The impact and fear of losing one’s life in a heroic act - the ultimate sacrifice one could make - is almost nil in modern comic books. Characters die and return from the grave almost constantly, an unfortunate cliche that has hurt the mainstream’s view of comics-as-art and rendered death as nothing more than a temporary setback for superheroes.

With the return of Jason Todd, the former Robin who was murdered by the Joker in A Death in the Family, yet another hero has defeated death. Writer Judd Winick, who openly voted to keep Todd alive in the 1988 fan poll that decided the character’s fate, opted to officially bring Todd back to life after scribe Jeph Loeb teased fans with his return during Batman: Hush. In Batman #635, Todd returned inexplicably as The Red Hood: a murderous anti-hero with a grudge against his former mentor. Finally, with Batman Annual #25 (clocking in at the “I can’t believe I just paid that much for a comic” price of $4.99) by Winick, we learn just how he came back to life.

As much as I was and still am against the idea of any character — especially Jason Todd, whose death added another tragic layer to the Batman mythos — returning from the grave, Winick’s run on Batman has certainly been the most thrilling since Hush, and among the most memorable of the past 5 years. Of course, seeing Batman fight Jason Todd would be thrilling when handled by just about any writer. But in the end, contrary to Winick’s claims in interviews, the how’s and why’s of Todd’s return are extremely important; if handled improperly, the circumstances surrounding his return would negate the effects of his death and his reappearance. Amazingly, in Batman Annual #25, the story behind Todd’s resurrection actually makes sense and ties into everything going on in the DC universe right now.

The reason behind Todd’s return, it turns out, is Superboy Prime. Punching through the walls of the glass “heaven” in which he and Earth-2 Superman, Alex Luthor, and Lois Lane were confined after Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy sent ripples through DC’s various realities (I know it sounds absurd, but if you’re up-to-date on your DC Crisis history, it makes sense), which either changed things completely or set certain things right. In the case of Todd, he was “never meant to die” (in a nice tribute to the late, great A Death in the Family artist Jim Aparo, we see his unused art of Batman finding Robin alive in a “what should have been” moment), and Winick horrifically shows a young Jason coming back to life in his coffin. He claws his way out (which somehow doesn’t set off the sensors Batman placed in the coffin to see if anyone tried to break in), wanders the streets with severe head trauma incurred from his beating by the Joker, suffers amnesia, eventually regains his memory, grows bitter, and finally decides to seek revenge on Batman for not avenging his death.

Ultimately, having Jason Todd alive and kicking will diminsh the impact of his death, as each appearance further waters down the character’s mystique. But for the time being, Winick has managed to tell an engaging story, and most importantly, tie something as ridiculous as resurrection to something as ridiculous as alternate realities, which is a stroke of brilliance considering just how good the reality bending Infinite Crisis has turned out to be. Love it or hate it, Winick has given us something to talk about it, and pulled it off admirably.

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