In this review of Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2, a young Jason Todd struggles to relate to his surrogate Bat-family while a mysterious outsider sparks his interest.
Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2 main cover by Dustin Nguyen (DC Comics)
ROBIN & BATMAN: JASON TODD #2
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art and Main Cover: DUSTIN NGUYEN
Variant Covers: RAFAEL ALBUQUERQUE, GUILLEM MARCH, CHRISTOPHER MITTEN
Page Count: 40 pages
Release Date: July 16, 2025
This comic book review contains spoilers
The Story
Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #1 ended with Jason Todd/Robin chasing after a d-list villain called “Cuckoo.” That’s right, we’re back in the mid-1980s young Jason era. As Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2 begins, Batman finds Robin standing over Cuckoo dead in a puddle of blood, but it was actually a masked vigilante named “Wraith” who pulled the trigger. Batman pursues him but Wraith gets away. Jason accuses Batman of thinking he was the one that committed the murder.
Back at the cave, Bruce and Alfred discuss whether Jason is emotionally equipped to be Robin. Meanwhile, Jason has a nightmare in which he relives his encounter with Wraith. After killing Cuckoo, Wraith told Jason that he felt a kinship with him and that Batman is holding him back before slipping him a note with his address.
That afternoon, Batman recruits Dick Grayson/Nightwing to spend some quality big-brother time with Jason, and give his impression. The hangout starts well, with them knocking out Firefly and his henchmen on a nightly patrol, but later Dick’s invitation for Jason to join the Titans backfires when Jason accuses both him and Batman of not taking the “mission” seriously enough. Dick gives Bruce a progress report. He says Jason isn’t like either of them, but that they should give him the space to become who he wants to be.
Finally, Jason meets up with Wraith at the address he shared. Wraith espouses a worldview that should sound very familiar to fans of Jason Todd’s adult persona: Gotham is getting worse and Batman isn’t doing enough to stop it. Lethal force is necessary. Jason and Wraith go swinging into the night.
(Image Credit: DC Comics)
Analysis
When I first saw the title of this book, I really didn’t know what to expect. Jason Todd has been a character that DC has tried just about everything with and his name on a cover has historically been associated with a huge variability in quality. But immediately I was relieved to see that this was truly a Robin story, written as if it was plucked right out of that ominous late 80s run leading up to A Death in the Family. I just love being in this time period. I love Nightwing’s 80’s pop-collar and open chest outfit, I love Bruce’s fleeting time of semi-optimism, I love it all.
In this series’ first issue, I was a little unsure of Jeff Lemire’s writing especially for Alfred, who seemed ready to drop Jason right back off at Ma Gunn’s School for Boys. But in Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2 he concedes that he may have been too harsh, and there’s a wholesome charm to the Bat-family at this stage with Bruce and Alfred teaming up as surrogate parents and Dick acting as an experienced older sibling coming back from college (or in this case Titan’s tower) to try and bond with Jason.
There was a meme that went viral on Reddit a couple years ago that said “Jason Todd as Robin [originally]: golden retriever, Jason Todd as Robin in flashbacks: werewolf.” This comic is the epitome of that concept, but that’s just how mythology works. They’re never going to do a Jason Todd as Robin story and write him exactly like Max Allan Collins, it’s just not going to happen. And it really doesn’t need to. The version of Jason Todd that became iconic is the one Jim Starlin hinted at in Batman #424 and Judd Winick solidified in Batman #635.
The jury’s still out on Wraith for me. He looks like Jim Lee’s “Grifter” if he was the villain in a Wes Craven movie. Some fans may be annoyed that he’s just a proto-Red Hood, and I get that. The idea that Jason just stole his entire ideology from some hereto unseen vigilante instead of coming to his ideas independently based on, y’know, everything that happens to him does remove a lot of agency from the character. But taken for what it is, I’m enjoying this story in isolation. Clearly there is a mystery surrounding Wraith’s identity so I’ll withhold judgment until I know exactly what Jeff Lemire is doing.
I feel such a melancholic nostalgia reading Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2 with most of it due to Dustin Nguyen. He captures the feeling of casting back to a foregone time perfectly. His art in this book is like memory put to color. I can barely put into words how much I love the look of this book. The canvas texture, the watercolors. It’s like the flashbacks from 2002’s Hush but for an entire comic. It may not look exactly like the Jim Aparo era in which it’s set, but it looks like how it felt to read those comics as a kid. It has the lingering optimism of the Bronze Age and the foreboding of what’s to come. This is my favorite comic art in I don’t know how long.
Final Thoughts
Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #2 is everything I wanted it to be. It’s nostalgic and eye-meltingly gorgeous. Dustin Nguyen has done something truly inventive and unique with this art, and I can’t wait to see more. A few narrative quibbles aside, this is a huge recommendation from me.
