One of the things that's great is that Batman is a character that lends himself to very personal stories.
Duke is a character who believes that heroism and the Robin mantle can exist entirely separate from Batman himself.
[Duke] is the same way that Harper Row is a character who doesn't want to know who you are beneath the mask, and that makes her interesting. She'll show up and help Batman, but she never wants to know if he's Bruce Wayne.
There's nothing comparative to Damien [the current Robin] or any of the other characters. I love those characters. And this isn't, "This is better than that." I think a couple of people misread what we had said in the first issue about that stuff.
KGBeast starts chasing our heroes in a big way, and you get the return of an old character from the mythology that I think people will be really excited to see.
Bruce sees in this character - who fought all the way through "Superheavy" when his parents were missing, and now is determined to fight even though his parents are telling him he's worth nothing - the essence of Batman.
It's one of the worst nightmare situations we could create for a young character, having the people who are supposed to believe in you keep telling you you're nothing.