Frank Miller Says He’s Planning ‘Dark Knight IV’

As you may have heard, we're only a few days away from the release of the first issue of Dark Knight III: The Master Race, a new Batman story from Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello, Andy Kubert and Klaus Janson that was billed as the final chapter in a trilogy that began in 1986 with the groundbreaking The Dark Knight Returns. Now, however, it looks like the trilogy might be surprising us all by becoming a tetralogy.

In an interview with Newsarama, Miller said that he's planning on a fourth (and final) installment of what he's now calling a four-part series of stories, and that when the time comes for Dark Knight IV, he'll be writing it solo.

There are a few things that are worth noting about this, even though at this point, it's barely even an announcement. The first is that, again according to Newsarama, Miller, who has been listed as co-writing The Master Race with Azzarello, is said to be supportive of what Azzarello's doing with the book, and intends to continue the story that's happening in that book "after he reads DK3 in full."

The second is that while Miller mentioned his desire to continue the story, DC gave an official statement to CBR, where they "stated that Dark Knight III is not the final Dark Knight story, but there are currently no specific plans for more."

As for what this means for The Master Race, which has been building to a massive release next week on November 25 with multiple formats and a whole long box full of variant covers, that remains to be seen. Miller's involvement definitely feels like a stamp of approval, but given that DC's promotion billed it as the "final chapter" of the story, it does seem like it might lessen the impact if we know there's more coming down the line. On the other hand, readers certainly like to see Frank Miller doing Batman comics, so there's a chance this could drum up even more excitement for future Dark Knight projects, including The Master Race.

The full interview with Miller will be up later today at Newsarama. More on the story as it develops.

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