Notice! Spoilers for From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #4!Many people in the DC Universe want to kill the Clown, and the person with the biggest reason to do this has always been Red Hood. Unfortunately, due to the Joker’s narrative necessity, DC never allowed him to be killed, but in this unique universe, Jason finally gets the revenge he deserves.
Jason finally got his satisfying revenge in the pages of From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #4 by JM DeMatteis, Rick Leonardi, Rico Renzi and Taylor Esposito. In this story, Jason survives and tries to overcome his attempted murder at the hands of the Joker. But the trauma turns out to be too much for Jason to handle, and he eventually goes after the Joker, trying to look for him on his own.
Naturally, the Joker is a very difficult person to pin down, and he not only captures Jason first, but also turns Jason into his new sidekick. Fortunately, Jason breaks free of the brainwashing and resists the Joker’s control before it’s too late. After the Joker escapes again, Jason chases the Joker and finally manages to shoot him dead in a bat cave, right in front of Batman.
Jason Todd finally gets his long-awaited revenge on the Joker
The Joker Couldn’t Overtake Jason Todd Forever
Jason’s death at the hands of the Joker is something that forever defines his character. No matter what Jason does, whether Red Hood is an antagonist of the Bat-Family, a mystical ninja, or an anti-hero, it always comes back to the Joker. The majority The Red Hood stories revolve around Jason trying to get revenge on the Joker. It was the main plot point of Batman: Under the Red Hood by Judd Winick and Doug Mahnke. But Jason never managed to kill the Prime Earth Joker. The closest he came was killing a Joker from an alternate dimension during Countdown to the final crisis.
The Joker is simply too popular a character for DC to kill off, which puts Jason’s character in a weird cycle where he desperately wants revenge on the Clown Prince, but he never gets it. Even in stories like DCcessed by Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine and others, it is Harley Quinn who manages to kill the Joker, not Jason. There are many universes where the Joker dies, but Jason never manages to kill him – until now. Seeing Jason finally shoot the Joker in the head is deeply cathartic, and while it’s understandable that this never happens in the Prime Universe, it’s shocking how it virtually never happens anywhere..
THE Robin lives! The timeline is the only “universe” where Jason Todd takes revenge
Jason Todd finally gets the revenge he deserves
Narratively, creating characters who want revenge in stories designed to never end – like superhero comics – can be a big problem. No matter how much Jason wants to kill the Joker, he will never be able to do so, because the Joker is simply too popular and important to Gotham’s narrative ecosystem. Jason either needs to abandon his desire for revenge, which isn’t entirely reasonable, or he needs to keep trying and failing to kill the Joker, like some kind of demented Wile E. Coyote skit. This is why alternate universe stories can be so good because, for once, Red Hood I finally managed to give Clown what he deserves.
From the DC Vault: Death in the Family – Robin Lives! #4 is now available from DC Comics.