Son of the Demon (1987), was entertaining nonetheless, and Prefore summarized it as "a good read if you don't mind all the strangeness". Publications ranking it among the best Batman stories include IGN and Complex in 2014, and GamesRadar+ and Screen Rant in 2021. Sean T. Collins of Rolling Stone ranked it among the 15 Batman stories he considered "essential" to understanding the character, praising Aparo's art and how Starlin characterizes the Joker. Literary analysis Despite Robin's status as one of the most famous sidekicks in comic book history, there has been little literary analysis of "A Death in the Family". According to literary critic Kwasu Tembo, it is generally only discussed "as either a case study within a broader discussion of Batman's ethics, or as a case study of DC's editorial decisions and socio-historical engagement with its readership". The story's message is that Batman cannot save everyone, and it portrays Jason as a tragic figure whose sympathetic journey ends in death. Tembo contended that the death leaves the reader to ponder Jason's nature as "Batman's greatest failure, as an orphan betrayed, and/or as a careless and overzealous lost boy who reaped what he had so impulsively and thoughtlessly sown". Tembo theorized that Jason's death, as voted for by readers, "can be more thoroughly understood as a complex form of scapegoating", comparable to a public execution. Jason was unpopular because he struggled to live up to the standard of his predecessor Dick, which made him a "bad" Robin. This created jealousy among readers, who concluded that Jason was unfit to be Robin. Citing René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, Tembo wrote that O'Neil's decision to let fans determine Jason's fate created a "mimetic crisis" because readers "could now not only influence [Jason's] existence in the story world, but in being given this power, compete against him". Readers instead saw themselves as more fit to be Batman's partner; by voting to kill Jason, they thought they were helping Batman. Tembo points out that the closeness of the vote indicates that fans may not have despised Jason as much as commonly believed. Fans who voted to save Jason may have voted to preserve the classic status quo, or because they found the Joker's murdering a child during an emotional period in his life unsettling. Depiction of Islam "A Death in the Family" has been criticized as Islamophobic for its portrayal of Arab