In this review of Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #3, Batman comes face to face with Wraith. Whose side will young Jason Todd choose in the finale of the three-issue miniseries.
Robin 7 Batman: Jason Todd #3 main cover by Dustin Nguyen (DC Comics)
ROBIN & BATMAN: JASON TODD #3
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art and Main Cover: DUSTIN NGUYEN
Variant Covers: RAFAEL ALBUQUERQUE, CLAYTON CRAIN, KYLE HOTZ
Page Count: 40 pages
Release Date: 8/27/25
The Story
Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #3 opens with Jason Todd reliving the death of his mother. He comes home to find her motionless on the bathroom floor with a needle laying beside her. We then cut to Jason teaming up with not Batman but the mysterious masked vigilante Wraith to take down a couple drug pushers. They find out where the supplier is and Jason convinces Wraith not to shoot the dealers. Meanwhile, Batman speaks with Jim and Barbara to narrow down Jason’s location. Batman finds him at a drug lab with a knife to the manufacturer’s throat. Jason must decide between killing the criminal or handing him off to the police. Eventually, Jason sides with Batman and the pair of them take down the criminals as well as Wraith. The story ends with Jason visiting Wraith in prison and wondering if he will be able to prevent his inner darkness from overcoming him in the end.
Analysis
While I enjoyed reading Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #3 and the miniseries as a whole a lot, I think it’s a shame that DC writers seem to only be able to write one kind of story about Jason Todd. If you imagine a story casting back to Jason Todd’s Robin years, this is beat for beat the exact story you would expect. I would have preferred to see a writer handle young Jason in a subversive way that breaks from the kill/don’t kill dialectic that seems to define his character even more so than it does for Batman. What we get here is a beautifully drawn depiction of that classic scene we’ve gotten so many times before: Jason has the opportunity to kill a criminal and has to decide between going through with it or honoring Batman’s rule. Think Judd Winnick’s Batman #650 (ending of the Under the Hood arc) except Jason makes the decision to spare the criminal’s life. Alternatively, there’s the original comic story that arguably invented this character trait for Jason during his origin run as Robin in Jim Starlin’s Batman #424 (a great and dark companion piece to this new miniseries). Point is, there is absolutely nothing new here.
I will now use my remaining word count to continue the Dustin Nguygen art love-fest that I began last review. It’s incredible. This style, whatever you call it, (minimalist watercolor?) scratches the perfect itch for me. It feels both classic and avant garde at the same time. Any individual panel may not impress in the way a Lee or a Mora might, but taken as a whole as its own style, Nguyen’s art evokes strong emotions in me. Last month I noted that his art doesn’t look like the art from the original runs with Jason as Robin (like the aforementioned 424 drawn by the late legendary M. D. Bright), but it still somehow manages to evoke the feeling of reading those old comics and I think that bears repeating.
In addition to praising the overall look and coloring, I want to shout out a few specific visuals. I love Nguyen evoking Miller on the second page with the bats rising up out of a childhood abyss (a scene which has made its way into several live-action films now). You could argue he evokes Miller again in the scene of Bruce and Robin hugging, but that may just be a coincidence. Finally, Robin putting on a red motorcycle helmet before riding off in the issue’s final scene is a nice touch. Although the narration in that scene is pretty heavy handed.
Final Thoughts
From a storytelling perspective this miniseries is a fairly rote and superfluous addition to Jason Todd’s backstory, but Dustin Nguyen’s wonderful art elevates it to one of the most enjoyable comic book reading experiences I’ve had this year.
