Knight Terrors: Action Comics #1 review

DC’s summer Halloween event continues with a look at what’s happening to the rest of the Super Family while Superman and Supergirl fight the effects of new villain Insomnia’s supernatural sleeping sickness.

But first – sigh – Power Girl.

What’s she doing back in Action? I thought that with a new series coming up which I can happily ignore, I’d not have to see her in Action Comics again. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved Power Girl, but over the course of three back-up strips and a spin-off special, writer Leah Williams has stripped all the fun from Kara Zor-L. The strong-willed veteran heroine has become a mewling babe, dependent on the guidance and approval of others.

It’s more of the same in this issue’s extra-sized story – the back-ups were ten pages, here ‘Paige’, as we’re meant to call Karen Starr now, gets 20. And they’re good looking, with decent character work and storytelling by Vasco Georgiev, an artist I’ve not come across previously. Clever angles add an unsettling air to proceedings, which is what’s needed when a character is trapped in a living nightmare. The visuals are given more depth by colourist Alex Guimarães, while Becca Carey does a splendid job on letters.

Power Girl’s Knight Terrors entry, ‘She’s Got No Strings’, begins with just what I was fearing the crossover would deliver… your bog standard set of unpleasant fantasies. Killer boyfriend. Best pal turning against you. Evil Superman. Parental rejection. Dad wearing inappropriately short shorts.

There are a couple of nice ideas. In one scenario, Karen is forced to go on stage unprepared in front of a very critical audience. I like this because it’s either very random, or speaking to our heroine feeling uncomfortable playing a role.

Better still is Power Girl ‘finding out’ she’s a robot and about to junked. Heck, this is the DC Universe, it’s entirely possible. And a pretty scary idea.

This is the only page that doesn’t work for me artwise – things are a little too tight to see what’s going on. I think there are two scenarios here – dream Karen as endangered robot, and Karen outside the dream in a sleep tank.

This would make sense because as the mini-dreams progress we see glitching and a literal ‘414 code’ written in the air. By the end of the book it’s clear that if Karen just fell asleep at the same time Insomnia sent the whole world into a nightmare, she happened to be lying down inside and machine, all wired up…

Though she’s initially frustratingly meek, Karen – like Superman and Supergirl in the aforementioned Superman tie-in – starts seeing through the fantasy, and that’s cheering. Hopefully the conclusion will see a proper Power Girl, kicking dream ass and taking dream names. While this story doesn’t deviate much from the standard nightmare narratives it’s probably not Williams’s choice – company crossovers are infamous for the tie-in creators not being told enough by the ‘showrunner’ to do something novel. So well done for making the story as interesting as it is.

Then we get what I come to Action Comics for – a Super Family story. While Superman and Lois are out of the apartment, presumably having their own Insomnia adventures, ‘Super Twins’ Osul and Otho-Ra are being watched by Conner, Kong Kenan and Natasha Irons. Kon is letting/forcing the kids to watch A Texas Chainsaw Massacre or somesuch and it all gets a little too much for the boy, Osul. The film is cut short and everyone decides to get some sleep. Osul, though, wakes up and starts wandering the corridors of the Lane/Kent home.

Did you notice the third panel of this beautiful sequence? That’s Conner raised off the ground, and not under his own power. Guess who’s back?

Or is he? We’re soon in a dreams within dreams scenario – is Cyborg Superman Hank Henshaw really returned from his Phantom Zone confinement so soon after being defeated?

Beats me. Everyone seems to be awake by the end of ‘The Stuff of Nightmares’, but if Knight Terrors rules are being followed they’re actually all asleep, having their own dreams; I’m guessing the story up to bedtime ‘happened’ but after that it’s all Osul’s fear of Cyborg Superman. I expect writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson will make things clear in the second part, perhaps show us some of the other dreams.

I enjoyed this tale loads. PKJ’s well-wrought, moody script, leavened with humour, is a given, but what really surprised me here was the effectiveness of the artwork. It’s credited to Mico Suayan and Fico Ossio and I wish I knew what that meant – no separate ‘penciller’ and ‘inker’ attributions seems to be saying that they’re splitting the 20 pages. Anyway, if there’s a join to be seen, I’m missing it. All the visuals look wonderful, with the characters easier to distinguish than has sometimes been the case in regular Action issues; at times Kong – China’s New Super-Man – has looked almost identical to Kon El and Jon Kent, skintone and all. but here he looks the best he has since suddenly appearing as part of the Metropolis Super Family. As for Conner, he’s also looking distinctive, wirier, more sinewy than is usually the case. I like the look a lot. Natasha, as I’ve said previously, doesn’t seem to have a DC model sheet, she looks different with every artist; it’s a little offensive. That said, this week’s Natasha looks great. And the Henshaw/Kon-El combo is truly freaky. Almost as freaky as Kelex.

As for the action sequences, they’re intense and intensely enjoyable.

The colours of Romulo Fajardo Jr are outstanding; the first half of the story sees the young Supers coloured for night time while the dream sequences benefit from intense reds and sickly greens and purples. Dave Sharpe’s lettering job is unobtrusive but effective.

The cover, by illustrator Rafa Sandoval and colourist Matt Herms, is spot on, showing Osul’s worst nightmare made real. It does beg the question again – why does the book open with the Power Girl story?

I’d prefer this comic to be half the size and Pretendy Power Girl-free, but if you’re reading regular Action Comics I’d say buy this for the excellent Osul opus.