Gotham City has long been one of DC Comics’ most iconic urban settings, thanks to Gothic, Art Deco, industrialist aesthetics lending themselves to a potent neo-noir vibe when night falls. It’s created an environment where heinous criminals do their worst under the cover of darkness, with Batman and his Bat Family commonly fighting back at nighttime. But one particular character, since his introduction as a precocious young child soon inextricably linked by trauma to Bruce Wayne and his crusade against crime during Zero Year and beyond, thanks to his metahuman gifts, has become known as the daytime protector. Duke Thomas, in addition to a stint in the We Are Robin movement, became the Signal in 2018.

Duke has gotten an impressive array of stories in which he’s featured alongside the Outsiders and seen checking in with the Batman Family as he’s matured into his role. But while he’s featured in various series and even starred in some limited adventures, his peculiar darkness and light-related abilities have, unfortunately, not had the opportunity to truly “shine”. But now, thanks to Everything is Fine writer Mike Birchall alongside storyboarder Jeannine A. Halley, inker Ekass, and colorist Paula Fidelis and the WEBTOON platform, ScreenRant is thrilled to confirm the October 19 debut of DC’s new horror anthology, Gotham by Daylight.

Gotham By Daylight Puts Batman’s Replacement Front And Center

The days are starting to get longer in Gotham City as something sinister hides within the light. With the increasingly pronounced absence of Batman amid no night and endless daylight looming, Gotham by Daylight introduces its aptly-named cosmic horror villain, The Daylight, whose torments appear to link the lives of ordinary Gotham citizens, including close friends of Duke.

The series may not focus on Batman, but it certainly has multiple familiar faces, from allies like Damian Wayne, to antagonists like Mr. Freeze. Some criminals in Batman’s world can conceivably carry on with business as usual, like Black Mask, the Penguin, and Two-Face, but as the preview glimpses show, Poison Ivy could understandably thrive under these conditions.

“Getting to tell a story set in Gotham City has been my life goal since I was seven and picked up my first Batman Adventures comic. So when I first heard that WEBTOON were partnering with DC I immediately begged them for this opportunity and somehow convinced them to let me have this tiny corner of the universe, to unleash unspeakable horrors upon.”

-Mike Birchall

As Birchall puts it, this won’t be a typical slice-of-life experience like other prominent DC WEBTOON series Batman: Wayne Family Adventures. It’s a 45-episode series that’d be the longest to feature Duke Thomas as its protagonist, with its tantalizing mystery and compounding plot threads drawing together a group of citizens, ravaged by the terrors bathing their city in light, to converge on a mysterious park. Beyond Duke’s presence, it appears other DC superheroes are unable to join the fray, meaning everyone involved in this story must count on each other to survive.

“I also have to mention that we have a team of absolute superstar artists on this, and what they’re doing with the scrolling layouts, the colors, the lettering, the fresh designs for classic Batman characters, is unbelievable. They are teaching me that there are levels to this game, and I cannot wait for you to see what they’ve been up to.”

As Birchall confirmed for ScreenRant, special attention was, of course, put into rendering Batman’s iconic friends and enemies who appear in a distinct WEBTOON style, capturing their iconic features in vivid colors for their digital online readership. All of this and more was revealed during WEBTOON’s New York Comic Con 2026 panel, while ScreenRant was given additional teases of just how the series will play out.

Gotham’s New Anthology Series Is Astro City Meets Uzumaki

Focusing a series on the lives of ordinary citizens in a city famously known for the presence of superhero defenders and the supervillains who torment them, can understandably sound a bit like Astro City. But the addition of a cosmic horror angle, complete with the characters being drawn to a mysterious park in Gotham drawing everybody inward, might understandably remind otaku readers of Uzumaki by Junji Ito. It turns out, this connection is entirely intentional, as Birchall puts it.

“My two strongest inspirations were Batman: The Animated Series, with its many non-Batman-centric stories told so beautifully, and the Junji Ito manga Uzumaki, which features an otherworldly threat arriving in a quiet town and affecting its citizens. What resulted is a horror anthology series that focuses on the everyday people of Gotham City, but in that I also found a throughline that focuses on one of my favorite characters, Duke Thomas.

Duke lives in Gotham City, he is one of these citizens himself, and I wanted to highlight that connection to these people that makes him different than other Robins. At the same time, he’s a horror protagonist now, and I’m going to be running him through a gauntlet that’s unlike anything he’s faced before. People might think I hate him at first, but my belief is that you can’t be a real hero until you’ve faced a real threat. I sincerely hope this is seen as one of the definitive Duke Thomas stories one day.”

Duke has had an impressive path to his particular status among Gotham’s protectors. He has an unusual array of abilities quite unique to anybody else in the Batman Family as a metahuman in past iterations, and Birchall is teasing that Gotham by Daylight may just rake Duke over the coals in a trial by Sun fire. But the citizens are just as important, and while Duke certainly takes the spotlight, there are evidently glimpses of classic legacy Batman characters.

“Getting to highlight the ordinary people of Gotham has been so fun and fulfilling as well. It’s so easy to say ‘why would anyone live in Gotham?’ but when you break it down, that’s actually such an interesting question, and there are of course many good reasons. What’s more interesting to me, though, is ‘how do people live in Gotham?’. How do they get by? How do they support each other? How do they react to crazy, cosmic-level threats? Putting these characters through their own horror stories is, to me at least, the perfect way to explore these questions.”

It’s a thrilling glimpse at what promises to be a darker tale than DC fans on WEBTOON are perhaps used to with Wayne Family Adventures, which has a reveal of its own at NYCC with season 5 on the way and its new confirmed villains. Gotham by Daylight will launch on Monday, October 19, likely to follow the usual WEBTOON pattern of a batch release upon debut of several episodes, before weekly installments thereafter. Be sure to stay tuned for more news on the adventures of Duke Thomas, just in time for Halloween as he joins with Gotham’s citizens to fight a threat terrorizing his home in what could be the Batman ally’s true definitive run.