Review: Demon Knights #1 - #6
I loved Paul Cornell's work on Knight & Squire and I was very, very excited to see that he was writing Demon Knights and that it featured two of my absolute favorite characters: Etrigan and the Shining Knight. I am thrilled to say that it has lived up to my high hopes. Cornell is a master of writing snappy, acrobatic dialogue that jumps between characters and scenes effortlessly. What I didn't expect was that he could wring six really solid issues out of the comics equivalent of a bottle episode.
I don't even know where to start with this. I love this book so ridiculously much. I have been known to produce reflexive squeals of delight when the staff of my local comics shop present me with the latest issue of a title I particularly love and Demon Knights is definitely one of the squeal-worthy titles.
The standard measures of a good book are all easily met, issue after issue, in this title. The characters are varied and interesting and every single one of them conceals at least a couple of different secrets they'll do anything to protect. Most of them, in fact, are defined by intrigue or a past betrayal, to the point that six issues in we've only seen one "secret origin" issue and yet more than one of them has presented more than one cover story to explain away what others can't help but notice. I can't believe the patience Cornell is showing in unpacking these characters' troubled pasts and motivations. He isn't peeling them away like the skin of an onion; he's unwinding them slowly and patiently and oh-so-carefully like the peel of an apple he's trying to remove in one long, slow, spiraling piece. Mwah. That is the sound of me kissing the cover of the book where his name is printed.
The book so far is about the build-up to and beginning of the siege of a tiny village by a massive army and the defense of that village by seven heroes who may or may not be the titular demon knights. One of them is obviously demonic but the others range from connivers and heretics to outcasts, traitors and a knight on a sacred quest. They cover all the moral and ethical bases is what I'm saying here and they cover them in an entertaining and dynamic way. The interplay between the characters is fun and clever and wry, nimbly cutting back and forth across the lines of slapstick, action, intrigue and heroism. The dialogue always advances the plot or the characterization in some very meaningful way and delights as it does so. Rare is the page that doesn't reveal an action or a motivation that we didn't know before and by gods is it refreshing to read a book so eager to give the mind something to work on.
The art has also been consistently great. The action sequences are mobile, the faces deliriously expressive, the settings like painted landscapes. I found myself studying the roofs of village huts, a herd of horses, arrows in flight, eyebrows quirked in dark amusement, teeth ground together in avaricious grins.
How can one book be this good? This easily completes the trifecta of victory for the New 52. If DC needed to enter three books as evidence in a courtroom where it would be decided whether this was orth their time and effort they would only need Frankenstein, Batwoman and Demon Knights to build a very strong case that all of this has absolutely been worth it. Demon Knights isn't just a solid read; it's a book I would show to a friend to get them back into comics. If you aren't reading it, start. If you can't get the back issues, wait for the trade. No, pre-order the trade. It's worth it.
Klarion
Posted to Comic of the Week, Comics, Review on 23 February 2012
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Other stuff like this: DCnU, Demon Knights, Etrigan, Paul Cornell, Shining Knight
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