American Carnage #9 Review

Writer: Bryan Hill / Artist: Leandro Fernandez / DC Comics Throughout American Carnage #9, Richard’s muses on the odd predicament he has found himself in as the series comes to an appropriately violent, or perhaps violently appropriate, conclusion. This train of thoughts weaves all of the narrative threads together in this melancholy tone and there is a quiet realization that there was never going to be a happy ending. Hill’s crime noir grounded itself in the very particularly 2019 zeitgeist of a white supremacist rising to political power and the darkly complicated opposition to it. For nine issues, Hill has navigated a tight rope of political discourse, grey and black morality, interpersonal relationships, and this complex notion of identity. However, the ending of American Carnage eschews a little more towards a more meditative tone. Mind you, there is still plenty of politically charged panels that managed to provide a strange sense of catharsis. But as a whole, Hill takes a step back from the political parallels of the Morgan dynasty in favor of focusing on the personal decisions and burdens of American Carnage’s principle characters. There are less bullets flying around, but each one punctuates the dark descent each of the characters has stepped in in the name of something they believe in noble even as it becomes progressively real that the pursuit of their goals will cost them everything. It’s a solemn ending and mostly satisfying and that very least, there is a sense …