Batman Knightfall : Part One currently available for $12.23 at Amazon
This was a huge thing back in the day. When you think of the setup, who wouldn’t read it? All of Arkham Asylum is let out to destroy Gotham. A newer supervillain, Bane, organized all of it in an effort to break the Bat. It sounded so awesome when I was younger! Shame that I didn’t read it back then, I think I would’ve enjoyed it more.
The main problem is it’s too damn long. The whole event is 68-70 issues. That includes Knightfall – Knight Quest – Knight’s End. Oi. The next problem is there’s a lot of backstory involving Bane/related characters that they don’t bother explaining. It’s not essential, but when you’re dealing with an event this long, there should be some short one-off page that explains what happened in the year prior to the event. Anyways, on to the Knightfall run.
It starts a little cheesy. Batman’s villains don’t usually work in a giant gangbang like this, but you know what? About two issues in, I started getting into it. Bane’s plan is pretty cool, if not ridiculous in concept and execution, he turns out to be a solid character. When my previous opinions of him were based on the cartoon (awesome) and the live action movie (barfo), I wasn’t sure what I’d get in comic form.
It gets better and better as Batman gets worn out and desperate. He knows he can’t rest long or put others at risk. These are by far the best parts of this event. Eventually, Batman is broken. Azrael has to take over his role. If you’re not familiar with him, he’s like Batman. BUT ANGRY. WITH CLAWS.
In the 90s, that seemed like a winning formula. Big surprise, like almost every other edgy attempt in the 90s, it starts sucking pretty quick. Azrael is tolerable until about the end of Knightfall, but it was getting rough to read.
Now you’re probably thinking, damn this is long for a dr_teng comic review, I bet he’ll split it up for the other parts of the event. WRONG. I was reading the rest and it becomes intolerable. I had to skim a good 40 issues of crap. Sometimes I would stop and give an issue a whirl just to see if it improved. It didn’t. It focuses on uninteresting storylines, Azrael’s descent into madness isn’t written in an interesting way, I honestly wasn’t sure how they could’ve taken a mostly fun event and turned it into such dreck.
I won’t even get into art since I found it disappointing all around, even at the best of times it was average.
3.5/5 for Knightfall. There’s some great moments and it’s well paced. 1/5 for the rest. I consider it almost unreadable.
