Originally Posted by
J. D. Guy
The issue I have with giving any credence to this supposition is that, speaking bluntly, Duke was never written in Batman and the Outsiders at all. All of his other points — from his bit in Zero Year, to his reintro in Endgame, to his official introduction and foundational building in We Are Robin, to what he pulled off in Synder's Superheavy storyline in the mainline Batman book, to his rebirth in All-Star Batman that leads into Batman and the Signal — all of these takes have weight and significance for Duke Thomas. And while there are some differences here and there, a continuing reader who is following Duke Thomas can very much get a sense of continuation and progression regarding the character of Duke Thomas from these works in the order I referred to them in. Hill paid no attention to anything of this. Instead, he punked The Signal first chance he got to show the threat of someone else, and then by and large just played lukewarm with the character, never really shelving them but never actually using them either. There was much lack of honesty and earnestness when it came to Hill's handling of Duke, and it began when he wrote Duke without ever considering his past, as if Duke never had a past before Bryan Edward Hill came along.
So the point I'm trying to make is that anyone who would say they preferred Hill's take on Duke over any prior take is saying they'd prefer a character who is not actually Duke Thomas/The Signal. Because that wasn't who Hill wrote. He wasn't actually writing for Duke. In this way, such a thing would come off as a bad-faith read from a person/people who never had any inclination to care for who Duke/The Signal is, was, and could be based on where he'd actually been. It's somewhere spanning the realms of being disingenuous to being outright intellectually dishonest. And it wouldn't be worth giving the time of day to that thought.