The Dark Knight III: The Master Race

The Dark Knight III: The Master Race, also stylized as DK3 and DK III: The Master Race, is an eight-issue DC Comics limited series co-written by Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Miller, Andy Kubert and Klaus Janson.^[1][2]

The series is a sequel to Miller's 1986 Batman miniseries The Dark Knight Returns and the 2001 miniseries The Dark Knight Strikes Again, continuing the story of an aged Bruce Wayne resuming his identity as a crimefighter, aided by his sidekick Carrie Kelley and featuring an ensemble of DC Universe characters including Superman and Wonder Woman.^[1][3][4]

Publication history

On April 24, 2015, DC Comics announced that Frank Miller was co-writing a sequel to The Dark Knight Strikes Again with Brian Azzarello titled The Dark Knight III: The Master Race and that would be an eight-issue limited series and will be the third installment in a trilogy that began with The Dark Knight Returns.^[5][6]

The series will feature a rotating cast of artists, including Andy Kubert and Klaus Janson.^[7][8]

Plot

Issue #1

Three years have passed following the death of Lex Luthor. Bruce Wayne has not been seen since. In the bat cave, someone unseen shatters a display case and removes the Bat suit from therein.

On the streets, a suspect gets chased by Gotham City police officers but saved when Batman appears to attack their pursuit vehicles.

In a jungle setting, Wonder Woman battles a 4-legged minotaur while her infant super-son, Johnathan, rides in a papoose on her back. Upon returning to the Amazons' new city, she learns that her truant daughter Lara is visiting Superman, father to her and consort to Diana.

Superman is now mysteriously iced over, seated on a throne in his rebuilt Fortress of Solitude. Lara speaks to him absently about the Kryptonian relics on display, including the Bottle City of Kandor. Upon looking closely at it, she discovers a distress signal.

Back in Gotham, Commissoner Ellen Yindel drinks from a flask and ponders the derelict bat signal. Her career is mired by the media frenzy surrounding the Batman sightings and a new Mayoral spokesperson trying to put words in her mouth. She answers a call reporting Batman's imminent arrest.

The ensuing chase results in Batman surrounded and abandoning a motorcycle. After considerable resistance, the cops manage to beat Batman down with night sticks. One officer is caught offguard by certain physical features of his charge but gets hit in the mouth before he can be specific. Disregarding the surprise of a female Batman, Yindel joins the arrest, unmasks her, and demands the whereabouts of Bruce Wayne. Revealed, Wayne's injured accomplice Carrie Kelly claims the original Batman is now dead.^[9]

First Tie-in

Dark Knight Universe Presents: The Atom #1: Dr. Ray Palmer finishes a sparring session with a reptile specimen in his lab. He regrows to normal human size and reads news cards about the Kelly arrest, worrying about the implications. The sounds of intruders prompt him to arm himself. One, he finds, is a miniaturized man we will come to know as Baal. The other is Lara who has come calling to see if Palmer can restore the inhabitants of Kandor to full size.^[10]

Issue #2

The beaten and bloodied Carrie Kelley is manhandled into a police vehicle. When prompted, she madly repeats her claim that "Bruce Wayne is dead" three times.

She's incarcerated as a Jane Doe and Commissioner Yindel spends a month plying for details. Her interrogation meets with mixed success. Carrie narrates a seemingly honest flashback about the aging Bruce Wayne finally succumbing to battle injuries after years of holding on. But, when asked about his final resting place, Carrie only makes a sick joke and chides her about her anti-Batman beliefs.

Back at his laboratory, Ray Palmer narrates about the complexities of science and fills in Lara about horrible consequences of his earlier attempts to resize Kandor. Baal joins the conversation through a wall-mounted speaker, openly admiring The Atom's heroism. Lara super hears a summons from her mother and flies away in the blink of an eye. Baal and Ray continue talking, leaving off with Baal frowning when Ray makes a reference to God.

Following some media commentary, Yindel approvingly takes reports on the lack of protestors or resistance to Carrie's legal situation, implying that the oblique Mayor is manipulating opinions. Yindel remotely oversees Carrie's prison transport, which enjoys clear traffic with only a drone in sight. At a strategic point en route, Carrie whistles to trigger a non-lethal missile strike on the transport.

The transport rolls and lands on its side. The Batmobile (still refit to tank form per Dark Knight Returns) advances on it. A waiting force of squad cars and drones scrambles to surround the Batmobile, some colliding with it at their own peril.

As it continues to shoot police vehicles, Yindel orders a drawbridge raised to cut off its escape route. SWAT members fire a bazooka which only succeeds in making it do an aerial flip.

At last, police corner the Batmobile against the drawbridge. They search the interior but find no one. Its afterburner fires, propelling it over the drawbridge. We find Carrie has wedged herself in the undercarriage and is enjoying the thrill. It lands on the other side of the river and carries her to an escape.

In a desert, Ray attempts his complex Kandor restoration project involving cables connected to the bottle and a chest-mounted beam projector. With due concern for the thousand lives in his hands, he pushes a button and suddenly considers the similarity of the technology at work to that of an A-bomb.

After a blinding flash, the area is populated by full-sized Kandor citizens. However, Ray is shocked to see that some of their number are freshly dead and many more wear the raiments of a cult we will soon learn to be twisted, fanatical, and polygamous.

The regrown Baal introduces their leader as Quar. Quar redirects the beam on Palmer. Palmer shrinks to a tiny height and Baal steps on him. Quar orates about their new home and power. He picks up the bottle city, whose inhabitants no longer include any of his followers, and obliterates it with heat vision.

In the Bat Cave, Carrie disembarks from the Batmobile and approaches the Batcomputer terminal. Bruce Wayne stands there with a crutch and turns to look at her with an unreadable expression.

Second Tie-in

Dark Knight Universe Presents: Wonder Woman #1: Super mother/daughter friction as Lara returns to the new Amazon city, late for a sparring session with Wonder Woman. Lara laments her upbringing in secret near-isolation while Diana focuses on the upside of having a defiant daughter; she'll fight for her own in life. Lara complains that combat training is needless given her potentially unrivaled super powers. Diana attacks harder in an effort to enliven Lara's performance. All the while, super baby Johnathan remains the papoose, possibly not even awake. Diana speaks of her fighting Amazonian heritage and thrusts a sword at Lara. Lara allows the sword to break on her chest, counters that she prefers her father's heritage, and flies away.

Reception

The first issue of the miniseries was the bestselling comic in the month of November, selling 440,234 copies.^[11]

Sequel

DK III was initially advertised as the conclusion to the Dark Knight series that began with The Dark Knight Returns, but in November 2015 Frank Miller announced he planned to produce a fourth miniseries to conclude the story. "I thoroughly applaud what [Brian Azzarello is] doing," he said "But now that he's doing [DK III], it's now a four-part series. I'm doing the fourth." ^[12]

References