Bane: Conquest #3
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBane: Conquest #3 marks the first appearance of Dionysus — the grotesque, cybernetically diminished crime lord whose sprawling global criminal network becomes the engine that drives Bane's ambitions for the rest of the maxi-series. His debut here is the narrative pivot that transforms 'The Sword' arc from a prison-break thriller into a full criminal-empire saga, directly establishing the premise that gives the series its title. The issue also delivers one of the more structurally interesting Bane–Batman team-ups in the character's history: two figures who openly acknowledge their intention to fight each other afterward, yet set that aside to pursue a common target, a dynamic Bane's co-creators Dixon and Nolan were uniquely positioned to write with authority. As the concluding chapter of the opening 'Sword' arc, it functions as the hinge on which the entire twelve-issue story turns.
ComicBooks.com Value
This exact issue on ebay
Raw — VF/NM ▾ $2.97–$6.56 4 listings
Raw / ungraded ▾ $2.25–$65 9 listings
More listings for this title
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Bane: Conquest was announced by DC in February 2017 as a deliberately creator-led reunion project: writer Chuck Dixon had been largely absent from DC for nearly a decade following a public falling out with the publisher, and his return was contingent on artist Graham Nolan joining him — Dixon himself stated it was 'both of us or none of us.' The series was editorially positioned as a direct spiritual successor to the 'I Am Bane' storyline then running in Tom King's Batman (Vol. 3), lending it continuity grounding while giving Dixon and Nolan room to operate in what felt, to many readers, like a self-contained crime epic in the tradition of their 1990s work. Issue #3 shipped on July 5, 2017, with a September 2017 cover date; colors throughout the series were handled by Gregory Wright, Nolan's collaborator from their earlier Bane work.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Dionysus — the series' principal antagonist, depicted as a barely-human cyborg and the shadowy master above Damocles — occurs in this issue (DC Database, confirmed).
- The issue is the third and concluding chapter of 'The Sword' arc (issues #1–3), which also sets the table for the series' subsequent 'Challenge' and 'Serpent' arcs.
- Written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by Graham Nolan — the co-creators of Bane — reuniting on the character for the first time since the 1990s Knightfall era, with this being Dixon's return to DC Comics after roughly a decade away.
- Bane and Batman's uneasy forced alliance, begun in issue #2 when both were imprisoned by Damocles in Romania, reaches its breaking point here as Bane chooses to pursue Dionysus over Batman's wishes.
- Venom plays a key in-story role: a prominent early sequence shows Bane self-injecting two vials directly into his forehead before going on the offensive against Damocles' forces.
- The story is set in Romania, continuing the series' globe-trotting criminal-empire premise that deliberately takes Bane out of Gotham City for sustained storytelling.
- The issue was later collected in the Bane: Conquest trade paperback (DC, 2018, ISBN 9781401284428), which reprints all twelve issues of the maxi-series.
- The series — and by extension this issue — was spun directly out of the 'I Am Bane' storyline in Tom King's Batman (Vol. 3), placing it in DC's Rebirth-era continuity.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Bane: Conquest #[nn] (2018)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.