Hope you're having a good day always.

Thank you! I’m gonna address ur aside first real quick bc like!!! It’s what my whole goal was with this blog & esp these last few years I feel like I’ve rlly been accomplishing it? At the very least it def feels like there’s been improvement with the general fandom being more aware of duke. As a fellow fan of color, I’m just so happy to create a space for everyone to feel welcome & uplift an awesome character who I love a lot. Representation matters so much, it’s a big part of the reason why I started reading comics in earnest while I was figuring myself out & during a time where I was getting more in touch with my own heritage. For some ppl, reading comics is just a fun hobby, but I’ve found a lot more often, these stories & characters have genuinely lasting impact on us. And I just hope more ppl find themselves open to connecting with Duke bc his story is genuinely so great 💛

As for Doug, this is absolutely the right place to ask! And it’s ok to feel like you’ve missed something, bc it’s something that’s only truly covered in 2-3 issues and could be very easy to ‘miss’. Unfortunately, he & Elaine’s stories both are what I’d call “editorial is asleep at the wheel”. Real quick, the last chronological mention of them that I recall was DC Power (2024) on Duke’s bio page:

Where they are listed as deceased 🙃🙃🙃 now this is especially disconcerting because the last time we actually saw Doug was in Batman Secret Files: The Signal. The end of which was when Elaine had been kidnapped:

This was followed up eventually by the Batman Urban Legends two-issue arc with Duke getting help from the Outsiders to finally track down Elaine & also ended with her being cured (#18 & 19). Doug was never mentioned during this story arc so I’ve always taken it as either writing him off, or for us to assume that he’s simply at a long-term care facility like before. Also I noticed a continuity error while rereading real quick. Because at the end of Secret Files, Elaine had been kidnapped during a kind of smash-and-grab from their hospital:

But in Urban Legends, they say she was more subtly taken????

The reason I bring this up, bc I have been reading for a long time now (I have a little over 4.7k comics logged on LoCG rn, I’d call myself an expert on certain characters/runs & on how comics ‘work’ for the most part). So I think I can say with some authority that sure, when a character is passed along between several writers, some aspects of their storyline might get confused/dropped/retconned depending on what the current writer wants to accomplish.

But the fact that we went from Doug not even being acknowledged in the Elaine rescue/curing arc to them both being written off as dead in Duke’s bio just felt SO egregious even for DC. Elaine & Doug mean so much to Duke’s story, to the Batman mythos: THEY WERE SET UP AS PARALLELS TO MARTHA & THOMAS. THATS IN THE FUCKING TEXT!!!!!!!

^all the way from Batman (2011) #37!!!!

Like on one hand I’m so hyped abt duke getting some appearances this year bc we’ve been having a DROUGHT of content. But on the other the knowledge that we’re not getting anything significant to his story & what WERE the most significant story arcs (his mom being kidnapped & before that them continuously tip-toeing around an eventual cure for his parents) was then tied up with such a quick arc & then basically just discarded. Dear GOD IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY & SAD AND JUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That DC Power issue really took the wind outta my sails & is a big reason why I wasn’t keeping up with Duke for a hot sec there. (Confession, I remember at least reading those Urban Legend issues at some point during my sabbatical, but this time around doing a reread it was like… wow i think I remembered the panels that got reposted here a lot more than the overall story arc, which is also kinda forgettable unfortunately. And that’s sad!!! Bc it should be a story arc that has a lot more impact but it just!!! Was not good!!! imo ofc, I’m sure some people liked it a lot more than me and that’s okay. I just think it was a waste of a good story & had a lot more potential that what we ended up getting.)

All-Star Batman #2

Despite the Jokerisation, Elaine recognises Duke. She knows that's her son - she says "I know it's you" and calls his name. Snyder goes out of his way to underscore this recognition, which plays a vital role in Duke's eventual acceptance of what happened to Elaine and Doug:

All-Star Batman #4

Duke comes to understand that Elaine is only attacking him because she loves him (borne out by what happens later, when she saves him from Daryl). However, Duke interestingly includes Doug in this reasoning. Doug, who has never insulted him, whose Jokerisation has never taken the form Elaine's does. This reasoning may hold for Elaine, but it makes absolutely no sense for Doug.

We Are Robin #8

Duke’s relationship with his parents isn’t talked about enough

* think picnics, fundraisers, etc.