“Remember, it’s all just a dream…”
SPOILERS AHEAD for Knight Terrors: Superman #1!
Written by DC veteran Joshua Williamson, drawn by The Thing’s Tom Reilly, and colored by Nathan Fairburn, Knight Terrors: Superman sets itself as a strong story for Superman and, interestingly enough, his cousin Supergirl. The story follows the generalized Knight Terrors format but with an ending twist as Insomnia comes after the Red-Blue Blur and manipulates his dreams to reveal his greatest fears. Williamson plays with Clark Kent’s fears a lot better than he did his dark and brooding companion in Knight Terrors: Batman, and it shows.
The psychological horror that Superman experiences is the age-old fear that comes with being unkillable: he’s scared of being the last being in the universe. Clark Kent’s nightmare manifests itself as an Angel of Death to reflect his fears towards being “The Man of Tomorrow” because as Insomnia says to Clark, “there’s only one Man of Tomorrow”. Luckily for him, he’s given a mere moment of comfort when he sees that his cousin, Kara Zor-El, is breaking into his nightmare to escape her own fear. The intensity of the story reflects heavily on Williamson’s writing and the brilliant creative duo of Reilly and Fairburn as the comic is colorful yet shows us the true horrors the two characters face throughout the story.
DC Comics
The first act in this two-parter for Knight Terrors uses concepts and designs from past eras of Superman and Supergirl as startling lenses into their nightmares. We see Reilly draw different versions of Lois Lane for Clark and later haunt Kara with a morbid sense of generational trauma as we see the different versions of Supergirl come after her and Clark. Williamson, Reilly, and Fairburn want you to remember every era of Superman as part of this thesis they present that there is nothing scarier than the life you’ve lived coming back to haunt you. In this case for the original two Kryptonians, having your life and your past lives come back for revenge.
Williamson brings the two heroes into a state of complexity with the comic as it gives Superman a fear based on the concept of eternity while his cousin deals with the weight of self-awareness and the curse of reboots. Reilly and Fairburn express that within the art and colors brilliantly and on top of that, Dan Mora’s design for Superman’s nightmare is beautiful and terrifying as it paints itself as a biblical angel that comes after two characters who are, to the world’s population, the modern angels.
The comic is a dream team as the creative trio soars into the stars with a stellar tie-in and an impressive look into Superman’s dreamscape. As the story ends, the reader will be left on the edge of their seat as Kara’s nightmare comes after our two heroes. If Williamson sticks the landing, this could easily become the biggest lore change made to Supergirl since Tom King and Biquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow where the creative duo brings back Kara’s classic origin of Argo City and its destruction.
DC Comics
Supergirl has always been in a fairly strange and unique spot since her death in Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths which changed the trajectory of her character on a new and otherwise debated path. Williamson could very well be pulling out a card from his time on The Flash and adding a sense of meta-storytelling to her character by introducing the idea of her remembrance of her past lives, or this could end up as a callback to past generations of Supergirl. However, given the Woman of Tomorrow adaption and the retooling of her Earth-2 counterpart, Power Girl, by Leah Williams and Marguerite Sauvage, this can be the sign of a new era for Supergirl. Until then, we just have to wait for the next installment of Knight Terrors: Superman to see what happens to the Man of Steel and the Maid of Might.
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