The Jason Todd Chronicles: Batman #408

You can read the introduction to this endeavor here.

And so we begin with Jason’s first appearance in Batman #408.

Well…technically this wasn’t his first appearance, either as himself or as Robin, but after Crisis on Infinite Earths, many of the books and characters that had been involved were reconstructed or redefined to new or more interesting dynamics and simplification in their stories. The concept worked for all of like, five minutes because it didn’t take long for things to get messy again with continuity errors, retcons, and Elseworlds stuff.

Jason was one of the characters to have his personality and background changed in a significant way after Crisis. As a result, he got a brand-new telling of his origin in Batman #408, which is why this is written as a first appearance. He was basically a brand-new character. Pre-Crisis, Jason was a circus performer like Dick and so much like the original Robin that, aside from his red hair (that Bruce made him dye because reasons), readers couldn’t tell them apart. Which is great if you had problems with Dick no longer being Robin and turning into Nightwing, but not so much if you’re looking to tell fresh, new stories.

Pictured: Originality

The comic is titled “Did Robin Die Tonight?” which I think is a pretty great title as it has a bit of a double meaning here, as we’ll see in a minute. It’s also a great attention-grabber, although considering that the Joker pops up in page one, I think it’s safe to assume that it could have been titled “Batman and Robin Watch Paint Dry” and people still would have been excited.


The opening scene starts in the middle of the action, with the Joker and Batman standing on top of a building while Batman yells “Give it up, Joker! There’s no place left to run!” Joker recently stole a valuable diamond necklace called “The Smile of Death” which Batman and Robin (Dick) are attempting to retrieve. Aside from the obvious connection to smiling, it’s never really clarified why the Joker wants this diamond necklace. Sure, he wears it (and his opening pose on the first page does little to assuage the notion of the Joker as gay or effeminate), but I find it odd that someone who would later go on to shoot and paralyze Barbara Gordon in cold blood would be bothered to steal diamonds for no other reason than “They look pretty on me!”

Anyway. The Joker pulls out a gun on Batman, preventing him from doing much of anything for several moments.

Robin, meanwhile, has been awkwardly climbing onto the roof of this building with a grappling hook, attempting to use a surprise attack instead of a direct one. This backfires, as Joker sees him before he can do anything and shoots him in the arm, causing him to fall off the side of the building. Batman freaks out and runs after him. Robin uses the grappling hook to prevent himself from splatting on the ground below and tells Batman to forget him for the moment and worry about the Joker. While Batman has his back turned, the Joker contemplates shooting his old foe, but before he can make up his mind, a helicopter with the Joker’s face on it arrives and drops him a rope. The Joker spends too much time rambling to make his escape, which seems to be a trait with a lot of comic book villains. Batman whacks him in the face with a Bataraang, causing him to fall into a river below just as Robin is losing his grip on the grappling hook rope.

Batman rushes back to Robin and grabs him before he hits the ground, carrying him away to safety in a hilariously awkward panel where Robin’s buttocks is right in Bat’s face. Somehow Batman manages to both carry Robin and retrieve the Joker before dropping him off at Arkham. He takes
Robin home and a fight inevitably breaks out between the two once Dick has had some time to recuperate from his gunshot wound and Bruce says Dick has to hang up the towel (or…cowl…or…domino mask).

This argument is interesting for a couple of reasons:

One: It addresses an issue that a lot of people have commented on since the debut of Robin and that’s what on earth is a child doing fighting crime. Isn’t it kind of a dangerous endeavor? Shouldn’t it be frowned upon? And the answer, according to this argument, is yes. Yes it is. Dick tries to argue that he’s no longer a kid—he’s a MAN now, y’see—and Bruce does agree with him. He tells Dick that he has been an invaluable asset to his crusade, a great partner, but that they’ve been lucky more than anything else that nothing more serious has happened and that a child has no place in this…erm…career path. He says that if Dick is a man now, he’s mature enough to understand and accept Bruce’s decision. Dick pouts for a little while before realizing that it’s actually a great opportunity for him to go out and be his own person—to pursue his own destiny. There’s a cool panel shot of him in his Nightwing mask before Bruce adds: “A man might as well pursue his destiny…because it will catch him if he doesn’t.” This comes into play later.

Two: It’s here that we get a thematic reference to the title. It was mentioned earlier when the Joker thought that he killed him, but this reference isn’t quite as literal. Dick says “And that ‘Robin’ is better off left dead!” He’s not meaning “I’m going to kill myself,” obviously. Dick is saying that he thinks Robin in and of itself is a defunct concept now that he’s grown up. He needs to move on. Funny enough, this was many readers’ attitudes towards the character, especially during the 80’s when his role as the light-hearted doler of puns was beginning to seem out of place in the darker DCU. So the discussion here is nifty, I think, if a little on-the-nose.

Third: Holy foreshadowing, Batman! I know that there’s no way this could have been intentional on the writer, Max Allen Collins,’ part…but yikes. It’s almost eerie. I’m of course referencing what eventually happens to Jason. Not only is Dick almost killed by the man who will later kill Jason, but even the way Bruce carries him (before using the face-in-butt technique) is the exact same way he’ll later carry Jason’s body. Bruce also remarks that if the Joker had succeeded in killing Dick, it would have been Bruce’s fault—not the Joker’s. Bruce is responsible for Dick, and anything that happens to him reflects back on Bruce. This is apparent when, after Jason’s death, he spends a ridiculous amount of time blaming himself, and not just in the comics that followed—he still does it to this day. It’s also important to note that Bruce acknowledges his part in anything that happens to his wards right here, in continuity, which is something that is completely overlooked in the case of Jason when everything that happened to him (including his death) was Jason’s fault.

Ahem. Moving on. I’m not even halfway through the comic and this is already absurdly long.

So the two heroes part ways and Batman spends the next few weeks doing his thing as the Caped Crusader while the news reports that everyone believes Robin is dead.

Commissioner Gordon asks Batman flat-out if he is dead. Batman says that for all intents and purposes he is, but that the person behind the mask is very much alive. There’s some more dialogue about how “a kid fighting crime is bad” that honestly annoys and bores me a bit before Batman tells himself that he doesn’t care what the press thinks, even if it means they spend all of their time crucifying him.

The next day he meets up with Vicki Vale as Bruce Wayne for drinks. She attempts to get Bruce to chair a committee who wants to overthrow Batman. Bruce, for obvious reasons, says no, and Bruce calls her out on her attempts to feed off of his “liberal guilt.” They finish their drinks and walk through Gotham, Vicki trying to convince Bruce that Batman is bad for the city and Bruce saying he thinks things would be a lot worse without him. Bruce notices a couple of Generic Hooligans steal some guy’s wallet and chases them down, managing to get the crap beat out of him but the wallet back. Vicki mentions, as they part ways, that she is going to Crime Alley to follow up on a story about a controversial school being built there—Ma Gunn’s School For Boys, which is being alternately condemned by “the powers that be” and praised by the media. Vicki suggests Bruce fund the school, as it’s a great opportunity to help the community.

We’re then treated to a panel that gives us our first impression of Ma Gunn herself and it’s a hilariously stereotypical “White Southern Lady” depiction: straight-laced dress, a frilly collar and sleeves, and her hair in a bun. Looking at her you’d think she had just walked out of a time machine that took her from 1900 to 1987. Which I guess makes sense considering she IS an old woman…but could Collins and co. been more cliché about?

Anyway, tonight happens to be the anniversary of the murder of the Wayne’s (because of course it is), and word has gotten out that Batman has picked this night above the others to crack down hard on Crime Alley. As a result, the streets are pretty calm and collected. I also find it amusing that Batman just casually walks the streets like a regular pedestrian, people waving at him and saying hello.

He runs into Ma Gunn outside of her school and introduces himself, saying that he’s glad someone has made an effort to change Crime Alley for the better. This conversation would be much more endearing if it wasn’t painfully obvious that (spoilers!) she’s going to end up not being what she’s seems. There’s no real villain in this story, aside from the Joker who is taken out in the first page or two, and the constant referencing of her being “such a great person” and “really trying to make a difference” just hammers the point home that that isn’t the case. But I digress.

Batman thanks her and they part ways. And that’s when the iconic scene of Batman happening upon his Batmobile missing its front tires appears. He lets out a burst of laughter at the sheer balls that the person to commit such a crime would have to have and examines the space where the wheels are missing, presumably looking for clues, since I doubt the wheels would be anywhere near the car.

As he does this, a kid appears with a tire iron to “return to the scene of the crime” and runs into Batman. All of the amusement gone, Batman demands that he gives back the tires. Jason denies taking them, but considering he has a tire iron in his hand, it’s more than apparent that he’s lying. Instead of just running away, Jason takes the tire iron and swings it right into Batman’s abdomen and makes a break for it.

Batman considers chasing after him at first but then decides he’s better off following the kid, thinking that it will lead to finding his tires. It’s kind of strange that he would even bother at this point, since he’s a billionaire and could probably afford a couple of new tires, but follow Jason he does and it leads him to a very depressing place. Jason lives in a decrepit, abandoned building by himself, sleeping on a dingy mattress without much else to his name (other than apparently a large stereo and a couple of Eric Peters and Poison Idea posters). He lights a cigarette before Batman pops in like a creeper and says “That’ll stunt your growth, kid.” Jason is understandably alarmed, and tells Batman to just take the lousy tires already and leave him alone (as I probably would have done the same at that point). Batman asks if this is, indeed, where he lives, and Jason says yes. He then asks where his parents are and Jason says that he doesn’t know where his dad is (probably in jail) and his mother passed away. He tries to force Batman to leave in a couple of humorous panels, and Bats admits that he’s “a scrappy one.”

Batman makes Jason help him put his tires back on his car, but while they work, Jason asks if he’s going to “fink” to the cops about him. Batman tells him no, but that he wants to send him to social services so that he can be taken care of. Jason doesn’t like that idea, claiming that he likes it on the streets and wants to stay there without being someone’s “pet charity case.” Batman asks how long his mother was sick, and Jason says “Over a year—I found her food and stuff—kept her warm—and alive…long as I could.” Then Batman asks about school and Jason gives a cheesy response about “graduating from the streets of Crime Alley,” implying that he didn’t actually go to school. Batman makes Jason a deal: No cops, no social workers, but he has to go to school.

Guess which one he’s talking about?

They shake on it, and Batman drops Jason off at Ma Gunn’s place. Ma says that new enrollees are always welcome and that he can stay on the premises if he wants. Batman walks away and the last panel in the comic is of a group of boys holding pockets knives and nasty looks while surrounding and threatening to beat up Jason. Ma Gunn, the “good citizen,” stands by watching and smoking a cigar. Classy.

The double-meaning of the title won’t be fully realized until the next issue, but it’s made pretty clear that Jason is being set up as the next Robin. The title questioning if Robin died will be answered with both a yes and no—Dick did move on and that era of Robin did die. But a new era with a new person wearing the domino mask has begun, and therefore Robin as a concept still lives on. Kind of cheesy, I know, but this IS the American comic book.

Even after the New 52 changed Jason’s background again, this one is still the one that everyone goes to as the ideal. And with good reason—it’s an origin that runs in the opposite direction from both his first one and Dick’s, setting Jason up as a fundamentally different kind of character. He’s homeless, talks with slang, has no problems starting a fight, and is far more independent than Dick was in the beginning. Even from the start, his anger and resentment at the world is there—he spends a lot of time frowning and pouting and only someone who has been hardened by a rough life would dare to throw a swing at Batman like that. It’s iconic because it’s funny, but also a great piece of storytelling without much dialogue or wordage.

…unlike this synopsis.