I'm very new to Batman comics, and have just been getting into the core stories. I'm currently reading The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and the death of Jason Todd is mentioned. I looked it up, and apparently this arc was published in 1986. But when I look up the Death in the Family arc when Jason dies, it says it was published in 1988. Am I missing something here? Please forgive my ignorance!

The Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986. In this "future" story, Jason Todd was dead (which resulted in Batman giving up his cowl for years.) However, Todd was very much alive as the current Robin in mainstream continuity. Ironically, in 1988 DC Comics decided that killing off Todd would be something left up to fandom. A phone-in vote promotion resulted in the death of Jason Todd at the hands of the Joker during the story arc called "A Death in the Family."

Here's some info from Wikipedia on Jason Todd.

"Though initially popular, following a revamping of his origin by Max Allan Collins, the Jason Todd version of Robin was not well-received by fans. For 1988's Batman: A Death in the Family storyline, DC Comics held a telephone poll to determine whether or not the character would die at the hands of the Joker, Batman's arch nemesis. The character was killed off by a vote of 5343-5271. Subsequent Batman stories dealt with Batman's guilt over not being able to prevent Jason's death."

FULL ARTICLE HERE

As mentioned, the Dark Knight Returns is set in the future with Batman being 20 to 30 years older. A lot that is depicted in the story (Robin's Death, the rift with Superman), was picked up by the main DC line and played with in a kind of: "Are they leading to the events of DKR?" vibe. The very same thing happened after the Kingdom Come series years later, where for a while it looked like the DCU was headed towards THAT future.

In The Dark Knight Returns we also saw a one-armed Green Arrow which I believe (not read the actual issue, just issues referring to it) was alluded to when some years later they decided to kill off Ollie for a while. Ollie had his arm trapped somewhere with a bomb about to go off when Superman arrived. Superman couldn't destroy the thing holding his arm and offered to cut it off and get him to safety. Ollie refused and was blown up. The Ollie in TDKR had obviously made the other decision and come to regret it, if his attitude to Big Blue in the future is anything to go by.

Ahhh okay, that clears it up. Thank you very much, guys. It's kind of cool how that worked out then. I thought I had my dates mixed up. If you read TDKR right after a Death in the Family like I did it seems pretty seamless!