Batman #357

A Robin for the 1980s

By the early 1980s Dick Grayson, the original Robin, had grown up and was leading the Teen Titans. DC needed a new boy wonder, and the writer Gerry Conway, who was then writing both Batman and Detective Comics, built one into a slow-burning subplot that wove between the two titles.

Batman #357 carries a March 1983 cover date and was published on November 23, 1982. Its lead story, "Squid," picks up from Detective Comics #523 and continues in Detective #524. Batman hunts the associates of a jailed crime boss, Tony Falco, who are being recruited by the Squid, a former spy turned gangster who wants to become Gotham's first true crime lord.

The subplot is what collectors care about. Dick Grayson visits a circus in New Jersey, where his friend Waldo introduces him to the Todds, the circus trapeze act: Joseph, Trina and their son Jason. Unknown to Dick, the circus owner, Mr. Sloan, is being squeezed in a protection racket by a crook known only as Croc. The issue ends with the Squid, having seen through Batman's disguise, throwing him into a tank with a giant squid.

Gerry Conway and Don Newton

Gerry Conway was born in Brooklyn on September 10, 1952. He had written "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" for The Amazing Spider-Man at 20, co-created the Punisher and Firestorm, and spent about a month and a half as Marvel's editor-in-chief in 1976. At DC he wrote Batman #337 to #359, from July 1981 to May 1983, and Detective Comics #497 to #526, from December 1980 to May 1983. Jason Todd and Killer Croc were among his last additions to Gotham.

Don Newton, who penciled the issue, was born in St. Charles, Virginia, on November 6, 1934. He had taught art in Phoenix, broke into comics at Charlton in 1974, and fulfilled a lifelong ambition by drawing Captain Marvel for DC. He began drawing Batman with Batman #305 in November 1978 and produced 79 Batman family stories. He died in Phoenix on August 19, 1984, of a massive heart attack, less than two years after this issue went on sale.

Credit for Killer Croc is shared: reference sources name Conway as writer, with Newton and Gene Colan as artists.

The Robin who died by phone vote

In the original continuity Jason Todd's parents were circus acrobats killed by Killer Croc, and Bruce Wayne took the orphan in, as he had Dick Grayson. After DC rebooted its universe in the mid-1980s, the writer Max Allan Collins rewrote Jason in 1987 as a street kid caught trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile in Crime Alley.

The new Jason was not popular. In the 1988 storyline "A Death in the Family," in Batman #426 to #429, DC let readers decide his fate with a 1-900 telephone poll printed at the end of #427. The vote was 5,343 for death to 5,271 for survival, a margin of 72 votes, and the Joker killed him in Batman #428.

He did not stay dead. In 2005 the writer Judd Winick brought him back in the "Under the Hood" storyline, revealing in Batman #638 that the new Red Hood was Jason Todd. The story became the 2010 animated film Batman: Under the Red Hood, and Curran Walters played Jason in the Titans television series.

Killer Croc, whose real name is Waylon Jones, was written as a man with a rare form of atavism that gave him reptilian features, raised by an abusive aunt. He grew from a cunning gangster into one of Batman's best-known monsters, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in the 2016 film Suicide Squad and voiced by Steve Blum in the Batman: Arkham video games.

Which first, and which copy

For Jason Todd the claim is clean: this is his first appearance. For Killer Croc it is not. Croc is glimpsed in Detective Comics #523, cover-dated February 1983, and gets his full first appearance in Detective #524, cover-dated March 1983. One graded-sales database calls Batman #357 his second cameo, while a grading label quoted by a variant guide calls it his first full appearance. Collectors should treat #357 as the first Jason Todd and an early Croc.

Copies were printed with an Atari advertising insert, which graders note on the label. A Canadian price variant with a 75-cent cover price also exists and collectors of those variants rate it highly; one collectors' guide notes a publisher's circulation-statement figure of 97,741 copies in its entry for the issue. The issue has been reprinted in Tales of the Batman: Gerry Conway Vol. 3 and in a facsimile edition, so the original 1983 printing should be confirmed on the label.

How the CGC 9.8 trades

Batman #357 is a common Bronze Age book, and high grades are not scarce. One tracker of graded sales listed 714 recorded sales of graded copies in early October 2026, 97 of them at CGC 9.8, with the most recent 9.8 sale on August 19, 2026.

Most CGC 9.8 copies have traded in a band of roughly $450 to $700 in 2025 and 2026. At auction one sold for $464.00 on August 20, 2026, and another for $586.00 on October 1, 2026. Online, a copy brought $699.00 on February 5, 2026, two days after another changed hands for $321.99, an unusually low result. The highest single 9.8 sale on one tracker's record is $1,750, on November 13, 2021.

The Canadian 75-cent variant commands a premium. A guide to those variants reports a CGC 9.8 sold for $1,932 in August 2021, and a 9.8 Canadian copy sold at auction for $960.00 on April 4, 2025.

The numbers

Cover date

March 1983 (published November 23, 1982)

Print run

Not documented; one guide cites a publisher's circulation-statement figure of 97,741 copies

Census

No dated census count found in the sources consulted

Recorded graded sales, October 2026

714 across all grades; 97 at CGC 9.8

Variants

Canadian 75-cent price variant; facsimile reprint

Jason Todd death poll, 1988

5,343 to 5,271, a 72-vote margin

Timeline

1. Nov 1978

   Don Newton begins drawing Batman with Batman #305.

2. Jul 1981

   Gerry Conway's run on Batman begins with #337.

3. Nov 23, 1982

   Batman #357 is published, introducing Jason Todd and his parents.

4. Feb 1983

   Killer Croc makes a cameo in Detective Comics #523 (cover date).

5. Mar 1983

   Killer Croc's full first appearance in Detective Comics #524 (cover date).

6. May 1983

   Conway's runs on Batman and Detective Comics end.

7. Aug 19, 1984

   Don Newton dies in Phoenix.

8. 1987

   Max Allan Collins rewrites Jason Todd's origin as a street orphan.

9. 1988

   Readers vote 5,343 to 5,271 by phone to kill Jason Todd; he dies in Batman #428.

10. 2005

    Judd Winick's "Under the Hood" brings Jason back as the Red Hood.

11. 2010

    Batman: Under the Red Hood is released as an animated film.

12. 2016

    Killer Croc appears in the film Suicide Squad.

13. Nov 13, 2021

    A CGC 9.8 copy sells for $1,750, the highest on one tracker's record.

14. Oct 1, 2026

    A CGC 9.8 copy with white pages sells at auction for $586.00.

The world in 1983

• Jan 19, 1983

  Apple releases the Lisa personal computer.

• Feb 28, 1983

  The final episode of M*A*S*H becomes the most-watched broadcast in U.S. history to that point.

• Mar 23, 1983

  Ronald Reagan proposes missile-defense technology, soon nicknamed "Star Wars."

• Mar 25, 1983

  Michael Jackson performs the moonwalk on the Motown 25 television special.

• May 25, 1983

  Return of the Jedi opens in theaters.

• Jun 18, 1983

  Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Batman #357 is number 77 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (98 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The fans who voted to kill Jason Todd in 1988 won by just 72 phone calls.
• Jason Todd started out as a circus acrobat, just like Dick Grayson, before a 1987 rewrite made him a street kid stealing the Batmobile's tires.
• Batman spends the issue's cliffhanger being thrown into a tank with a giant squid.
• The issue was printed with an Atari advertising insert, which graders note on the label.
• The issue's own editor's note cites the wrong earlier issue for the Squid's previous appearance: it says Detective #499, but the encounter was in #497.
• Artist Don Newton was a former junior high school art teacher in Phoenix.