I was thinking about Under the Red Hood again and this scene:

[ID: four panels of the Under the Red Hood comic. Jason Todd’s monologue, as he holds the Joker at gunpoint and confronts Batman: "I’m not talking about killing Cobblepot or Scarecrow or Clayface. Not Riddler or Dent… I’m talking about him. Just him. And doing it because… because he took me away from you”. End ID]

The real heartbreak of the comic is this scene. I have seen people take Jason’s monologue and run a marathon with it arguing that Batman should kill the joker because otherwise he’s responsible for all the deaths caused by the Joker yada yada.  My brother in the DC comics, that’s not the point. Jason knows Batman doesn’t kill. Jason knows that Batman won’t ever kill as a way to stop crime. He knows that. This is not Jason asking Batman to kill the Joker in order to become a better or more efficient vigilante. This is a son asking his dad to prove that he loves him by avenging him. The “Just him” is important. That’s why when Batman says he can’t cross that line because it would be too easy and that he would never come back from that, Jason is so furious. Because he’s not talking about Batman changing his way to fight crime. He’s not expecting Batman to kill anyone else. For Jason there shouldn’t be a line to be crossed, because the Joker already exploded that line when he killed Bruce’s son. Jason is asking for one thing, and Batman’s answer is about something else entirely - the big picture that Jason can’t even consider, because nothing should be more important than your son. Nothing. The heartbreak of this conversation is that Jason and Bruce couldn’t understand each other until the very end.

And it ends in tragedy.