Batman, seeing himself in the kid's fearlessness and finding himself presented with an opportunity to channel it towards good ends and make a real difference, quickly took Jason in and started training him as the new Robin. And this time, he didn't even have to battle a vampire in court to do it. But while that new origin definitely distanced himself from his predecessor, it also changed how he was perceived by both creators and fans.

It's really interesting to look back at those issues and see how people were reacting to the new Robin. In Detective Comics, Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis—the creators of an underrated run that was heavily skewed towards providing decidedly modern stories that were structured like and influenced by Golden and Silver Age classics—basically just treated him as though he was Dick Grayson with a different name. They even ended "Fear for Sale," one of the greatest Batman stories of all time, with a reveal that Batman's greatest fear was that his plucky young ward would be murdered by one of his enemies, a fate that he narrowly managed to avoid... this time.

In the other monthly Batman title, however, creators like Max Alan Collins, Jim Starlin, and Jim Aparo were telling stories like the ridiculously violent "Ten Nights of the Beast" that were leaning harder and harder into grittiness. Starlin's take on Robin in particular was a much more vengeful product of the streets with violent impulses and a hard-line sense of right and wrong.

But while Jason was controversial, the reaction wasn't as divided as you might think. If you go back and read the letter columns in those issues, you'll find that while a few people were writing in to talk about whether they liked the new take on Jason, there weren't a lot of extreme takes. If nothing else, it definitely didn't have the vitriol or intensity of people writing in to debate whether or not Batman's logo should have a yellow oval. That conversation got heated.

But then came Batman #424.