#randys meta

Because for a comic so defined by relationships, the ones he has with his family, with Izzy vs Riko, the uneasy start to his partnership with det. aisi; they could've easily shoehorned a 'chosen' father-son relationship btwn bruce & duke to contrast against the Gnomon reveal. If anything that would be exactly the expectation, that kind of story beat is a trope for a reason.

So for context for everyone, this ask was sent 2 yrs ago (yikes on me i knowww) and I def wanted to go really in-depth on Duke & Dami's interactions in Robin War but... given that it's kind of the only significant event that we have to analyze and DC continued to develop Damian & Duke past this event without any further significant team-ups btwn them... Any fic written with these characters is so context dependent & at this point still speculative imo?

Because the crux of Robin War and Duke & Dami's relationship is that they really go from this:

We Are Robin #7

To this:

Robin War #2

At the end of the day, I read this as a prime example of Duke's natural charisma & ability to get others to open up to him. And long-term, I think it did end up sticking out to other writers too! (I hate putting panels up that I can't cite so I won't but it might've been from the Grayson run??? anyways the point is-) there's one panel with Damian where he's talking to Dick (i think) & says "Drake is gone. Duke is in the mansion", and I find just that small detail in dialogue funny because... that's Damian's whole thing. How he refers to people whether it's with first, last or code name usually shows how close he considers certain people in his life & how much he respects them. His relationship with Tim has always been contentious, but Duke seems to have earned his respect & trust.

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.)

Welcome to duke nation! I hate to say it but you kinda answered your own question with your last sentence there 😅

That’s really what it boils down to. These comics teams don’t want to put in the effort of ensuring that he’s drawn his age (late teens at most), because the short of it is, is that they’re not checking their biases (racism). And yea, I’m gonna put it on the whole team here & not just the artists bc that’s the thing abt comics!!! It’s collaborative! Editors esp are supposed to be the oversight to ensure that continuity is maintained!!! Don’t get me wrong, these comic artists also need to up their game, but lbrh, the whole company is complicit at this point. (‘How long as it been since we’ve had a black-lead on-going?’ I know is smthn that some of the fandom has been keeping up and tbh they’re doing the LORDS work 🙏🫡 keep it up guys 💛)

The last (from what I can ascertain at least) in-continuity overt acknowledgment of Duke’s age was still way back in We Are Robin. I personally have not caught up to Duke’s appearances past his Secret Files issue bc of backreading hell. So anyone in duke nation feel free to chime in if we have had a more recent age-drop 👍

Years and years ago I did a breakdown of the batfam ages that I’ll see get rb’d around every so often. The thing that I would want to update abt it is that since Dami got an update for being 14 (from his Robin (2021) run if memory serves, for sure he was a freshman starting at a HS in the Batman & Robin (2023) run so that would be abt the right age), that would then mean duke is abt 18 now if they hold the same pattern like I outlined in that post. But I also still stand by my personal headcanon of starting duke off earlier as a robin, so he’ll always be at most 16 in my HEART 💛 BEAUTIFUL BABY BOIIIIIIIII

i wanted to ask if theres anything on duke and the batfam personally? i was thinking about his relationships with them and i really dont know how it is currently since most of what i know is from robin war and batman & the outsiders. or interactions in general. i lowkey just want to see him more LOL

also, i dont know where id ask this but what type of bird do you think duke would be?

Hey! Ahh, I’m always so happy to hear when y’all are reading dukes comics! I’m so glad you had fun!!! Bc Duke’s obvi the best haha if you’re ever looking for more recs, I have a gen list on my main dc blog & also feel free to drop an ask there. Licherally any comics fan here always has recs to give, we don’t gatekeep bc we want others to be insane abt our blorbos just like us haha 💛

I think I need some clarification on your question? Like do you mean if I have personal comics recs or fic recs or something else? Bc as far as general duke/batfam interactions in canon… you def got the most of it already it sounds like 😅 the reading list, as is, is fairly comprehensive, I just haven’t been personally keeping up post-Secret Files/DC Power 2024. (& there rlly unfortunately hasn’t been much published for duke since from what I’ve seen 🙃)

It doesn’t help that bc of the nature of superhero comics… we really don’t see as much of their ‘downtime’. Idk abt everyone else, but I’ve esp noticed this shift in comparison to the 80s/90s, where you have a Story-arc (2/3 issues)/downtime (1 misc adventure or Reaction™️ to prev story arc) pattern. Compare that to post-Flashpoint, where comics are written almost exclusively in mind with how they would be collected in a trade (5-6 issue story arcs before moving directly into another story arc). This means unless a writer goes out of their way to showcase those relationships (for ex, how BatO did for Cass n Duke & Secret Files helped to reinforce), it otherwise leaves a lot up to fan speculation.

So like, Duke has… varying levels of closeness with the batfam, which is just to be expected when you’ve got a potential ‘main cast’ of? What are we at like 10 now, almost? If you want me to analyze any of them specifically, I do already have an ask abt Dami & Duke in my inbox & I’ve talked a few times abt Duke n Cass. The meta tag on this blog is a good place to start too if you wanna see more interpretations of duke in gen 👍

Ok, but getting to your last one. Here me out:

I do really love Lark as a codename & for the symbolism it brings. Funnily enough, I think fandom forgets that Duke never actually donned it as a moniker, Bruce actually kinda shot him down on it:

Batman & the Signal #1

But fans usually use it in esp Reverse Robin AUs and it makes me so happy bc well, just look at this here. I pulled it from wikipedia so obvi further research encouraged & it’s got great stuff abt other things larks symbolize but!!!

Like!!!!!!!!! That’s Duke!!! That’s Duke’s WHOLE THING IN BatS!!! He’s breaking away from the mold & being a something new!!!!

Thanks!! Xxx

This is the kinda thing that I so desperately wish that I could link an interview to Scott Synder with a definitive “yes/no”. I did some preliminary searches and couldn't find anything conclusive (most interviews I found that would've been relevant were hyping up All Star Batman/Dark Days but obvi didn't go into details abt duke specifically)

I def believe that those storylines are where Snyder had actually figured out what direction he wanted Duke’s character to be pointed in because he most clearly started laying the foundation for Duke’s powers in the Cursed Wheel arc in ASB. But the thing about comics is that all these writers & artists are sharing these characters. It's all one big game of “yes and” where ideally editorial helps keep things coherent & somewhat on track, but anyone can decide to derail at any time. (For better & for worse)

So from Duke’s unnamed appearance waaaaay back in Batman (2011) #21? No, I don’t think Snyder was writing him with the idea that he was a meta in mind. For all intents, Duke was unnamed civilian character 24,601 that got a few lines with Batman, then disappeared for half a year before he’d be brought back with a more significant purpose for his character. And that's what's nice, but is usually rare in comics, is when those kinds of characters are allowed to more fully join the story like that, to become more fleshed out and eventually morph into their own character. Because I do think Snyder's plan was always to have the Thomas family introduced as an ‘early’ part of this era of Batman's mythos, and for them to be paralleled with the Waynes by the end of his writing, effectively putting narrative bookends on Zero Year vs Endgame and his Batman run. It tells me he was being intentional with his writing, and while I don't personally care for a lot of the New 52, I have a lot of respect for writers like him that were taking advantage of the ‘clean slate’ and staking their claim. Even if again, i realllllly don’t love what those clean slates did for a lot of my favs BUT ANYWAYS-

I think some writers saw some potential in Duke at the time & that was the era where they had started playing around with the idea of him joining the batfam. For example, Batman & Robin: Future’s End takes place btwn those story arcs and also is in the middle of the time period when Damian had died. Not sure if this or We Are Robin might be what you're referring to, but they both are points that lend credence to Duke more fully joining the batfam in the future, whether as a Robin, or as something new.

So by the time Snyder gets the reins on Duke again after WAR? Yea, he probably had a clearer idea of making him a meta, or maybe it was something someone in editorial threw around as an idea & Snyder ran with. We don't know these things unless the teams tell us. And like I said, I couldn’t find anything conclusive on that end.

Imo, with comics being such a collaborative medium, it doesn't leave a lot of room for speculation on authorial intent. Because it's not just one writer's intent. It's what the artists contribute, it's what editorial allows/mandates, it's what teams before them built and what the teams afterwards will do with what was given. And what comes after can sometimes be VERY different from what came before.

The only example that we can point to in canon is DukeIzzy! (& tbh I barely put any stock in WFA at this point, it's fanon-y & just ok as a starting point for new fans, but the test will always be if they make the switch to actually reading comics or if they stay in the fanon bubble)

It's heavily implied that they start dating partway thru WAR and are still together through BatS & Secret Files. With WAR it's a bit tricky because we don't get it stated Out Loud, but I'll give you a few panels here & encouragement to read them in their full context:

(We Are Robin #9)

(We Are Robin #11 (? Forgot to keep track of this one))

Duke is very physically affectionate with Izzy! And it's to a point where as you're reading, you'll see that Riko has a bit of an implied envious streak. (& yes, it's envy, not jealousy, I double checked lol)

I bring this up because later in Batman & the Signal (#1 below)

^Izzy finally verbally confirms what was implied in WAR before. But these issues lack the overt physical affection from before. Possibly because Duke & Izzy are being mindful of Riko’s presence? Potential discomfort with PDA when friends are known to be near vs before when there was more anonymity by being in more open public spaces where some forms of PDA would be acceptable? Much to consider…

By Secret Files, they're back to some PDA (Cass had just left the Hatch after sparring with Duke so they're relatively alone here):

She's a little worried for him towards the end of this issue as Duke self-isolates a bit. But given the day he had, it's understandable, a bit worrying, and great angst potential imo. Duke’s learned to be very self-reliant over the course of his training, and when that in turn starts to affect a characters relationships it's always 🤌 great. I love when characters 'backslide' & relearn that they gotta let ppl back in 💛 (which kind of gets covered with the Outsiders helping him out in the Urban Legends arc, but goddddd do I wish it was a proper like 6-8 issue arc and not a 2-bit and done thing :/

Anyways, comfort levels with PDA is the easiest thing to point to when it comes to a visual medium, but obvsly it's not the only thing to consider when writing ships. I would say Duke in all of his relationships is very straightforward with whoever he’s talking to, Izzy historically has been no different (with the exception of when he pulls away from everyone at the end of Secret Files). Whether you're writing DukeIzzy, an Xreader or some other ship, I would say getting a feel for Duke's voice first will be one of your best bets. Consider how he interacts with Izzy & others around him. And then tbh go nuts.

I’m more of a hobbyist doodler & writer, so redesigns aren’t usually my speed. Usually like to leave that up to the ppl with a lot more skill so I am 🫡 at you anon, Godspeed!!!!

That being said, I rlly like when fan artists redesign his helmet & try more hairstyles than just the shaved head/close crew cut. There’s so many WAY more visually interesting hairstyles that we could be using and we keep seeing the same shit over & over 😭 free my boy!!!!! AHEM ANYWAYS- So that’s always a good starting point imo! As far as his signal suit itself, it’s p alright, it’s nice that the batkids for the most part each have ‘their’ color & yellow being not only great for a daytime superhero but also ideally as a nod to his robin days (ik duke wore more red than anything else for his Robin but shhhh, let me have thissss)

Actually speaking of, I think that would be rlly cool, incorporating some red accents possibly in the future? Not just bc of the robin days but also Shiva telling him ‘the flash works during the day and HE wears red’ lives RENT FREE in my head aksjsj (paraphrasing Batman & the Outsiders (2019))

Only other thing that I can think of & what I could see maybe stumping you, is that Duke’s suit is def very armored compared to some of the bats? Namely I think of Jason & Cass as prime examples, here lemme show you:

Batman Secret Files: The Signal

Cass esp has no armor whatsoever, considering she has what’s essentially a bodysuit (& yes, there’s a layer of sexism to be discussed abt how women are designed in comics but that’s a discussion for another blog). If we’re being VERY “GENEROUS”, an in-universe excuse is that this suit was designed by Helena Bertinelli & passed along to Cass & also given how skilled she is at combat, she doesn’t have a ‘need’ to be armored, since most people won’t land a hit on her in the first place. Again, all too generous read, but I think artists can be allowed to get away with the bodysuits if the hero is powerscaled accordingly (being either very powerful/skilled or a ranged fighter for ex)

New Talent Showcase (2017)

Contrast that with Jason, who usually is depicted having a bit of armor chest-plating/shin & knee guards (oh and his helmet lol) but otherwise has more of a street wear look (it’s part of why he’s part of my cosplay repertoire bc he’s so easy to put together haha) And again makes sense, since his primary weapon is Guns & he works primarily in gotham, he doesn’t need to be Fortified like other supes, just plated up enough to protect vitals & keep himself agile for hand-to-hand when needed.