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Random Duke Thomas Headcannons pt 4

Insired by @overcookedfool 's headcannon about Cass and Duke being banned from hide and seek, Bruce uses their hiding skills to train the other batfamily members.

The training involves Duke and Cass hiding around Gotham and the others having to find them before sun up (for Cass) or sun down (for Duke). So that everyone can still get their work done, this only happens once a week.

If someone finds them in time, they can get a trophy from the batcave, if Duke or Cass remain unfound, they get the same deal.

Dick gets them to use carnival rules so winning a lot of little trophies can get you a big one. After a few months of the training exercise Duke and Cass put their trophies together to offically own the dinosaur.

Random Duke Thomas Headcannons pt 1

Duke is my all-time favourite character, and he doesn't get enough love, so I'm going to share some random head cannons I have for our boy.

I love the idea of sensory seeking autistic Duke.

He is canonically a fan of a metal band and I can imagine after a log day of patrol and school him just listening to them full volume. Even with headphones his cousin, Jay, still have to bang on his door sometimes to turn the volume down.

His meta ability would let him visually stimming by causing the light in a room to flash repeatedly. This would also work with him manipulating shadows to make the area dark and light again.

Or he would use his Ghost Vision and pace around a room so the versions of him all burn into one. Duke would also do this during bat family dinners. With so many bats around running all over the manor to help with food or run from each other in importune game of tag. I image the overlapping visual would be immaculate.

Did I give his these head cannons as a form of projecting?

Mostly, yes, but it's my post so I can do what I want./lh

Duke Thomas and the Robin Mantle

There's been some minor discussion about whether Duke counts as an 'official' Robin or not. While that discussion is interesting, I actually don't think it's the crux of the Duke and Robin issue. To me, the question is whether or not he should be Robin. And, to me, the answer is definitively yes.

This is purely my opinion, and I haven't read every single Duke comic so it's possible I've misread/missed things. Any Duke fans, absolutely feel free to add or disprove anything here!

The Changing Robin

The first thing to understand is that Robin, as a mantle, has shifted with each person it's been passed to. Tim's Robin doesn't mean the same thing as Jason's Robin, which doesn't mean the same thing as Damian's. A mark of a true Robin is the ability to shift the meaning of Robin by wearing the colours.

Duke absolutely fulfils this criteria. In fact, him and his We Are Robin crew are the biggest shift in the meaning of Robin since its creation.

Cover from We Are Robin #1. The phrase "We're not sidekicks. We're an army!" signals the shift from Robin as individual to Robin as collective; from Robin as tied to the singular Batman to Robin as a wider movement, a socio-political force. The last question, "are you ready?", is vitally important as well. Duke as Robin is meant to be different. He's meant to be non-normative, a groundbreaking turn in what Robin looks and feels like.

At the end of the first issue, a disguised Alfred (who started We Are Robin) thinks the following:

Alfred infuses the phrase "of color" with two meanings: the Robin colours, and People of Colour. By explicitly linking Robin to POC, the comic is suggesting that not only can kids of colour be Robin, but that they should be Robin. Robins of Colour are the "future of this city," and Duke is the vanguard of this future. It's no coincidence that the Robin before (Damian) and the one after (Maps) are both POC. Duke, however, is the Robin that gives the mantle an explicit direction towards diversity: him and WAR use Robin as a social movement, and in doing so transform the colours of Robin into a symbol for the diversity in Gotham and the world.

Robin as Collective

Duke doesn't change Robin alone. The point of We Are Robin is that Robin is a collective, and it's important that Duke doesn't start WAR (as much as people like to say he did). By joining late, the comic demonstrates that Duke is part of a bigger movement.

The Robin community represents POC solidarity, the necessity and ability of the oppressed to band together. Lee Bermejo ends We Are Robin's final issue with "stress on the word "we"" - Duke's arc, in one sense, is learning to rely and work with others (he initially mistrusts basically everyone). The WAR community is essential to both Duke's character development and his tenure as Robin.

So to have this page, affirming his loyalty and love for them, to be followed immediately by them being written out is... something.

Duke appears next in Batman: Rebirth, where Bruce gives him the yellow suit and tells him he's not looking for a Robin. As soon as he stops being Robin, the community around him quite literally falls apart. Izzy sticks around for a bit but fades into obscurity, Riko and Dax turn evil, Dre ends up in Arkham - all of these fates are antithetical to these characters and genuinely tragic.

Batman: The Secret Files: The Signal is possibly the worst Duke story in existence, but it's important to understanding why Robin!Duke mattered. Riko calls Signal 'Bat-Signal', highlighting his sudden reduction to a Batman acolyte. His friends turning on him shows how, by losing Robin, he also lost the community formed by WAR. In every way, his transition into the Signal was saturated by loss.

Robin Doesn't Need A Batman

Bruce giving Duke the Signal suit is borderline insulting. He already had an identity predicated on the fact that he didn't need Batman.

From Batman (2011) #45, Batman: Rebirth, and Night of the Monster Men. "Robin doesn't need a Batman" is an inversion of Tim's 'Batman needs a Robin' - in many ways, Duke is the opposite of Tim, who's rich, White, and whose Robin is the most focused on helping Batman. If Tim is the ideal Robin-as-partner, Duke is the ideal Robin-as-individual. His idea of Robin is not, and has never been, associated with Batman.

People who say Duke isn't an official Robin since he was never Batman's partner miss the point. He is Robin because he was never Batman's partner. That's what Robin means to him - a mantle free from Bruce and all authority.

"Batman is on the gargoyle. Robin... Robin is on the street." Robin is the person on the ground, who lives and belongs to the people. When Duke becomes Signal, this ground aspect - as well as his separation from Batman - is gone.

In this cover from Batman & The Signal, they gave him a Bat symbol and put him on a gargoyle. They erased every single part of his Robin philosophy.

The Original Robin

Post-We Are Robin, Bruce becomes the Batfam member Duke interacts with the most. Besides the insult of Bruce withholding Robin, this fact also strips away one of my favourite aspects about early Duke - he was tied to the Batfamily through the Robins (especially Damian and Dick), not by Batman.

It's Dick, the original Robin, who chooses him.

Dick recognises that him and Duke have a lot in common. He tells Duke in Robin War that he's "got it," and that he's a natural leader - Dick knows Duke has what it takes to be Robin, and explicitly endorses him.

Not only that, but when Dick sends Duke to jail (along with the other Robins, official and unofficial), he tells Duke that he "take[s] care of [his] family". He basically inducts Duke into the family then and there!

Dick's endorsement of Duke makes it more interesting that Bruce doesn't make him Robin. Despite Duke's disillusionment at the end of Robin War (dispelled soon after in WAR), the events in RW confirm that Duke can and should be Robin. Bruce not making Duke Robin is defying both Duke's potential and Dick's right to choose Robins.

Robin as Family

On the rooftop in Robin War, Dick tells Duke that Robin is about family. This is the fundamental connection between them both: Robin acts as the link to the families they've lost and gained.

For Dick, Robin keeps John and Mary Grayson alive, while also symbolising his connection to Bruce. For Duke, Robin is the intersection of three families: the heroic legacy of his parents, the tight-knit community of We Are Robin, and the newfound friendship of the Batfamily.

In Batman (2011) #45, Duke tries to give his friend Daryl a Robin badge. He says, "you and me, we came up together. We're fam[ily]." Even before Dick, Duke associated Robin with family, and Daryl implies in the next issue that Duke became Robin because of his parents' inclination to help. Signal, of course, also comes from his mom; but unlike Robin, Signal isn't a legacy mantle. As Robin, he constantly inducted people like Daryl, Riko, Damian, etc. into his family. As Signal, his circle shrinks immeasurably, until it's really only the Batfamily and the Outsiders if we're being generous. (Daryl also turns evil - a really unfortunate pattern for Duke side characters).

Lark and Conclusion

I'm going to end with this panel from Batman & The Signal #1, which is emblematic of the way DC has treated Duke and Robin as a whole. Bruce tells Duke that Lark is "too soft" a name. DC was probably debating between Lark and Signal, but it's telling what they went with. How is Lark too soft, exactly? How is it any softer than Robin?

By overtly dismissing the bird-like name, Bruce - and DC editorial, or whoever decided this - is definitively moving Duke away from Robin. And it's a shame. In Duke's transition from Robin to Signal, he has next to no agency. Bruce tells him he's not Robin, Bruce gives him the suit, Bruce tells him not to be Lark, Bruce gives him another suit. It's a stark contrast from his induction into Robin - though Alfred arranged it, he gave Duke a choice. Duke chooses Robin.

Duke being disallowed the Robin mantle is, to me, on par with DC stripping Cass of the Bat symbol during the New 52. The racism behind both these decisions cannot be overstated - both Cass and Duke redefined their mantles, and their mantles defined them. At least Cass' mistake has been corrected, and lots of writers and fans acknowledge how horrible that period was. For Duke, he was never given a real chance. And it's unlikely he ever will be.

This is not a knock against the Signal identity or any writers. However, it genuinely saddens me to think that all of this story potential - Duke's redefinition of Robin, his relationship to Dick, his connection to We Are Robin, and above all his ability to choose who he wants to be - has been neglected and cast aside. Even if they never acknowledge his role as Robin, I hope future stories centre him once again, because it's what he deserves.

No because you see Duke was FORGED by his parents everything he does is in service of THEM to HONOUR their legacies. But Cass was forged IN SPITE of David Cain everything she does is not about HIM but to TAKE CONTROL of her destiny. And Batgirl was her, it was Cass it was all of her, it was the first thing she ever owned; and Robin was his but also theirs, it was Duke and his friends and Damian and the people Duke loves, it was something they shared. But now Cass shares Batgirl with Steph like a hoodie because she loves her, because she can now forge a community around her she never had as a kid. And now Duke becomes the Signal because he's forging his own path, because he's directly honouring his mother rather than using another mother's legacy, maintaining his focus on community but also celebrating what makes him special. They're SO DIFFERENT but they LOVE EACH OTHER and family is so so important to both of them do you even understand what it means for Duke to call Cass his sister??? And for Cass to let him??? These two people for whom family means very different things but is so fundamental to who they are, for them to meet and choose each other means THE WORLD. DUKE & CASS FOREVER

wlw DC championship - SUDDEN DEATH!!

Random Duke Thomas Headcannons pt 2

I think Duke and Bao (Clownhunter) would be childhood friends.

Bao and Duke both grew up in the Narrows. I imagine Duke meet him at Bao's parents pho restaurant and dragged him off to play together.

The two would run through the steets, play tag with the other Narrows kids, do their homework, which at that age was mostly just colouring in, in a cornor seat at the restaurant.

When Zero City happened, Bao's family would move in to the apparentment block with Duke's family and others. It was that point when their relationship chnaged from friends to brothers.

They were attched to each other. Duke took it upon himself to be the older brother (dispite only being a year older). He would tell Bao to do riddle while he went out to get fish, no matter how much the other protested (or how much he was scolded when he got home). Bao use to pretend to be more scared than he really was so he could stay with Duke, hoping to protect him a bit.

So their bond grows, as they start middle school they don't hang out as much being in different grade but are always together at lunch. They get into petty fights, play video games together, were general hooligan(/aff) on the streets.

Then Bao's parents we killed by Joker. He started living with his aunt and uncle, Duke and his parents would bring food around, mostly as an excuse for Duke to just sit with him. In the grief, Bao closed himself off, stopped responding to Duke's messges, stopped going to school, stopped leaving the house.

Duke tried to keep contacting him, he would show up at his house, force Bao to sit with him and do his online school homwork while Duke did his, like when they were kids in the restaurant. That stopped by Joker got Duke's parents too.

Duke got washed away in the foster system, in being Robin, in becoming Lark and later Signal, in joining the Outsiders.

The Joker War started, Bao became Clownhunter, was washed away in his bew found duty to finally stop the Koker how Batman never could.

They almost naturally just stopped talking.

Until, while waiting for Jay to be able to take custody of him, Bruce sent him to Gotham Academy.

There was Bao again. The first thing they did was fight. They were both mad at each other for abandoneding the other. A few hours later they made up. Dispite not talking for so long, they were best friends, more than that, brothers.

They caught each other up if their lives, keeping the vigilante business out. They started messaging each other regularly. Duke would fight the people who builied Bao, the two spending a few afternoons in detention because of it. They would just sit with each other, happy to be in each others space.

Bao joined Batman incorporated which caused Clownhunter and The Signal to finally meet.

After taking down Professor Pyg's operation, some of the Batkids, lncluding Signal, arrived for clean up. Clowerhunter knew about the Signal, he was Gotham's hero. Signal knew about Clownhunter, he'd read the file Batman had on him. When they saw each other they immediately understood who was under the mask.

There wasn't a chance to talk that night, they didn't want to reveal each others identifies to the other vigilante's and Ghostmaker had an argument with Nightwing, quickly ending Batman Incorporated's time in Gotham.

They meet the next night, in costume, on the roof of their old apprentment building. Once they shared during Zero Year. Not much was said, Duke didn't mention the people Bao had killed, Bao didn't mention him joining the Batfamily. However, they understood each other mor now. Not much needed to be said. Duke gave him a Signal beacon, a promise to help if Bao ever needed. Bao gave the same sentiment. The two parted ways again.

They knew at that point they were closer than ever, dispite being so far apart. They had their own paths to follow but they felt more secure now knowing they had family in the hero community who will help them in any way.

Hi!! I love you so much <33333 /qpr

Simp

Duke's eyes glow brighter than most flashlight. His teeth glow faintly enough to see them in the dark when he smiles. His blood glows a little as well. He sometimes forgets he can turn them off.

Duke at 3 am eating cereal in the mansion, in the dark.

Jason breaking in through the window, seeing two glowing orbs sitting at the table: Holy shit! What is that?

Duke: Huh?

Jason: Duke? Oh my god what's wrong with your face?

Duke: Rude! My face is amazing!

Jason: Why is it glowing!

Duke: Oh, yeah they do that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Duke on one of his rare nighttime missions with Steph, Tim, and Jason.

Steph: Shit, I lost my flashlight

Tim: Here, I think Bruce packed me a spare.

Jason: No! Wait, let me try something

Tim and Steph: ??

Jason takes Duke's helmet off: Look that way.

Duke's, eyes being better than any flash light Wayne money can buy: This feels dehumanizing.

Jason: Shh flashlights don't speak.

I don't really like the debate about Duke Thomas on if he's the "normal one" or "just as crazy" as his siblings because it's based on a false dichotomy that limits Duke's characterization in a fandom that already doesn't really know where to place him. The long story short is that Duke is like his siblings which is to say he does whatever based off of his sense of morality and he often has no scale of normal human behavior.

I'm pretty sure that the idea of him as the normal one comes from Wayne Family Adventures. (Though if this predates it in fandom please let me know). WFA chooses to play into his newness to give insights into the dynamics of Wayne manor and the larger batfamily.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad choice. I'm pretty giving to adaptations because it's hard to summarize 80+ years of comics into an easily digestible form. However, it was clearly written by a team who didn't have much insight on what to do with Duke outside of that, so his newness and uncertainty become his characterization and by extension him being the "regular one" in the family. The fandom that hasn't engaged with Duke outside of WFA run with that.

Which leads to jokes, skits, and fics where Duke is not only misrepresented but underrepresented. In a family filled with weird people with distinct dynamics what's the new, normal guy to do but sometimes stand in a corner and throw in a responsible one liner.

As a response people get frustrated with Duke's lack of inclusion in fics, skits, and jokes, so they bring up all the things that prove he's just as wild as his siblings (such as getting shot and thinking it's cool or jumping out of a cop car though my personal favorite is when he breaks into the iceberg lounge). However, without context this still isn't Duke. He doesn't just do insane things for the response he has a very clear characterization.

Duke is a child genius who has a huge problem with authority, primarily motivated by helping his community (though in the time between his parents disappearance and goign to live with Bruce he is a bit of an adrenaline junkie as a coping mechanism).

So, if we revisit some of the actions listed above:

Duke gets shot and thinks it's cool: This is Duke in his peak adrenaline junkie time, when he's riding the high of We Are Robin and all the potential negative consequences of superherodom haven't settled in yet. (This is also the period of time when he's getting into fights and is a bit of a playboy).

Duke jumps out of a cop car: This is Duke with his problem of authority (particularly cops) especially when they are trying to stop him from doing what he thinks is right. In this case, stopping him from We Are Robin duties. (This is also why he sneaks out of his foster homes looking for his parents).

Breaking into the iceberg lounge: This is peak Duke. It's him using his genius intellect to crack open a case and because he refuses to ignore it when he can help chasing the lead himself. It's also a little bit his adrenaline junkie sense as he's absolutely more reckless when there's a lot of external pressures.

TLDR: Duke is not the normal one. He's also not just a series of his wildest actions. He's a 16 year old, who wants to help the world and his own way of going about that, wether that's within or outside of our conception of normal behavior.