Oh, How I Love RodyDeku

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.

Y'know that quote about "if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room"

Also applies to queerness and neurodivergency

This was my response to someone asking who we that Bruce was with options like 'someone who does the best they can for Gotham and walks the path paved by good intentions' and 'a good man who believes he is bad (or vice versa)'. (But much better written obviously and had some really good options and once again I can't find the post now I rlly need to stop losing them🙃) Anyway this was my answer:

He was supposed to be a damaged but good man at heart who truly believed himself to be bad but still did his best for Gotham.

And this would be consistent with most batman centric media/JL media

But then there were too many story lines of him treating the batkids in ways that (imo) canon batman shouldn't. But given that it is canon, I find it hard to say he's good anymore. Because whatever your intentions may be, when u r responsible for a kid, u should take care of them and canon batman has failed at that so many times? Jason, Steph being the top examples in my mind but definitely not the only ones.

Anywayz that's why I choose to live in delusional fanon world where batman stayed the way he was (supposed to be) and (yes he would absolutely still make mistakes with each of the kids but) be a caring dad/mentor. ie, not repeatedly insulting/beating up his kids.

....

I was thinking about this more and I stand by this in that fanfics and fanon are for ourselves so fuck canon. Since I got into this through batman, i want to protect my childhood fav character so most of my AUs are inherently fix-its with Bruce as a good dad. But something I think we should be considerate of (and something I am still very much working on myself) is to not disrespect other characters in doing so.

A lot of the batkids have gone through shit because of canon batman and that is an integral part of their character arc. Be careful to not just.. thoughtlessly erase that ig?

If u r writing a fluff batfamily Sunday morning or something (maybe I'm wrong but) I think it's fine for it just to be fluff - we can act like Steph had an ok time being Robin for example.

But if u r writing an angsty/feeling/deep thing, than don't make the character more 1D/easier/lighter just because it makes it easier for ur narrative.

Because that character is a complex character too. And yes it's just fanfic/AUs but writing that also makes you a writer. And a core part of being a good writer is respecting every character you write whether you love them or not.

Anyway, just my rant/thought vomit ig. Open to comments/discussions ofc because this is smthg I only started considering recently.

dead

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

I love the circle of like 80 maximum Cass fans on tumblr who are all mostly chill and doing their own thing but then someone makes a random poll being like "Best batfam character with Bat in their title" and we fucking swarm and promote that shit like it's the most important election of all time. It happens once a month and it's worth it every time. I think Cass fans on twitter do the exact same thing like she won the best batfam member poll with thousands of accounts voting a year or two ago. Fantastic work everyone keep up the spirit of Cass winning everything, it's what the annoying menace would want ❤️

Just finish watching Justice League War, and I have some thoughts:

On one hand, HOLY BATLANTERN... I GET IT NOW WHY THIS IS Y'ALL HOLY GRAIL... I UNDERSTAND NOW MY BRAIN EXPANDING. I'm very giddy with all of their banters like osbkebdkd?? So cute 😭, the way Hal being the first one Bruce ever took his cowl off for to share why he's helping people is so??!??!?? Amazing, absolute cinema

On another hand, I lowkey wanna kill myself with whatever they try to do with WW and superman. Like the "sexual tension" is not. Is not it. Batlantern that wasn't even the primary ship or relationship even had more sexual tension than them. I need DC TO STOP... STOP IT.

My main reason high key is how they portray Clark, like when he first meet Hal and Bruce I was kinda giggling and kicking my feet that he's acting a bit cocky, but thats the only part I like about it, the rest?? WHO IS THIS AND WHAT THEY DO TO MY SUPERMAN?????? #notmysupes

I kinda like the way they portray Diana tho, she's great in that film, my top three, I just don't like whatever the hell they trying to do to with WW and Superman, I don't like they try to push her to man gaze in general anyway like let the gurl slay and stab people COME ON

Barry, Vick and Billy is solid, I don't have much to complain about them tbh, I just have more beef with the Superman x WW they trying to do like ON GOD. Luckily Batlantern was so strong I feel less mad lmao, they so sksbdkbdkd Bruce immediately understand and get to connect with Hal?? And the part Hal put Bat in the box to protect him while he try to fight superman is HILARIOUS. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I love them, 8/10 (it's minus 2 cuz I really don't like Clark in this and WW x Supes ship, I'm sorry fellas)

Walphemia

Does anyone have any good Steph or Cass centric fics? I really want to get more into them but I kind of hate the way they usually end up getting portrayed in batfam stuff. In Steph's case especially I would love any fics that talk about her pregnancy because I think that's such an important part of her backstory that is ignored