the Batman team received hate mail and angry phone calls; according to O'Neil, the calls ranged from You bastard,' to tearful grandmothers saying, 'My grandchild loved Robin and I don't know what to tell him. Frank Miller was critical, calling the story "the most cynical thing [DC] has ever done ... fans can call in to put the axe to a little boy's head. To me the whole killing of Robin thing was probably the ugliest thing I've seen in comics". NPR cultural critic Glen Weldon found the criticism to be ironic, as it was Miller who came up with the idea of the Joker killing Jason in The Dark Knight Returns. Retrospective Critics have agreed with the decision to kill Jason in retrospect. Sims wrote that killing Jason was "unquestionably the right decision" and made for a far better story. He opined that allowing the Joker to defeat Batman enhanced both characters: the Joker became "a deadly threat... whose actions have lasting consequences", while Batman had "a motivating loss at a time when new readers were coming in". Hilary Goldstein of IGN and Jamie Hailstone of Den of Geek praised the story's handling of Jason's death for its emotion and portraying the dangers of superheroics. Retrospective reviewers have faulted "A Death in the Family" for its plot. Hailstone described "A Death in the Family" as "the ultimate 80s epic": "brasher than Top Gun, louder than Hulk Hogan and more implausible than The A-Team". Both Hailstone and Goldstein found the plot hard to believe, and Hailstone said that it veers into nonsense when the Joker is appointed as an ambassador. Charles Prefore, writing for Screen Rant, said the story "can't decide if it wants to be fun or dark"; while Jason's torture and death at the hands of the Joker is quite somber, elements like the "globetrotting nature of the story" and the Joker becoming an ambassador for Iran are evocative of the goofy Silver Age of Comic Books. Prefore said the story's grim moments, which caused "A Death in the Family" to gain a reputation as one of the darkest Batman stories, overshadow the rest of its outlandishness. "A Death in the Family" remains a popular story among readers, and despite their reservations over the plot, critics still deemed it worth reading. Hailstone called the story a "guilty pleasure" that, while not as groundbreaking as "Year One" or Batman: