The character of Robin has always been a staple of the Batman mythos, having first been introduced during the golden age of comics in 1940. Robin was intended to give young readers a surrogate character to relate to and imagine themselves alongside Batman. Naturally, this increased the popularity of Batman comics, cementing Robin as one of their prominent supporting characters, as essential as the Joker or Commissioner James Gordon.

Initially, the alter ego of Robin was Dick Grayson, whom Bruce Wayne/Batman adopted after Dick’s circus-acrobat parents were murdered by gangsters. From the 1940s to the early 1980s, Dick’s character developed through his leadership of the junior superhero organization, the Teen Titans, as he matured into a young adult. When Dick broke off as his own independent superhero named Nightwing, the mantle of Robin was left vacant until 1983 when Jason Todd was introduced in Batman #357.

Jason was originally designed to have a backstory similar to Dick’s, allowing for a more seamless transition between the two Robins. However, in 1985, DC Comics rebooted its continuity, allowing Batman writers to make Jason more autonomous from Dick. Post-reboot, Jason was reinvented as a brooding and aggressive young man, which struck readers as an unpopular revision of the beloved Robin character. By 1988, the creative team behind the Batman title decided that Robin needed to be written out of the series. 

Batman editor Dennis O’Neil suggested drawing from a Saturday Night Live sketch in which viewers could call in to determine the sketch’s direction. Over several months, the DC Comics executive team designed a telephone campaign in which viewers would vote on Robin’s fate. They commissioned Jim Starlin, who was known among the creative team to dislike the Robin character, to write a four-issue storyline with the ending to be determined by readers. DC published Starlin’s A Death in the Family storyline, which deployed the telephone campaign at the end of Batman #427 to determine whether Jason would survive or die in a brutal warehouse explosion. 

The Batman creative team prepared two versions of the next issue depending on the results of the vote. Though there was a strong showing for Jason surviving the explosion at the end of #427, the option of him dying won by just 72 votes. Batman outsold all other titles in 1988 as a result of this storyline fulfilling the hopes of the publishing team. However, Jason’s death was considered so controversial that it was covered on mainstream news outlets, driving public outrage over the death of an iconic comic-book character. 

Over time, however, public sentiment toward the storyline shifted, especially after DC Comics utilized Jason’s death to underscore the threat and menace of the Joker, deepen the characterization of Batman as an isolated figure, and reintroduce both Robin and Jason in new incarnations later. A year after the publication of A Death in the Family, O’Neil helped introduce the character Tim Drake, who would become the third Robin, into Batman continuity. Tim addressed the flaws of Jason’s Robin while also evoking continuity with Dick’s Robin. Much later, in 2004, Jason was formally reintroduced as an antihero called the Red Hood, who was resurrected following cosmic events involving the character of Superboy.