Duke Thomas: The Signal Appreciation 2019

[lemonpeace]

can you tldr what he says about duke?

He starts talking about Duke right off the bat, he talked about how a lot of people expecting him to do more with Duke in Detective but he recognized that a lot of people are invested in Duke Thomas and have questions about who he is. When DC approached him to write the Black Lightning/Batman issue for 'Tec, Outsiders was already on the table so he wanted to use that to explore how is Duke different from another robin. Is he just black Robin? How does that work? He's the Signal, signal of what? Have Duke deal with the ramifications of the Karma attack, use the volatile nature of Outsiders to explore a destabilized Duke and see him forge his path from there. Figure out what he symbolizes. He wants to explore the relationship between Duke, a young man stuggling to move forward, and Black Lightning, someone who is taking a step into a bigger hero role and someone who's been there. He wants to be able to bring his experience as a black American to the characters of Black Lightning and Duke, just like how he spoke to Japanese people for insight into Katana.

edit: oh, something interesting Hill said to think about; think about Duke in his current state of mind meeting Ras al Ghul and what Ras would see in him. So we will likely see a Duke/Ras one-on-one confrontation of some sort.