While his name isn’t technically given, the likeness and Twitter style of U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump appears in today’s issue of Dark Knight III: The Master Race.
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“Trump,” who has been spotted in the “talking heads” segments in previous issues, boasts that he predicted mankind’s victory over Kryptonian invaders, and promises to make the Kryptonians pay to rebuild Gotham City:
It’s difficult to get a handle on the political commentary here: Miller has been an outspoken conservative on many subjects in recent years, so it would be easy to see him as a Trump supporter. It’s most likely that the satire here is more bomb-throwing and anti-authoritarian: Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who were Presidents during The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again, were satirized in those books, and even if he hadn’t won the election (it would be difficult to imagine this comic was completed that far in advance), an over-the-top persona like Trump’s would continue to be easy to mimic and to mine for humor.
All that said, it will likely be taken as a jab at the President-Elect, particularly since the image of the tweet is superimposed over the “win” — a city in ruins and in flames.
The fact that Trump — addicted as he seems to be to social media — won the election works out nicely for the way Miller was delivering some of the broader cultural commentary in the series, as it pertains to the “talking heads” segments that had been a part of the previous installments in the Dark Knight series.
“When I wrote old Spider-Man comics, I’d use newspapers. I’d use The Daily Bugle, for instance,” co-writer and series creator Frank Miller told ComicBook.com. “When I started to write The Dark Knight Returns, I switched over to television, and now the switch has gone over to a more Internet news service. I think that as our communications vehicles change, we’re bound to change the way they’re represented in our comic books.”
Dark Knight III: The Master Race #7 is in stores now. You can get a copy at your local comic shop or pick it up digitally on ComiXology.
