What is the reason many people don't like Duke Thomas

[Frontier]

I still think that Barbara could do much better with a better creative team, and her main book is still outselling Batwoman, even if Kate has (at least imo) the better writing and art and gets a much bigger push from TEC.

When JPV made it to 100 issues, it was a very diffrent time, in the 90s they had some long running series for characters who would today hardly be able to carry a mini. And having Danny O'Niel as writer was probably also factor.

Firestorm, back in the 80's, had a solo book for 8 years. That would seem unheard of in today's market.

[skyvolt2000]

When JPV made it to 100 issues, it was a very diffrent time, in the 90s they had some long running series for characters who would today hardly be able to carry a mini. And having Danny O'Niel as writer was probably also factor.

Does not matter he still has 100 issues.

It's not any character's fault times have changed to where we see the behavior Marvel has dealt with.

In the past no one cared who had a book. It was read what you want and I will read what I want.

Now entitlement has taken over and now guys who could have books can't get them because someone feels entitled to demand that book not be made.

Funny how we get more posts trashing Duke, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, Riri Williams, Cho Hulk & Miles than praising Tom King's Mister Miracle or Vision.

Funny we can get more folks to hate buy books TRASHING their favorites (while setting fire to others on youtube) than support for books "doing" it right.

[oasis1313]

I like JPV and wish we'd see more of him. I'd like more of Bat-Wing, too; he interests me far more than Duke.

[JasonTodd428]

In the past no one cared who had a book. It was read what you want and I will read what I want.

I'm not sure if the first part of that is exactly true because I can remember people at my LCS back before the internet existed arguing about who should and shouldn't have a book but there definitely was a sense of "you read what you want and I'll read what I want" back then at least to me anyway. I never got flack for reading the books I did back then. I still operate under that idea myself. As long as you're reading what you enjoy and you leave me alone to do the same I'm good. (I'm using the collective "you" and not talking about you specifically just to be clear.)

Funny how we get more posts trashing Duke, Moon Girl, Ms Marvel, Riri Williams, Cho Hulk & Miles than praising Tom King's Mister Miracle or Vision.

Funny we can get more folks to hate buy books TRASHING their favorites (while setting fire to others on youtube) than support for books "doing" it right.

Unfortunately the internet seems to make people feel like they have carte blanche to say whatever they like and that's a sorry state of affairs really. Let me tell you I'd much rather read fifty posts about how wonderful Mister Miracle or the Vision are then to read even one post trashing a character or book.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I haven't read all of Duke's appearances, but from what I've seen, he fills the role Tim Drake filled back in the way. His motivation, at it's crux, isn't tragedy, but intellectual. He's not a skilled fighter or scarred warrior, but a thinker.

The problem with that in general is that we've seen that already with Tim. More than that, having a generally dull reaction to say, the Joker about to kill you, is bad ass yes but also boring in comic medium.

Also, he needs a decent name already!

Not a bad character, IMO, but not hard to see why he's struggling to find a place in the fandom

[millernumber1]

I haven't read all of Duke's appearances, but from what I've seen, he fills the role Tim Drake filled back in the way. His motivation, at it's crux, isn't tragedy, but intellectual. He's not a skilled fighter or scarred warrior, but a thinker.

The problem with that in general is that we've seen that already with Tim. More than that, having a generally dull reaction to say, the Joker about to kill you, is bad ass yes but also boring in comic medium.

Also, he needs a decent name already!

Not a bad character, IMO, but not hard to see why he's struggling to find a place in the fandom

I think we're stuck with this name. Very sadly.

[JasonTodd428]

I haven't read all of Duke's appearances, but from what I've seen, he fills the role Tim Drake filled back in the way. His motivation, at it's crux, isn't tragedy, but intellectual. He's not a skilled fighter or scarred warrior, but a thinker.

The problem with that in general is that we've seen that already with Tim. More than that, having a generally dull reaction to say, the Joker about to kill you, is bad ass yes but also boring in comic medium.

Also, he needs a decent name already!

Not a bad character, IMO, but not hard to see why he's struggling to find a place in the fandom

That doesn't really bother me much since I missed out on seeing that happening with Tim back in the day but I can see how that would annoy fans of Tim Drake. For me the character I find to be bland and boring is Luke but that's a topic for another post and not this one.

[sirmarkus]

I've only ever seen the character in the Metal Preludes, and he didn't do much to stand out to me. He acted as Hal Jordan's sidekick and used a Lantern ring to rebuild Batman's machine. He definitely did not stand out, as I didn't mention him at all in my review of The Forge(https://wp.me/p81uZL-9H), and merely mentioned that he was in The Casting(https://wp.me/p81uZL-aP). From my limited experience with him he feels like a sort of filler character. He's there to play the extra guy in a scene.

[Rod G]

Let me guess:

The Beacon (Duke) will be regarded as an “Urban Myth”, same as the rest of the Bat-Family?

[Korath]

It's The Signal. And considering that he has basically guys taking pictures of him the very first day he operates, I highly doubt that he'll be an Urban legend any time soon. Peoples are clearly in the know about Batman and co. in issue #1 of The Signal (which gave a pretty neat explanation for the name).

[skyvolt2000]

I haven't read all of Duke's appearances, but from what I've seen, he fills the role Tim Drake filled back in the way. His motivation, at it's crux, isn't tragedy, but intellectual. He's not a skilled fighter or scarred warrior, but a thinker.

The problem with that in general is that we've seen that already with Tim. More than that, having a generally dull reaction to say, the Joker about to kill you, is bad ass yes but also boring in comic medium.

Also, he needs a decent name already!

Not a bad character, IMO, but not hard to see why he's struggling to find a place in the fandom

Yeah but you got folks who have not read those stories with Tim.

And once again that is a management issue. As we are slowly seeing that Chuck Dixon era of Tim hitting trades again.

When you choose to keep trades out of print for whatever reasons especially if you don't care for the lead or his writers-you get struggles.

What is the MAJOR gripe with John Stewart? Boring and so on. Because all his best stuff is NOT (or at the time of a certain cartoon) in trade. You got restricted to Johns treatment of him.

Same issue with Tim. 15 years of bad stories in trades that outnumber the good ones for a series that is no longer canon.

So now you got a battle of development with Tim & Duke.

[oasis1313]

I think Duke should have a solo title. No "Batman and The Signal"--just "The Signal." And then we would have the DEFINITE answer to the question: "How popular is Duke?"

[Aahz]

For me the character I find to be bland and boring is Luke but that's a topic for another post and not this one.

The thing with Luke is that to me he comes of as a poor man's version of Mr. Terrific, Steel and Cyborg.

Btw. i kind of have the impression that there is a odd lack of variation when it comes to DCs African American male and Asian female characters.

[DragonPiece]

I think Duke should have a solo title. No "Batman and The Signal"--just "The Signal." And then we would have the DEFINITE answer to the question: "How popular is Duke?"

I mean, didn't we are robin sales already show how popular he was by himself pretty much.

[Assam]

Btw. i kind of have the impression that there is a odd lack of variation when it comes to DCs African American male

It doesn't help when a lot of artists seem to think there's only one available haircut (this goes for Marvel too).

and Asian female characters.

Can't say I agree with you there. There's definitely a lack of them, but would you ever say that Cass is very similar to Kimiyo? Katana to Traci 13? DC's problem is just that most of their Asian female characters currently aren't around.

There is now a trio of Asian teenage girls all raised by assassins, but at the same time, that's mostly the only thing they have in common and they're otherwise very different.

I mean, didn't we are robin sales already show how popular he was by himself pretty much.

I joked about this a couple days ago for a reason. First issue sold about 52,000, second issue dropped down to 31,000 and even with a bump in the middle from Robin War, it was still down to 14,000 by issue 12. It showed exactly how popular he is on his own.