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Sunday 11 June 2017

Dark Knight III: The Master Race #9 Review (Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello)


And so we come to the end of Dark Knight III. Quar and the evil Kandorians square off against Batman and co. in a final battle for the fate of Earth. Guess who wins? 

Predictability aside, The Master Race #9 isn’t a great conclusion to what was a decidedly average return to Batman for Frank Miller. Batman’s contribution to the fight was plain silly and he felt like a supporting player in his own book.

For once Miller doesn’t make Superman and Green Lantern look like bumbling idiots. Both superheroes make the biggest differences in the battle while The Atom, who has remained a cipher rather than a character throughout, makes an underwhelming cameo. Overall, the Kandorians were defeated a little too easily and ridiculously.

He’s not one of my favourite artists but I’ve enjoyed Andy Kubert’s work on this series. The fusion of his style with a facsimile of Miller’s has looked good and the splash pages on Quar’s fate were the best part of this issue. As a contrast, the backup, drawn by Miller and included to justify the jacked-up price point, was pointless, dull and looked horrible, like all the other backups.

DKIII: The Master Race #9 was a weak, uninspired finale to what turned out to be a mediocre story – disappointing stuff given the big-name talent involved. Still, while it wasn’t nearly as good as the first Dark Knight, at least it wasn’t anywhere close to being as horrendous as DKII (probably thanks to Brian Azzarello for toning down Miller’s crazy)!

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