Batman: A Death in the Family / YMMV

Alas, Poor Scrappy: Jason wasn't exactly the most favored character at this time, but lots of fans thought his Family-Unfriendly Death was... a bit too much. Frank Miller (a man who especially later in his career has written some very cynical books) of all people said, "An actual toll-free number where fans call in to put the axe to a little boy's head... to me the whole killing of Robin was probably the ugliest thing I've seen in comics, and the most cynical."^note A major factor to this is most likely Wizard Magazine, which had a horrible habit of slamming characters or concepts they didn't like. There was even an April Fools Top Ten of Characters that should Stay Dead and Jason was #1. Thus, if it wasn't how brutal Jason was cut down, it was certainly because certain people wouldn't stop making fun of it. Which was arguably the point — fans wanting to see Todd written out of the series got precisely what they wanted.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Issue 7 of Batman & Superman: World's Finest (1999) did this with Superman's refusal to let Batman kill the Joker following Jason's death by revealing that the whole incident occured just after Clark's brief time as Gangbuster. Because that whole mess was started with Superman's choice to execute General Zod and his underlings, he feared Batman killing the Joker would cause Bruce to become tormented with the same guilt he felt over his actions.
Common Knowledge: Yes, the Joker does beat Jason with a crowbar. However, he didn't beat him to death with it, as some mistakenly believe. What finished the job was getting left in a building he blew up.
- Also, partially thanks to the Batman: Arkham Knight video game muddying the waters, there are some fans who believe that The Joker spent an extended period of time torturing Jason. In reality, The Joker gave Jason a quick (if brutal) beating and then blew up the building, with the whole affair (including the time it took to rig the building to blow and the 10 minutes it took for the bomb to count down) taking 15-20 minutes tops.
Complete Monster: The Joker is as monstrous as ever. After escaping Arkham Asylum, during which he kills a number of people, the Joker steals a nuclear weapon with plans to sell it to terrorists during the Lebanon civil war. He also blackmails Jason Todd's mother Sheila into helping him obtain medical supplies that he withholds from the starving to sell them on the black market, replacing them with laughing gas that, when set off, will kill thousands of people. Capturing Jason Todd, the Joker beats him with a crowbar before killing him and Sheila with a time bomb. After getting a position as the Iran representative, the Joker holds a speech at an assembly, only to try and kill everyone in the building with poisonous gas.
Franchise Original Sin: This, combined with The Killing Joke, established the Joker's Darker and Edgier trending, with the key moment in the story played humorlessly straight, and propelling him into Complete Monster territory. Flash-forward to Death of the Family with the Joker wearing his own skinned-off face like a mask...
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- It's suspected that Lady Shiva could be Jason's mother. While drugged with truth serum, she states that she's never had a child. Years later, her daughter, Cassandra Cain, the second Batgirl, would be revealed as Shiva's daughter. Bruce noting that Cass is about Jason's age has led to some fans theorizing they're siblings.
- In a dark mix of this and Harsher in Hindsight, Superman is called in by the government to stop Batman from killing the Joker as revenge for murdering his son. There's a dark, ironic chuckle to be had at this in light of Injustice: Gods Among Us, where their roles were reversed (only, in that universe, by the time Batman waged war with Superman, the latter had long since killed the Joker).
- Everything people didn't like about Jason Todd has been defiantly exaggerated with Damian Wayne, a fact that's narratively rubbed in the faces of Todd's original detractors.
Informed Wrongness: The narration of Batman's thoughts as he uses sodium pentathol on Lady Shiva describes him as "revolted by the thought" of using such methods. As opposed to his usual interrogation technique of beating or scaring the crap out of people.
It Was His Sled: Jason Todd gets murdered by the Joker... At least for a time.
Like You Would Really Do It: A decent portion of the fanbase thought this was just a stunt. They were wrong.
Mainstream Obscurity: Every Batman fan knows the scene of Joker attacking Robin with a crowbar and the scene of Batman carrying Robin out of the wreckage, and about the infamous phone poll. These are the only parts of the story that every Batman fan knows. It doesn't help that the parts besides Jason's death are more than a bit dated, and so rarely see acknowledgement in future material.
Memetic Molester: One fan theory about Joker's murder of Jason Todd is that after he beat Jason bloody with a crowbar, he sexually molested his unconscious form. His leering, ogling expression as he's swinging the crowbar makes this theory uncomfortably plausible.
Mis-blamed: There is the oft-repeated fact Batman fans in the 80s "hated Jason Todd so much that they voted for him to die." This leaves out the fact that the readers who voted for him to live were actually more numerous, and that it was later found out that a single person rigged the phone line to dial multiple times—this tipped the vote over to the "death" side. (Although some voters thought that it was Dick Grayson who was going to be voted off, who is insanely popular)
Moral Event Horizon:
- Again, The Joker, as he brutally tortures Jason Todd (the second Robin) right in front of his estranged mother Sheila, before killing both in an explosion.
- Hell, Sheila herself for tricking Jason into the warehouse so that Joker and his men could ambush him when his guard was down. Sheila's reaction to this? Grimacing, then lighting a cigarette.
Narm: Jason's death is the thing everyone remembers about this story, but few remember just how bizarre it gets afterwards. In the last issue the Joker becomes the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, and gives a speech that basically says that the Iranian government is just like him, because they both hate America. This was likely an attempt at being topical (the Iranian Hostage Crisis was still fresh in people's minds), but it makes very little sense and is impossible to take seriously.
- Not only that - Superman saves the entire U.N. assembly from Joker's gas attack by sucking it all into his own lungs, something you'd ordinarily expect to find in only the cheesiest of Silver Age stories. While he's holding the gas, he even talks to Batman with no issue. A brief return of super-Ventriloquism, anybody?
Never Live It Down: Pun definitely not intended, but for years the fact Jason died tended to be the one thing casual fans knew about him. Making it worse is that until about the time of DC's New 52 even the writers seem to blame Jason for his death, with characters saying he "failed" or brought his death on himself, when what happened is that Jason, a teenager with abandonment issues, tries finding his biological mother who immediately sells him out to the Joker.
Nightmare Fuel: Joker's absolutely brutal assault on Robin with a crowbar, delivered in a bright color palette typically seen in lighter DC Comics stories, was absolutely shocking and served to indicate that the days of Camp Batman comics were over^note.
Take That, Scrappy!: Jason's stint as Robin ends as he gets an astoundingly brutal for the time No-Holds-Barred Beatdown courtesy of the Joker and a crowbar, who then blew up the warehouse where it took place. DC at the time ran a poll asking the readers if Jason should survive or not; turns out the votes in favour of killing him off outnumbered those in favour of letting him live, so this was in effect DC itself allowing its readership to do this themselves. It's also significant that hatred for the character was so great even afterwards that it took almost 25 years for it to abate enough to bring him Back from the Dead (and it's far from totally gone, too).
Unintentional Period Piece: The story touches on a number of contemporary political and social issues of the 1980s, such as the Lebanese Civil War, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Ethiopia famine, corruption and the handling of rogue states, the Iran-Contra case, etc..

YMMV / Batman: A Death in the Family

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