#duke thomas

[toomanyf4ndoms77]

Detective Comics (2016-) #990.

It's nice finding a Duke and Bruce scene I haven't seen before.

[suffering-and-misery]

Imagining a Cass Steph Duke and Dami hangout where they've all snuck into Steph's dorm to make slime. Cass brings a bunch of glitter and trinkets to add into the slime to the point where its unusable, Dami perfects the glue:activator ratio (he calculated it) and so does Steph (she eyeballed it). Duke overactivates his smile, makes rubber, and spends the next twenty minutes throwing it at whoevers nearest to him. They fall asleep on the floor with pillows cuz the bed was too small

lil thought I had while yapping with @toomanyf4ndoms77

[haveihitanerve]

huge fan of the headcanon that Duke can just... turn invisible and no one except for the BatFam/certain Associates know/can avoid him

Like Bruce is leading Clark and Diana through the Manor and chatting and randomly walks around the middle of the hallway for no reason and Diana follows him while Clark just walks headfirst into Duke and neither Duke nor Bruce realized what they'd done

Tim is casually talking with a couple of friends he has over and randomly picks up a sandwich from the plate in the middle of the table and holds it over his shoulder where it just disappears

Steph is helping Alfred set the table and just shoves a glass bowl into the abyss and lets go and Alfred is two seconds away from screaming when he realizes 'oh, Duke is holding it' and Steph didn't even realize he wasn't visible.

Hal is gesturing while telling a story on the Watchtower and turns to look at nothing and goes "You were there, tell them" and the emptiness starts talking and Barry nearly has a heart attack until Duke flickers into existence.

[roguestorm]

Duke presents a problem for the DC writers. It’s 2016, DC’s launching Rebirth, and you’ve got this character who has taken up the Robin mantle in a different way. If you don’t tie Duke to the Batfamily, he disappears. DC isn’t interested in preserving him as his own thing (which would have been the most narratively satisfying thing for him). Instead, he gets put into the Batman and All Star Batman titles. But as soon as you put him into those titles, you’ve lost what makes him unique. You’re left with yet another smart, dedicated kid who wants to do what’s best for Gotham and is going to pursue that by working with Batman. He’s got a different name and costume, sure, but he’s essentially fulfilling the same role as, for example, Tim Drake’s Robin.

The Cursed Wheel, the backup story for the first arc of ASB, is directly about how Duke fits into the Batfam and what his role will be. That’s written by Snyder, who created Duke in the Batman: Zero Year story, and who I think is really interested in moving the character forward and keeping him around. Ultimately, DC (whether that’s Snyder or Tony Patrick or someone else) lands on something that, from a publishing perspective, makes sense, which is giving Duke powers. That’s an easy point of differentiation that opens up new possibilities. They also go with a daytime vigilante angle that’s a little silly (IMO) but works well thematically.

But they haven’t actually solved the problem. They haven’t given Duke a story or character trait or role that successfully differentiates him. And part of the problem goes back to my initial point — what made him unique (his disconnect from the Batfamily) was also what made him (in DC’s opinion) totally unmarketable. They didn’t want to pursue a genuinely new story because the entire comic book industry is kept alive by simply writing the same story over and over again. Another part of the problem, though, is lack of follow-through. They made Duke the daytime vigilante with light-based powers, didn’t give him a solo, and have shuffled him around various books. Rebirth was a decade ago! By the time Tim Drake was ten years into existence, we were on issue 60 of his solo series.

To sum up, I’m not saying Duke hasn’t had good writing. I’m saying that DC doesn’t seem to have a good vision for the character, and every time someone does have a good vision for the character, DC changes direction. We’re left trying to assemble a character out of short stories, which is never going to let Duke be a character as well-defined as Cass or Damian or Dick or any of the others.

[emilyarmadillo]

Sungender flag colorpicked from The Signal

[tobesaught]

DUKE THOMAS SIGNAL

[republicanjasontodd]

This was originally gonna be Duke n Cass but Steph worked her way here and she's too cute to leave behind

I've been reading Cass and I see why Cass fans are always telling ppl to read Batgirl 2000 *obvs i didnt start here but its what im currently at bc its really good so far i love the art and the way they do flashbacks and sugjfhfhfhfhg. I decided to read Cass for 4 reasons.

1. She was a chara that was interesting to me and I wanted to know more

2. I'm a Duke fan who likes the Duke & Cass duo and I felt like reading abt her could help me flesh their dynamic out more

3. Similar point with Babs bc I'm reading Barbara rn too

4. I lowkey wanna see if the notion that she's supposedly too "difficult to write" in fanfics holds true or is there perhaps some unintentional bias involved when thinking about her in this fandom that expresses itself on putting her on a pedestal of superiority