The following article contains spoilers for Batman #125, on sale now from DC Comics.
The latest issue of Batman reveals a moment in the Dark Knight's history where he briefly considered hanging up the cape and cowl and letting the world know about his secret identity.
Batman #125, the beginning of a new story arc by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Jorge Jiménez, features Batman and his third Robin, Tim Drake, infiltrating a party for Gotham's rich and famous. When the party is crashed by Clayface masquerading as the Penguin, panic breaks out and Tim Drake is shot by a thug in the neck. As Batman races his sidekick to the hospital and quickly switches Tim out of his costume to keep his secret identity from being exposed, he reminisces that this situation is tragically similar to the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin.
In a series of flashback panels, Batman remembers "a different time, a different soldier." In the aftermath of Jason's demise at the hands of the Joker, who beat the boy senseless with a crowbar and then blew him up in the classic 1988 tale A Death in the Family, Batman also had to frantically change his ward's costume so that civilians could discover his body. "When Jason died and I removed that costume I thought...is there a bottom to this mission?" Batman asked himself in the moment. "Can I really keep falling? I almost stopped that day. Let the world know that I was Batman. That they'd lost a hero in Jason Todd. But the mission. The damned mission."
Luckily, Batman #125 reveals that Batman gets Tim to the hospital in time. The third Boy Wonder is revealed to be in stable condition by the end of the story, which sees the Batman confronting a hospitalized Penguin and framed for his subsequent death.
Batman's grief in the aftermath of Jason Todd's passing has been explored countless times, most notably in A Lonely Place of Dying, the 1990 followup to A Death in the Family which introduced Tim Drake. There, Batman's sorrow caused him to become increasingly unhinged and violent when it came to apprehending criminals, and Tim made the point that "Batman needs a Robin" as a mediating force in his life. Jason was resurrected in the 2006 story Under The Hood, but for years his death was regarded as Batman's greatest tragedy.
Batman #125 additionally comes from colorist Tomeu Morey and letterer Clayton Cowles. Cover art is done by Jiménez, with variant covers by Jiménez, Zdarsky, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair, Francesco Mattina, Inhyuk Lee, Gabrielle Dell'Otto, Simone Di Meo, Jock and Alex Garner. The issue is on sale now from DC Comics.
Source: DC