From The DC Vault: Death In The Family – Robin Lives! #4 – JM DeMatteis, Writer; Rick Leonardi, Artist; Rico Renzi, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Most What Ifs and Elseworlds tend to present a worse vision of the future if things were tweaked – after all, where’s the drama in a utopia? But it’s hard to think of something worse than a young boy being beaten to death, which set JM DeMatteis up for an interesting spin in what would happen if Jason Todd lived. We saw a story of Bruce desperately trying to protect his adopted son, who was spiraling into pain and rage in a way that eclipsed what he was already dealing with before his near-death experience. And with the help of Dr. Saraswati Dev, a compassionate mental health expert, they started to help Jason heal – only for him to misunderstand their intentions and head down a dangerous path, one that saw Joker capture him once again and try to turn him into a twisted sidekick. And that’s where we start this final issue – with Joker trying to push Jason into killing an innocent for the first time.
Of course, this series revealed to us how it ends at the start – Jason Todd kills the Joker – and this entire series has been a build-up to that. DeMatteis manages to make this play out as a tragedy, but not one about the Joker – one about a boy pushed past his breaking point, and how his family picks up the pieces. The future that unfolds after that is surprisingly emotional and hopeful, showing a version of Bruce Wayne who sees what his quest has cost him and takes a different path, and a family that slowly rebuilds in some surprising ways. But then it veers into a jump-scare of an ending that we’ll never quite see play out, ending it on a haunting note. This has been a great experiment, especially due to the deliberately old-school art by Leonardi that makes it feel like it truly could have come out in the months after the original comic. I’m hoping DC continues to do experiments like this.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
