Demon Knights #3 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Diógenes Neves (penciller), Oclair Albert (inker), Marcelo Maiolo (colorist)

The Story: The Horde is coming, the Horde is coming!

The Review: Works of fantasy have lent a kind of glamour to the period in which they take place.  Whether you’re talking Arthurian legend, Tolkien, or even World of Warcraft, their tales of knights and mages, stallions and dragons, chivalry and destiny have painted a gloss of excitement to what was actually one of the grimmest, least heartwarming times of our world’s history.  So in that sense, the fantasy genre truly lives up to its name.

For the first couple issues, this series seemed set to buy into this trend of scrubbing up the Middle Ages, only it went for the humorous route than epic.  After all, when you have a cliffhanger of flame-breathing, armored dinosaurs raging into a bar, you can’t expect this title to take itself that seriously.  Even here, where events show we’ve clearly entered a dark point in the plot, Cornell can’t resist getting in a few laughs here and there.

Savage is downright jokey about the whole matter, in a hopeless, let’s-make-merry-while-we-go-down kind of way.  Too long-lived and bearing too barbaric an origin to give a hoot about his choice of words, it’s no wonder he gets all the best lines.  In response to Horsewoman’s query about their next move against the Horde, he responds, “…all in all, I suspect the plan is: leave an exquisite corpse.  But I say—let’s at least give them a contest!”