One of the most important deaths in the Batman mythos, the death of second Robin Jason Todd in #428, almost didn’t happen. In 1988, in the lead-up to Jason Todd’s death, readers were able to vote on whether or not the divisive character should survive a beating from the Joker (followed by the explosion of the building he was in), and the fans ultimately voted for his death.
Now, Polygon has gotten an exclusive look at the original alternate pages that were created in case the poll had swung the other way, revealing how Batman would have handled Jason Todd’s survival. If Todd had survived the Death in the Family arc, as it turns out, DC still had a way to keep him off the pages for the foreseeable future.
Head to Polygon to see the pages that were not printed. In them, a jubilant Batman discovers that Todd is alive, but badly hurt. Batman quickly removes his costume and wraps him in a towel so as to hide his identity as they go to the hospital. In a single later panel, Bruce visits Jason in the hospital–he’s in a coma, and Bruce says that it’s up to “the boy’s own recuperative powers” whether or not he pulls through.
This essentially means that the comics could have continued on, as they did, with Jason Todd’s survival not affecting the course of the arcs that followed until D.C. decided to wake him from his coma. That’s not what happened, however, and instead Todd died.
DC received 10,614 calls about Jason Todd’s fate, with the decision to kill him coming down to a margin of 72 votes. Todd would famously return in 2005 as the Red Hood, having been revived by Superboy-Prime altering reality (which is to say, some comic book nonsense).
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