Talking to ‘The Signal’ Writer Tony Patrick About Batman, Robin, and Gotham With the Lights On

Ever since his appearance back in Batman: Zero City, we’ve been intrigued with the path that Duke Thomas would take. Seeing him go from victim to apprentice, to Robin (sort of) and now The Signal, it’s been exciting ride for Duke. With issue #2 dropping, things are only getting more exciting for him and we got the chance to speak to the co-writer Tony Patrick.

Black Nerd Problems: It’s rare to see Gotham in broad daylight and you’ve managed to give daytime Gotham a voice of its own. Why is it important for Daytime Gotham to be established as its own character. Tony Patrick: Every city has its own character. Its own voice. There are so many parts of Gotham to play with. Daylight Gotham is unexplored and so easy to play with.

A lot of people have the misconception that daylight Gotham would be like Metropolis. But I don’t think so. So we wanted to make the distinction. It suffers from the same type of crime that happens at night, but just in a different manner. Is daytime Gotham more corrupt than nighttime? I think it might be. But is it white collar or violent. That’s what we wanted to explore with The Signal. BNP: We are huge fans of We Are Robin. One of the most gully team books from DC in years. What made you have Riko and Izzy return as support for Duke and can we expect to see more members return down the line? Tony P: Scott [Snyder] allowed me to pull in whoever I wanted to. He opened the door for me to bring back those characters. They were in the initial pitch and I …