Does anyone like Duke Thomas?? I never have! Scott Snyder’s annoyingly been trying to make this character a thing for the longest time now and he’s never taken off with the Batman readership – take the hint, dude!
Batman & The Signal was DC’s last chance to make the case for Duke Thomas to convince me to care and they failed! The first half of the book collects the back-ups from Snyder’s All-Star Batman, a super-dull storyline called The Cursed Wheel where Batman and Duke do something and beat the bad guys or whatever. It rehashes Duke’s boring origin from Endgame before touching on the even more dismal Bloom storyline, both from Snyder’s New 52 Batman run (the bad half).
Then we’re into The Signal miniseries by Tony Patrick, set in the wake of Metal. Duke’s suddenly got superpowers - and he’s still not interesting! He’s got light powers because his deal – and the whole thing behind the name, The Signal – is that he’s the Light Knight, going out during daytime while Batman, the Dark Knight, goes out at night. Bleeeeurgh! Throw in some characters nobody could possibly remember from that godawful Robin War storyline and some cruddy villain who thinks Duke is the Chosen One or whatever, and you’ve got a book that has “REMAINDER” written all over its future!
Batman & The Signal (what a terrible name!) is full of such poorly constructed and told stories that are completely unengaging. The Bat Signal for Duke would be a turd!
At this point there’s just too many people in the Bat family. It’s time to thin the numbers down considerably, and not just Duke but also ridiculous members like Clayface. Time to dust off that crowbar, Joker!
