Knight Terrors: Terror Titans
Story: Mark Waid, Jeremy Haun and Ed Brisson, Tim Seeley and Andrew Constant
Art: Acky Bright, Jeremy Haun, Scott Godlewski and Dexter Soy
My rating: 2 out of 5 Ω‘s
This volume of Knight Terrors tie-ins collects:
Knight Terrors: Titans #1-2
An interesting little side-adventure wherein the Titans are all individually trapped in nightmares – and the choices for the same were all pretty good and made sense (more so than in many of the tie-ins) and the short comic benefitted from the larger cast because we didn’t really delve into any one of them, giving the reader just the gist and letting your brain fill in or not as you saw fit. The protagonist is interestingly NOT a regualar Titan and whether this mystery woman who is hearing a guiding voice in her head and working to save the Titans is Raven or not was a nice little added mystery that lent itself to an interesting twist to cap off the story. There is horror, mystery, some solid action and a pretty good art style throughout that works very well for the whole vibe – much like a familiar DC house-style but at the same time with a dark edge to it that suited this as one of the better tie-ins as a whole. Very well rounded.
Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1-2
Probably the surprisingly best story in this collection – I liked it more perhaps because of how much it surprised me. The main character of Angel Breaker is one I am not even really passingly familiar with and she recruits Raptor, a pro-thief, to help her steal something from a Kobra site. The site turns out to be like a boarding school for a few teenage-ish kids who are being raised and indoctrinated by Kobra. It’s not a heroic story and is more of anti-heroes who end up trying to kind-of-sort-of do something good (or at least decent) while they carry out their thieving plan – all while surviving in a slasher-movie feeling situation. Combined with the art of Acky Bright who creates a pop-bright art style that is coloured darkly and heavily shadowed with some creepy thrown around, it is a nicely crafted story that actually shows and adds characters to the two principal characters and I wanted to know what happens next at the end.
Knight Terrors: Shazam! #1-2
It was… well, Mary Marvel is the primary protagonist and we see her trying to save her family while dealing with this surreal nightmare reality, there’s horror and a few snap-twist moments here and there. But despite a pretty strong art team effort and some good moments, I really didn’t much care for the comic. It was throwing the Shazam family into the event in a pretty generic feeling story and it’s quite “rah-rah-family!” and all but nothing special. Ended on a cliffhanger for no reason.
Knight Terrors: Black Adam #1-2
A better framed story, Black Adam finds himself in a nightmare scenario where he kind of knows this is all not real, but at the same time has no way out. Drawn in a more somewhat realistic style by Haun, this story is a good exploration of one of the darker characters in the DC pantheon as he faces being powerless and in a blast from the past, we see the murder of the Black Marvel family from way back in “52” which is still one of the better period of DC comics in years. Decent art, decent story but somewhat annoying cliffhanger ending – and if you don’t know Adams’ backstory, it will likely be a little awkward.
Knight Terrors: Ravager #1-2
Bored me lifeless. Ravager is in some suburban nightmare that isn’t part of any actual nightmare she’s had and there’s a kid version of her and creatures hunting them that at times I felt was all tied to Deathstroke but then I wasn’t sure… it was all a bit confusing and felt like the Catwoman story, I felt like I was missing big chunks of info for context and it also ended on a cliffhanger for no good reason if I am not following the main book. Weakest by far in this volume and among the poorest overall. Even the art was fine but unremarkable.
A bright spot or two but overall some of the weakest stories in this whole event so-far, several of these could have been abandoned on the idea-board and more focus given to the better ones, a theme I see recurring throughout this events tie-in minis.
One Happy Monk 
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