Knight Terrors: Superman #1 // Review
Clark’s on top of it. Really. The whole world is falling apart. Everyone is falling asleep. But he’s on top of it. He’s not crazy. He’s not doing it all alone. Wonder Woman and Zatanna are looking into possible magical connections. Batman and Deadman are heading off to Arkham Tower to check out the madness there. Supercorp inexplicably just happens to have some supernatural oneirologists on speed-dial. (Who knows? Maybe one of them has a sister named Death.) It’s all going to be fine. And then Clark’s going to fall asleep in Knight Terrors: Superman #1. Writer Joshua Williamson playfully puts Clark through an adorable hell with artist Tom Reilly and colorist Nathan Fairbairn.
Clark seems to have fallen into the offices of the Daily Planet. As luck would have it, he’s got his glasses on. No cape. He looks perfectly normal at his desk and everything. Only thing is...he was sleeping at it, and he’s probably behind a deadline on SOMETHING. As it turns out, all is cool. The editor pops in to show them the headline for the next edition. Evidently, the world has been permanently saved, and now Superman can marry Lois Lane, after all. So, it’s all cool until the tsunami hits.
Williamson throws a whole bunch of different Superman tropes into the blender and hits a few buttons. The character has been around for a long enough time, but this is actually a lot of fun. It's fun to watch it play out. Then, just toy with all of the different elements that are rolling around in the head of the Man of Tomorrow. There's a sharp sense of humor about it that seems to fit the nightmare nature of the story almost perfectly. There's a sinister menace behind everything that seems to be lurking in plain sight. It's a fun approach to horror: laugh at it with daggers lurking in the corners of the panels.
Reilly holds the weird mood and tone of the script at a distance. Don't want to hold this one too tightly. Don't wanna take it too seriously. But at the same time, if the art is too goofy, the underlying drama and menace behind everything is going to completely fall apart. Reilly seems to know exactly how tightly to hold the drama without losing track of the comedy. It’s a very tenuous thing...very tricky to manage, but Reilly nails it. Fairbairn seems to be having fun with the colors as well. The pallet is vaguely all over the place. It's cool and approachable with the occasional bright accent that serves to delicately key the reader into the madness.
The Knight Terrors crossover event has had a dazzlingly weird variety of different stories that all manage to come from the same heart. Superman’s foray into the horror is the first one to really openly embrace the dark absurdity of the situation. It’s a very cool approach that makes for a truly enjoyable Superman story.
