Review: Knight Terrors: Knocturnal Creatures hardcover (DC Comics)

In the Knight Terrors book most suited to outright horror — Knight Terrors: Knocturnal Creatures, villain and supernatural focused — the writers go for comedy and genre-bending, if not outright parody. There’s a place for that, sure, but particularly given that most of these characters' regular series writers are here, one might expect something more consequential, or at least emotionally affecting in some way. Instead, the stories are often mundane, often predictable, and largely lacking on new insight into the characters. If you wanted to skip a Knight Terrors tie-in book, so far Knocturnal Creatures would be the one to pass on.

[Review contains spoilers]

To Knocturnal’s credit, the majority of the stories collected here are set squarely in their home titles' continuity, insofar as that matters. “Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn,” as discussed in my review of Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Girl in a Crisis, is even less of a Knight Terrors book than it is another chapter in Tini Howard’s multiverse-spanning romp. The Poison Ivy story picks up from Ivy’s arrival in Gotham in her own title; the Joker story cameos his new gang from Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing. Zatanna’s story specifically starts and ends in Knight Terrors proper, and writer Dennis Culver guest-stars Robotman Cliff Steele following Culver’s own Unstoppable Doom Patrol miniseries.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

So in minor ways, it’s not as if these books are untethered from their titles the way that “Knight Terrors: Nightwing” was in Knight Terrors: Dark Knightmares, written by a totally separate creative team. And I admit to being enough of a diehard fan that these small continuity notes were probably enough to get me to read Knocturnal even if I’d known beforehand that I wouldn’t enjoy it.

The book is not wholly unredeemable. Harley getting her hands on Grant Morrison’s Multiversity tomes was fun the first time and only doesn’t rate higher here because I read it in an earlier collection. There are legitimately scary images in both the Poison Ivy and Joker stories, though overshadowed by the extent to which each story is played for laughs. Zatanna partnered with Robotman is an unexpected and enjoyable team-up; I hadn’t been familiar with artist Lucas Meyers, who draws the Punchline story, but his work has a Jim Lee/Jason Fabok vibe that’s sure to take him far.

But that Ivy story, for instance, explores the horrors of domestic bliss a la Stepford Wives, and those are too familiar tropes, not to mention — as is a problem with most Knight Terrors stories — we know none of this is real and the characters will emerge unscathed. I thought series writer G. Willow Wilson broached interesting topics in Ivy sticking with the nightmare to try to make girlfriend Harley Quinn happy, but it’s awfully drawn out for a scenario we know will end badly; this might’ve been truncated into just one issue. Artist Atagun Ilhan’s work is so cartoony as to never be scary, only mildly stomach-turning, though Poison Ivy series cover artist Jessica Fong continues to be brilliant.

Matthew Rosenberg’s Joker story sees Batman absurdly slipping and falling to his death, and then the Joker tries haphazardly to live a normal life. The whole thing has a parodic unreality to it — a too-long two-page gag about the minutiae of Joker’s company’s accounting department, the Joker conducting corporate interviews with other villains, and a violent dust-up at the company baseball game — and I didn’t think Rosenberg moved well beyond “isn’t corporate work ridiculous.” His narration when Joker moonlights as Batman — riffing on Rorschach, itself meant to be overwrought — is equally a joke too familiar, much like the concluding idea that the Joker needs Batman to give himself purpose.

Danny Lore’s Punchline story ends up as a meta-tale of Punchline fighting her way through a YouTube page personified. That’s too on-the-nose for me, though there’s an interesting moment where Punchline almost confronts how being “too online” led her to end up as the Joker’s groupie. As with the Ivy and Joker stories, however, we’re too far into social criticism for the story to be actually scary. And it takes a whole issue to get to this point; the first, in which Punchline infiltrates Oracle’s Clock Tower, is exceptionally over-narrated, not to mention Punchline having inexplicable knowledge of the Bat-family (or maybe just dreaming she does? But if she dreams it and it’s right, is that just coincidence?).

Knight Terrors: Knocturnal Creatures ends with “Presque Vu,” the two-part backup story from the Harley Quinn volume, with art by horror bonafide Ben Templesmith. It’s written by Leah Williams, whose work I know mainly from the bubbly Power Girl, so this bizarre thriller is a curious other side. Harley undergoes some reality-bending trials as she slowly takes over from and becomes a cyberpunk future version of herself, with shades of Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, though the story being more sci-fi than horror is another in a book that feels like it’s missing its mark; I can think of any number of scary Joker stories, especially, over the years, and it’s a disappointment one couldn’t have been spared for here.

[Includes original covers, variant cover gallery]

Rating 2.0