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.

I really wanted to make sure that if we set Duke up, that he's set up the right way and he's his own hero for the right reasons.

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.

[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.

First of all, what made him [Duke in "Zero Year"] captivating is this sense of somebody who wants to save the city regardless of whether Batman wants to or not, but has been inspired by Batman. He's always been - not combative with Batman or anything - but I think he has a sense that what Robin is and what heroism is in Gotham is something that's inspired by Batman and sort of separate from Batman.

I had to fight for wingdings. Batman needs to curse sometimes!

I think thing that makes Batman so endlessly interesting is that he's one of the most flawed and deeply human characters, even though he seems completely the most inhuman and infallible in costume. Psychologically he's one of the most complicated in both his strengths and his weaknesses. For me, one of his great strengths and weaknesses is that confidence. His emotional self-protection is one of the things that makes him heroic and sacrificing; he doesn't have a personal life. He sacrifices those to be the best hero he can be.