Before he became the Red Hood, Jason Todd was best known for his brutal death at the hands of the Joker in the classic Batman story "A Death in the Family." However, newly released art has revealed that Jason could have had a different fate.
An article recently published on Polygon showcases a pair of alternate pages from Batman #428 -- pulled directly from DC Comics' archives in Burbank, California -- that depict a different fate for Jason. While some of these photos have certainly been seen before, they don't come out terribly often, much less are they released to a major news outlet.
The pages, by the same creative team of writer Jim Starlin, penciller Jim Aparo and artist Mike DeCarlo, depict a familiar scene: Batman emerging from rubble, holding Jason's limp body in his arms. However, the Dark Knight is looking to the skies with an expression of joy on his face, saying "He's alive! Thank god!" A second image shows Jason in a coma, with Bruce Wayne watching over him.
The "A Death In The Family" storyline was infamous for having its readers vote on whether Jason would live or die; the votes for his death came in at a narrow margin of 72 votes. Former Batman editor Denny O'Neil was against this decision, even voting for Jason to live himself. “We didn’t kill the Boy Wonder," O'Neil would say in the first collected edition of A Death In The Family. "The readers did.”
Although Jason would later be resurrected, and his mantle taken up by Tim Drake, one has to wonder how much differently events would have unfolded had he lived in the first place.