KARATE KID #14 (1978)
by Bob Rozakis & Juan Ortiz
cover by Rich Buckler
“Diamondeth” might just be one of the dumbest supervillain names ever.
Last time Karate Kid returned to 1978 only to find his friend Iris transformed into a diamond monster. And Robin is there for basically no reason.
So of course this turns into a disappointing Karate Kid vs Robin fight. Considering Karate Kid has never met Batman up to this point, it’s a wasted opportunity to bring up what exactly the 30th Century knows about the caped crusader.
We have a superstrong diamond woman on the loose, so of course Karate Kid spends his time dealing with regular crooks because that’s what he does most of the time in this book.
But wait, weren’t we supposed to focus on the diamond woman?
It says something that even Karate Kid struggles to find ways to care about Iris.
Ah yes, the classic villainous plan:
1) turn the hero’s love interest into an indestructible monster
2) ???
3) victory!
Poor Robin having to deal with this crossover.
The Time Master’s great plan is… uhm… we’ll I’m sure we’ll learn about it eventually.
(we won’t)
Now, you might expect the rest of the story to be about the fight with Diamondeth. But most of the time we deal with a random gang having kidnapped her because they thought she was a diamond statue.
I will spare you the millionth disappointing Karate Kid fight, jumping to the confrontation with Diamondeth.
Punching her is useless, so the solution is having Karate Kid and Robin punching her together.
I can believe Karate Kid splitting diamonds, but having Robin do the same is really stretching it.
And so we end with Karate Kid deciding he’s going to bring Iris to the 30th century in order to turn her back into a human.
We still have only 1 story to go, plus 2 epilogues.
Once more, so bad it can’t be described with words.
Historical significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10