A Death in the Family
Writer: Jim Starlin
Penciler: Jim Aparo
Inker: Mike DeCarlo
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Adrienne Roy
Asst Editor: Dan Raspler
Editor: Denny O’Neil
Cover Art: Mike Mignola
Cover Price: $4.99
Batman arrives back at the warehouse just after it’s exploded. Searching the wreckage, he finds Sheila just before she dies. And then…Robin. But he’s ALIVE! Kid in the hospital, the rest of the issue plays out much as it originally did—Bruce returns to the US, sees to it that Sheila is buried properly, goes after the Joker, is confronted by Superman, and learns of the Joker’s new “promotion” that keeps him from touching the murderer if he wants to avoid an international incident.
Well, that was NOT what I expected. I’ll have to dig out my copy of the original issue, and/or the older TPB to check page-by-page…but I’m pretty sure the only REAL differences were text boxes and "that" panel–"He’s alive!" vs. head bowed in grief.
As I went through this faux-simile, though, it hit me as a great example of how different a story can be/go with just a few word changes…and how much we may or may not "read between the lines" or insert our own feelings, etc.
The Joker goes on about stuff having left the kid for dead…NOTHING about that had to change. But reading a few words about Jason being ALIVE lets one consider how "foolish" the Joker was to not confirm his kill, and/or build up feelings of "oh, he’s gonna be in for a shock when Batman catches up to him!" or whatever.
I think of the ’80s animated GI Joe movie where they apparently had intended to kill off Duke; but after Transformers and the actual death of Optimus Prime they backtracked a bit. As I’m recalling it offhand, there’s some dialogue about Duke pulling through, or is going to pull through, or whatever…but you still don’t see the guy on-screen again. They easily could have referenced his NOT having pulled through, but due to action there’s no time to get a funeral on-screen, or logically they just wouldn’t get TO it yet (if all the action is same-day, for example).
I’d also forgotten how many pages we had leading up to Batman FINDING Jason, and the way ads spaced things out for the pages, drawing along some drama as Batman goes through the warehouse wreckage.
I said this was NOT what I expected–I suppose I EXPECTED a lot more change to the issue and more of a visual difference…that there’d be at least several PAGES of different art to the story.
Having Jason be "in a coma" obviously tracks with his being ALIVE, and accounting for the horrific injuries from the explosion. AND accounts for him not being in #429…dead or in the hospital in a coma, he wouldn’t be physically capable of anything "on-panel" of story significance, and the point of the story is NOT hospital drama of Bruce lingering by the bed listening to machines, etc…so in "classic" "compressed" style, we’d get the focus on Batman, Superman, Joker, etc in #429 and would just have to "know" that the kid’s alive in the hospital but no longer pertinent to the story at hand (Joker as ambassador targeting the UN).
This issue has one of THE MOST iconic (to me) covers in comics; one I was very aware of long before I ever got to own a copy myself…probably from the back cover of an early TPB edition of the entire story (from a local library, back in the day). It’s by Mike Mignola…likely better known nowadays for Hellboy. I often forget that he DID do stuff for DC back then…This cover definitely works for conveying something from the issue–namely that we have a badly-injured-from-an-exploding-warehouse-Robin; and yet the blood spatter was Comics Code Authority-approved.
The interior art being Jim Aparo is fantastic, especially compared to what I think of nowadays. Aparo and John Byrne and Norm Breyfogle (and it’s waned on me over the years, Jim Lee) are probably my favorite Bat-artists. Visually this issue is up there with the heart of Knightfall, such as Batman #497 (the Batcave slugfest between Bane and Batman).
This thing was $4.99 ($7.99 cover price on the foil variant!). I’m not quite sure why the extra dollar on a standard-length issue (Batman #405 facsimile—Year One part 2—came out the same day with the same number of story pages for $3.99). But I suppose it’s technically a “new” issue for not being a 100%-straight-reprint, so they snuck the extra dollar into the price. I’ve quit buying Batman in part for the price increase…and at the least, the price increase has "kept" me away from buying the title for the current issues. Considering the importance of this issue in pre-2004 Bat-history and it commanding higher prices as a back issue, I can be a LOT more "forgiving" of the $5 price; and it’s much more palatable somehow. (Even though the ads technically become “story pages” since they’re not putting NEW ads in with stuff…seems “off” having 428 & 405 together with the difference in pricing!)
For me personally, I enjoyed this issue/experience, seeing how the issue could have been different all those years ago, getting the thoughts/examples in my face of how different "tweaks" can impact a story.
If you’re not all that familiar (or at all) with A Death in the Family and/or prefer much more recent Batman to ’80s/’90s Batman, this may not be "worth it" to you.
But if you’re like me, this is well worth the pickup.
Some comparisons:
First from the original take in #428.
And then here’s the “new”/alternate from the faux-simile.
The infamous full-page image…
But it’s smaller for the alternate take, making room for several additional panels (since the kid’s survived and that has to be explained, vs. just the grave moment)
And since they’d included it in the TPB I was referencing, here’s the page that we were given in Batman Annual #25, without the extra words.
Context, conveying a lot in just a few words…
A slight change of wording omits Jason, since the alternate take is that he actually survived.
Original panel…
Slightly re-worded without Jason.
The original version, mother and son side-by-side.
Alternatively, a single coffin and simply no extra reference to Jason.
A poignant moment with Alfred after the funeral…
Orrrr Dick checks in with Bruce in the hospital after the funeral of Jason’s mother.
And then looking into #429, we have a few panels that would take very little alteration of words to account for Jason living.
“Injured” vs. “Killed,” perhaps.
Make past tense present tense, and the Joker “did that to” rather than “murdered"?
“Hurt” instead of “murdered”…
“in a coma” instead of “dead”…
“nearly killed”…
Now, even having this alternate take…with DC releasing the 4-issue Year One issues weekly, it seems like other 4-parter classics like Death in the Family, Year Two, and so on would be ripe for facsimiles. Even The Dark Knight [Returns]. If they can do Vengeance of Bane as a “regular” (if extra-pages) facsimile instead of squarebound, why not those?
Time will tell, but such reprints would get ME buying Batman for the duration…
Filed under: 2023 Posts, 2023 Reviews | Tagged: 80s Revisited, 90s Revisited, Adrienne Roy, Batman, Batman 428, comic books, Comic Reviews, comics, Dan Raspler, DC, DC Comics, Death in the Family, Denny O'Neil, facsimile, fauxsimile, Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin, John Costanza, Joker, Mike DeCarlo, reprint, Robin | 2 Comments »
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