In his first sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller produced one of the most reviled superhero comics of the 2000s. And yet, last year DC Comics brought him back for a third installment, provocatively titled The Dark Knight III: The Master Race.
There are many comic fans, even die-hard devotees of Miller’s early superhero work, that have completely sworn off his modern day output after the critical disaster of The Dark Knight Strikes Again and Miller’s outright racist “propaganda” piece, Holy Terror! However, curiosity got the better of me with his latest foray into the Dark Knight universe. Despite how big a name Miller is when it comes to Batman, I realized I had no idea what was going on in this comic. As I decided to sit down and dive into it, I realized I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
What was the hype?
Frank Miller is one of the all-time greats when it comes to Batman, and he helped re-define the character for a broken and cynical eighties. In 1986, DC Comics released The Dark Knight Returns, by Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley. It took place in a near-futuristic Gotham City, ten years after the retirement of the Batman. In the future, criminal gangs rule the streets, and Bruce Wayne is a broken and jaded man. When he begins to feel that familiar fire pumping through his veins once more, he returns to remind the criminals of their place. In doing so, he reminds himself and the people of Gotham what a hero is.
In 2001, Miller returned to DC and The Dark Knight’s setting for a sequel. The Dark Knight Strikes Again brought in aspects of a larger DC Universe, but lacked the emotional heft of the original. As much as the story was criticized, Miller and Varley’s visual work took a good brunt of the complaints, with the general consensus being that Miller had lost his way as a penciller and Varley’s move to computerized coloring had made the book garish and ugly.
DC Comics announced a third installment of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight series in April 2015, and the general reaction to the announcement seemed to be a mix of dread and apathy for people who remembered The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Critically, Frank Miller hasn’t had a well received comic in decades, and many fans believe his political views have seeped too far into his work — to a level where they are no longer comfortable reading.
It’s completely understandable that The Dark Knight III: The Master Race seems to have flown under a lot of people’s radars — many of the people who aren’t actively avoiding it are just content to let Frank be Frank and not let it impact their own reading decisions. The thing is, The Dark Knight III: The Master Race is one of the most bonkers, take-no-prisoners superhero comics of this decade. Expectations are low, but it might have exceeded them.
What’s it about?
The Dark Knight III: The Master Race is the third part of Miller’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, completing what he began in The Dark Knight Returns and the less-than-well-received The Dark Knight Strikes Again. The first part in the trilogy remained fairly grounded in its approach to a futuristic Batman, and its sequel dabbled with high-concept sci-fi. The Dark Knight III: The Master Race keeps its foot on Strikes Again‘s gas pedal and drives straight off a cliff, but it might be all the better for it.
The main plot of the comic follows a rogue cult of Kandorians — the titular “Master Race” — who escaped their shrunken Kryptonian city after tricking the Atom into restoring them to full-size. Batman is thought dead and Carrie Kelley is attempting to continue his legacy, but when the Kryptonian army rampages across the world, Bruce Wayne has to come out of retirement again and venture to the Fortress of Solitude to recruit Superman to stop the evil aliens.
Andy Kubert/DC Comics
Along the way, there are plot points involving Lara, the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, who is caught between her two worlds. The Flash gets his legs broken by a Kryptonian and so serves as the team’s information and tactics expert, managing situations faster than any computer could. Carrie Kelley visits Atlantis with Aquaman, and Bruce Wayne takes a dunk in the Lazarus Pit.
Is it any good?
The story’s pace doesn’t have time for depth of characterisation and doesn’t seem particularly interested in it either
The miniseries is co-written by Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello, and it seems that while Azzarello is capable of reining Miller in regarding some of his tics and tendencies, he also has some of his own that become prevalent throughout the comic. Both creators have been routinely criticized for female characters who are either oversexualized, overvictimized, or more often than not, both — so it’s almost a small blessing that every person in the book has about as much drive as a freshly created Dungeons & Dragons character, so the creators never get the chance to explore nuance and mess it up. The story’s pace doesn’t have time for depth of characterization and Miller and Azzarello don’t seem particularly interested in it either. You’re given enough to fill in the gaps, and if you know the characters already or have read the previous installments of the trilogy, then you’re ahead of the game.
The series is somewhat reminiscent of the recent Fast and the Furious films, not in pace or tone, but in reckless abandon and escalation for the sake of escalation. At one point, Batman seeds the clouds above Gotham City and makes it rain kryptonite, putting the evil aliens on an equal footing with the heroes and law enforcement, as civilians fueled by civic pride wail on their would-be oppressors. That’s kind of baller enough in itself — but then Superman shows up in his own version of Batman’s The Dark Knight Returns armor and Batman shoves the bad guy’s face into his metal S-shield. While “good” might not be the word to describe it, if you let it take you with it, it’s all kinda rad.
Pictured: Kinda rad
Andy Kubert/DC Comics
How’s the art?
The main story of every issue is pencilled by Andy Kubert, with inks by Klaus Janson and colors by Brad Anderson. Kubert is one of DC’s biggest artistic guns, and was trusted with Frank Miller’s Batman for a reason. When inked by Janson he manages to capture the spirit of this specific incarnation of the character, one so closely linked with one creator’s vision.
Kubert follows Miller’s lead in terms of panel layout and presentation, and the classic Dark Knight Returns talking-heads are ever present in this installment, which otherwise never gets bogged down with too much reverence to its iconic predecessor. Those talking heads are now on smartphones rather that TV screens; not the most groundbreaking or innovative technique. But Kubert experiments with actually making the smartphones the panels themselves in later issues, adding a new visual language to the series.
Frank Miller/DC Comics
Each issue also features back-ups spotlighting other characters, such as The Atom, Green Lantern or Lara, that are integral to the main story, and many of these are drawn by Miller himself. The last time The Dark Knight III: The Master Race got any noticeable buzz was from Miller’s cover for the fourth issue. The image featured his take on Wonder Woman in profile, squatting with her knees up to her chest and carrying a baby on her back, and was razzed for its odd proportions and uncomfortable looking structure. Miller has some defenders, like James Harvey, who has argued that with a flatter color treatment, Miller’s work pops much better. He’s right to a degree, but Miller’s work has become so abstract that it seems to have lost basic levels of composition and structure.
There are many panels and covers in Miller’s work for the series that just seem to have no sense of perspective or depth, and it’s hard to tell where things are happening in relation to each other. If the art causes the reader to lose a sense of what’s happening and who’s doing it, at that point it isn’t abstract, it’s just bad comics storytelling. It’s sad to see from the same man that changed that game in 1986, but Frank Miller’s art in this series is just flat-out bad.
Then there’s the butts. If you read The Dark Knight III: The Master Race, you will be unable to avoid coming to the conclusion that Frank Miller loves ladies’ butts, and distractingly so. Carrie Kelley generally — but not all the time — avoids this treatment, but every time Miller draws Wonder Woman or Lara, they’re jumping in the air, knees tucked to their chest, with their butt out on display. It’s not generally the sort of thing that would be commented on in this kind of overview of a miniseries, but it’s so prevalent that it’s hard to ignore both as a reader and as a critic.
Is it worth reading?
Andy Kubert/DC Comics
It’s interesting that later this year DC Comics is publishing Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Metal, because The Dark Knight III is one of the most metal interpretations of Batman of all time. In tone, Master Race is more akin to Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s unfinished, delay-plagued All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder than any of the Dark Knight books. It’s going to divide fans right down the line depending on how sacred Batman is to them, but it almost gleefully does not care what you think about how it does what it does.
The Dark Knight III: The Master Race does not hold The Dark Knight Returns up as some unshakable tome of enlightenment, and is way more interested in moving forward with a rollocking momentum — one that can be tough to keep up with. If you love the original miniseries so much that you’d rather keep that intact, then maybe skip this one. It views Batman as a story engine which always needs feeding: It throws ideas and concepts into the mix, hoping that the concept of Batman is strong enough to turn them into a good story. It doesn’t always work — The Dark Knight III: The Master Race is occasionally just flat-out bad. But when it works, it works better than most Batman comics DC has published in the last thirty years.
Whether you’ll like the miniseries or not hinges on how much leeway you’re willing to give it and how curious you are to see how weird things get. It’s not as good as The Dark Knight Returns but it’s way better that The Dark Knight Strikes Again — more importantly than that, it’s more interesting than its immediate predecessor. You’re not missing out if you skip it, but if you’re at all curious about it then by all means catch up before the final issue drops on June 7.
I’m going to need people to talk about it with.
Kieran Shiach is a Salford, U.K.-based freelance writer and one half of Good Egg Podcasts. He is on Twitter, @KingImpulse. He wishes in the past he tried more things ’cause now he knows being in trouble is a fake idea.
Source: Polygon – Full
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