​In an M. Night Shyamalan-type twist, we witness Jason putting on clown makeup and changing his clothes... only to reveal himself as The Joker reborn.  As with most M. Night Shyamalan-type twists, this one was both ineffectual and irritating. It was also completely unneeded.  

Jason's story has already addressed — and continues to address —  his suffering at the hands of The Joker. If the idea behind Robin Lives! was to give Jason a different, less tragic ending, then maybe it was okay to let him recover and thrive?

​RELATED FEATURES: Jason Todd / Red Hood Fans  |  Batman Collection  |  Nightwing Collection  |  Jason Todd's Empty Grave