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A Spoiler-Filled Read Of Dark Knight III #1 – It's All About The Women Of The DC Universe

Published Wed, 25 Nov 2015 05:00:12 -0600

Last updated Thu, 09 Mar 2017 09:02:44 -0600

So there's this comic out today. You may have heard mention of it. DK III: The Master Race #1 by Frank Milller, even if he seems to think he didn't, Brian Azzarello, Andy Kubert, Klaus Janson, Brad Anderson and Clem Robins.

From the beginning, there are attempts to echo the original. The distinctive street slang is transformed into text speech that, just as the original did, does take a second or three to mentally translate. We have the television news narration, set against the heat of the sun on Gotham, and an antagonistic relationship with the police, which machinations occur in far away places.

But in pace, in tone, in look, this book seems a world away. Indeed, at one point it even moves, back, back to a Mazzuchelli look straight from Batman Year One, a reference that I really wasn't expecting. And no bad thing for that.

Because this book isn't just about reviving one aspect of Batman, but reflecting a whole history before turning it on its head.

It also does a trick that Doctor Who did a few weeks ago in the Zygon Invasion/Inversion, making every character of note, every character that has a real role to play female. In a way that the audience might not know. Except DKIII goes one step further and, at the end, reveals that the lead character is female too.

So we have Commissioner Yindel, Bailey Travers, Wonder Woman, Lara The Supergirl, and Batman herself. The male characters are the teenager being chased by the police (who only appears in that intro), Wonder Woman's baby son, Superman (literally) on ice and random unnamed police, newscasters and tribesmen. This is in direct opposition to the original which, even with its female Robin and Commissioner, told a story about men doing manly things in a manly world where women were victims until men did the decent thing.

The only male character with an actual role to play is The Atom in his own mini-comic, included on a tip-in in the middle of the book, though it makes more sense to be read at the end.

That mini-comic drawn by Miller and Janson uses more of the techniques you may remember from the original, specifically the use of small panels to convey wordless information very effectively. And its format separates itself from the main event very effectively, until you realise how they dovetail together.

Indeed, it's in that mini-comic that we gain the understanding of what The Master Race in the title refers to, the Kandorians who are "tired of being small" and who want out. And with a Supergirl and Atom willing to make that happen.

It has been suggested that if women ruled the world they'd make a better job of it. Dark Knight III tries to show us that world, a world where every position of power is filled by a woman, and they seem to make all the same mistakes, have the same bravado, the same ego problems, and are as compromised as in the original book. The only difference is in the original, the bad guys had form, had purpose, formed a palpable target to hit, here the bad guy is the system, which is a lot better to hit. Thankfully a distracting Master Race are on it's way….

I wonder if they're all men?

We have a Batman beating up police to save a young black teenager from being shot and raising the ire of the city, a Lone Wonder Woman And Cub fighting a mythical legend in a faraway forest, a Supergirl finding her father's palace and a call for help within, an Atom looking for a role and being given one, and a Batman after all this time being shot, beaten and taken down by a police squad, and a dead Bruce Wayne. The men are all on ice…

It may not be a great comic. It's not even the best Batman comic out right now, I think I preferred Batman/TMNT. And it certainly pales in the light of Azzarello's other works. It's also slower, more decompressed, than Dark Knights of old. And frankly, it's not quite as batty as the originals either. But it is an interesting comic, and a tad.. more unpredictable than I was expecting.

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics, London. With a Black Metal Friday sale on Friday and one of the only two shops in the UK to be celebrating Local Comic Shop Day on Saturday. And currently exhibiting a group of cartoonists' influences and inspirations by paying tribute to creators, characters and stories that have had an impact in their own work.