9 Mind Blowing "What If?" Scenarios That Almost Changed Comics Forever

3. The Public Votes To Save Jason Todd

The death of Jason Todd still stands out as being one of the industry's grimmest and most remarkable stories, not that you'd ever want to read it.

While the Death of the Family itself is a fairly unremarkable story, the external process that led to the second Robin's death stands out if anything because it's so grim. Unsure how to react to a burgeoning tide of hate mail being directed at Todd, DC opened up his fate to the public with a telephone poll. Readers could call one line to vote to save Jason, while others could call the other to kill him off.

There was only ever going to be one outcome, and in Batman #428 Todd (and his mother) were no more, bludgeoned by the Joker and left to die in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The now iconic panel of Batman holding Jason's corpse wasn't always meant to be, however, and Jim Aparo had even drawn up pencils in the event of a vote to save Jason's life.

The difference in the vote was marginal, with a mere 72 votes deciding Todd's fate. If he had lived, then not only would we have been spared the Red Hood and the inconvenience of the Superboy Prime resurrection, the progression of the Bat-family might've changed altogether. Would the Robin line have ended with number two?