#digmon theme: alternative friendships

[anti-praxis-antihero]

Duke's Digimon partner

To the interest of very few I made digmon lines for a lot of the bat characters. I've seen some post doing similar some with amazing art. I wanted to try my hand at it.

For those who don't know Digimon is monster raising/virtual pet franchise, spanning multiple mediums where the monsters grew as you take care of them or go through character changes.

Duke was the first and hardest I had to come up with. Since Duke is the only bat to have goggles as a part of his costume (very rarely and usually on covers) I like to think of him as the google head [a fan term for the main protagonist of each series most of the time]. Or the Davis to to Dick's Tai at least, a successor. Anyway obviously he'd have a medieval Dukemon (eng: Gallantmon) but why and how and what story hooks would he have.

Long post ----long post-----long post------------

So a motif of Duke's his fans keep gushing about and lamenting being ignored is the classic batman knight theme being literally for him in his alternate universe counterparts.

The finale knight and Quietus (the Ras+Bruce+Duke death monster)

Heavy on the Knight theme, heavy on the metal.

Anyway here's his knight and heavy metal themed evolution line.

I gave him some fire/smoke based in training/fresh/bbys to invoke his light and shadow powers he gains in Batman & the outsider (2019).

He gets the edgey boy Impmon X, a delinquent and punk with a chip on his shoulder. He rejects the friendships offered to him throughout the anime series Digimon Tamers until events make him reevaluate his priorities. I feel this is what a fully realized version of We are robin (2015) would've gone for as Duke's character arc (I was about to say only someone doesn't die to make him accept help in WAR but oops someone does! AT least Duke didn't cause it). I also chose it to twin with the regular Impmon rookie I gave Jason because it's a common Jason rookie that I can't argue with.

Since starting this I found it fun to have certain character lines echo each other when appropriate. Impmon typically transforms/digievolves into Wizardmon, which works well as a reference to him being a magic user with a demon arm and Teekl (Her/His descendant?) as his familiar in Batman: Urban Legends. To avoid spoilers I'll just say this version of Duke makes a sacrifice while the most well known Wizardmon in the franchise makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Flamewizardmon is for his Robin outfit in We are Robin nuff said. No heavy stuff here. Phew.

Deathmeramon's (eng: Skullmeramon) name is a play on death metal and that's why he's here, simply and sweet.

While Gankoomon is being used as a reference for Duke's possible future state timeline. In Future State: The next Batman (2021) Duke is an organizer and resistance fighter who fairies people in & out of Gotham. So the reason he seemingly has a Jojo stan/persona/lightning spirit at his back is because Black Lightning cursed by a witch to be incorporeal and he found his way to one of Katana's swords that doesn't house her husbands soul. And that is why Duke is rocking the Ichigo look with a stan!

The Final Knight's armor is made out of a...dragon version of a fusion combing Bruce & the once maybe a real demon now cosmic entity Barbatso. It's complicated. But of course that means Duke gets a death metal dragon in Heavymetaldramon. This was found in the Tales from the Dark Multiverse Dark Night Metal (2020) [yes that's its full name].

Was any of the lore confusing or interesting to you? Well then you should go read the comics I mentioned! Yes this was in fact a trick to get you interested in these little talked about Duke entries. I'm very clever.

We are Robin (2015)[12 issues] Batman & the Outsiders (2019)[17 issues] Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Dark Nights Metal (2020)[one shot, The Final Knight also appears in The Outsiders (2023) issues no. 3,7 He's not in issue 7 to much but he does have a conversation that plays with the stuff in TftDMDNM. Ignore context here, outsiders is very meta and its not necessary to enjoy the edgiest boy FK] Dark Nights: Death Metal Robin King (2020)[one shot, Quietus' only appearance] Future State: The next Batman (2021)[issues no. 1,3] Batman: Urban Legends (2022)[issues no. 8 & 9 for Wizard demon arm Duke but he is also prominent in issues 18 & 19]

[izzyizumi]

Digimon Ghost Game ~ Episode 59 featuring Characters: ESPIMON (Character Voice: Yumiko Kobayashi); + Hiro Amanokawa; (Character Voice: Mutsumi Tamura); + Kiyoshiro Higashimitarai; (and Friends + Support) + Espimon HELPING OUT the group Throughout Ep + Espimon’s Character Progression / COMPASSION + HIRO’s COMPASSION / Charging In (to help save Kiyoshiro & Others)

“Is this what it MEANS to be a ‘BRIDGE’?” - Hiro Amanokawa

BONUS:

(Notably reacting for the first time to an Notable Occurance) {happening to a “Friend”}

“ME and YOU are Friends!”

“...YOU and Hiro are Friends!!” - Gammamon to Espimon; Previously (Ep 54)

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[askmerriauthor]

Man, I'm really enjoying the new Digmon series. It's called "Digimon: Ghost Game" and holds to its horror theme remarkably well. Digimon has always had kind of a weird, eerie vibe to it and that tone lends itself to this approach.

This show takes the angle of Digimon appearing in the Real World as a way to play with urban legends. Plus it seems like this is an alternate universe to the original series or Tamers, where people don't know what Digimon are in this setting. Which I actually really like; it gives the show a chance to take it own unique spin on things and not worry about all the previous (and extremely convoluted) lore. I definitely enjoy the fact that combat is relatively low in this show as well; there's rarely any fights at all and when there is violence, it's usually only one or two strikes before the fight is done. The Season 01 reboot was absolutely terrible with how every episode was just one long, drawn out, pointless battle scene after another, so this is a very refreshing change of pace. So far every antagonist Digimon encountered has survived, with an interesting balance of the threats being neutralized peacefully and others remaining at large and swearing to return later on. Our protags have no interest in actually harming the Digimon at all and do their best to reach an understanding with them.

Normally I'm not big on the "we can talk it out with the power of friendship" approach being overused, but it works in this case because of Digimon mentality. Digimon are always this sort of odd mix of childish and animalistic; even the most mature, well-spoken, philosophical of Digimon still have these very basic drives and behaviors that inform what they do. That sort of trait is perfect for the horror theme of this series, as the Digimon antagonists and urban legend monsters/ghosts adhering to a sort of simple, repetitive behavior because of their mannerisms match perfectly. The majority of the antagonists so far are only dangerous to humans because they just don't understand what they're doing is wrong or harmful. There's only been two so far that are outright and intentionally hostile for the sake of causing harm. But even with those two, they're not trying to take over the world or anything like that; they're just assholes who like hurting people for their own amusement. Which, again, lends itself really well to the supernatural monster/haunting of the week theme this show has.