10 Most Messed Up Batman Moments

This one could only have occurred in the age before the internet. Dick Grayson’s replacement as Bats' sidekick Robin, Jason Todd, had grown increasingly unpopular with readers. In what editor Denny O’Neil surely thought was a masterpiece of outside-the-box thinking, DC set up a number for readers to call in and decide Todd’s fate. In the wake of Frank Miller's revitalisation of Batman and his related characters into a grittier, darker world, DC were clearly exploring the new possibilities open to them.

What they ultimately went for though, is pretty messed up. Ultimately, the fans spoke, and they asked for the death of teenager Jason Todd. The Joker acted as executioner, beating Todd half to death with a crowbar before finishing the job with a bomb.

This being comics, of course, Todd was reintroduced as the new Red Hood in the mid 2000s, resurrected by Ra’s al Ghul in one of his Lazarus pits. The abiding image that lives on in many comic fans memories however, is of Todd dying at the hands of the Joker- as voted for by thousands of fans.