Demon Knights #9 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (story), Diógenes Neves & Robson Rocha (pencils), Oclair Albert & Julio Ferreira (inks), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: I left my love in Avalon…something, something…And so I’ll travel on to Avalon.

The Review: Now that our “heroes” have proven capable of amazing feats as a team, the next step is seeing if they can go any bigger and if they keep themselves together long enough to do it.  As it stands, they came together by necessity, and arguably only necessity keeps them together.  Yet there seems more at work in their union; considering how drastically different each one’s motives and background are, there must be some great destiny at the end of their collective road.

And does it get any greater than Camelot?  There’s no way to tell even if the Knights succeed in recovering Merlin’s soul, whether that means the kingdom of Alba Sarum will really be considered the newest incarnation of the fabled city  As a concept, Camelot doesn’t seem to be something which someone can create or even earn.  It’s a bit like performance; you rarely know what you did to resonate with the audience, and when you do, it doesn’t work.

WCBR’s Top Picks

Dean’s Top Picks

Best of the past week: Mind the Gap #1 – Admittedly, it wasn’t the strongest week in comics history, and that’s allowed a comic that wasn’t “awesome” to win honors.  But….that’s how it goes sometimes.  It looks like Jim McCann and Rodin Esquejo have a nice, longer-form mystery to tell us and I’m personally looking forward to it.  This comic has three things that set it apart:  (a) wonderful art, (b) a sense of freshness and (c) not knowing what will happen next.  Runner-up: X-Factor #235 – Talk about running against the grain!  There are no characters I “love” in X-Factor.  The art is a little spotty sometimes.  It is never central to any big Marvel stories.  And….I’ve been trying to convince myself to drop X-Factor for years, but every month Peter David writes an interesting and compelling tale that keeps the series on my pull list AND makes me wonder why I keep it on such a short leash.

Most anticipated this week: The Walking Dead #97 – It’s amazing how much I still anticipate this comic after nearly 100 issues.  As much as I’ve criticized it during reviews for “nothing happening”, I KNOW that I’ll be downloading this onto my iPad and furiously reading it during lunch on Wednesday.  This issue probably won’t feature anything HUGE (as the big events will likely be saved for issue #100), but we should be starting to see the basic shape of whatever horrifying things are to come.  My anticipation is also increased by the fact that last issue was a big improvement over the series’ recent form.

Other picks: Batman #9, I Zombie #25, Morning Glories #18, Takio #1, Wolverine and the X-Men #10

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Alex’s Top Picks

Pick of the Week: Invincible Iron Man #516 – This book has been on fire lately, even if no one seems to have noticed.  Exciting, high-stakes, and character work that leaps off the page for both the good guys and the bad guys.  This is Iron Man at its finest with energy to spare.

Most Anticipated: Uncanny X-Force #25 – Rick Remender begins a big new arc of X-Force.  That alone should excite.  This promises to be more than the Otherworld “breather” (by X-Force standards).  This is also the first issue that’ll see Mike McKone on art and the preview pages have already shown that that’s as awesome as it sounds.

Other Picks: Batman #9, Demon Knights #9, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE #9, Green Lantern #9, Fatale #5, Captain America #11, Journey into Mystery #637, New Avengers #26, Punisher #11,  Wolverine & the X-Men #10