Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1 – Tim Seeley, Writer; Acky Bright, Artist; Brian Reber, Colorist
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: Of all of the characters getting two-part series in this event, none has as little pre-event backmatter as Angel Breaker. The powerful assassin who crossed paths with Black Canary in the recent Shadow War event, she’s got a great design and an impressive set of weaponry (including a possibly supernatural sword) but she’s not exactly a dynamic character. So what does she fear? Tim Seeley draws on the character’s Turkish background to create a compelling and original phantasm to torment her. As the issue opens, Angel Breaker is investigating a Kobra base and recruits (read: Blackmails) fellow assassin Raptor to help her. Raptor is a Seeley creation and a highly entertaining character, so that immediately gives this issue a big leg up with me. As the two of them head towards their destination, a quartet of kids at the Kobra base get a little too close to the truth.
The depiction of the Kobra base is one of the creepiest parts of the issue, showing the inner workings of a cult as four kids designated as future high priests investigate their teacher’s odd doings. The teacher seems to be a particularly sadistic figure, but she’s not the scariest thing in this issue—that’s a mysterious old woman lurking around the fringes of the temple and picking people off one by one. Like many of the other minis, this one starts in the waking world before the Knight Terrors tie-in kicks in, and it also keeps us guessing about just what is the waking world and what is the nightmares. Overall, I don’t know that this issue told us too much about Angel Breaker—Raptor may still be the more fleshed-out character here—but Seeley is one of the DCU’s most effective horror writers and he’s created a compelling new villain here. Hopefully this is the start of more DC work for him.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
