Nightmares.
Nightmares are the most vulnerable aspect of dreaming as your emotions and your fears are put on display while your brain creates an absurdist reality filled with things you don’t want to see. For children, it’s the source of childhood fears. For adults, it’s a reflection of your true self and how much you despise your past. The mental scape is a terrifying thing to be trapped within, and writers Leah Williams and Phillip Kennedy Johnson continue to haunt the Superfamily of Metropolis with their worst nightmares in Knight Terrors: Action Comics #2.
Following the first installment, we are greeted with Leah Williams and Vasco Georgiev’s “She’s Got No Strings, Part Two” which continues Power Girl’s story in a deeply striking way. Since Power Girl Special, Williams has been playing with Kara Zor-L’s mental state with writing that reflects back to the early days of Kara being on the JLI and her first years after Crisis and continues that streak through her constant attempts to wake up and fight back against Insomnia and his attempts to torment her and the rest of the heroes he’s put to sleep. However, what makes the story so striking is Georgiev’s art and Leah’s character development.
DC Comics
Williams presents the idea that Kara’s worst nightmare is losing the people she loves – throughout her publication history she’s experienced just that, whether it’s the loss of Earth-2 or her many loves throughout the years. The hatred that comes with leading people to their graves follows her and she begins to challenge her nightmares with her own self hatred. Williams succeeds in testing how well her abilities are with a layered concept such as this, as her journey with the character has been evolving the original trauma of Earth-2 through the introduction of a cosmic sense of imposter syndrome. Mixed in with Vasco Georgiev’s striking art and breathtaking colors from Alex Guimarãres, they tell a beautiful but terrifying horror story of self hatred with small teases for Power Girl #1.
On the other side of things, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Mico Suayan, and Fico Ossio continue “The Stuff of Nightmares, Part Two” and steal the show with just how unsettling the story truly is. Following the first chapter, The Super-Twins are faced with the horror of Cyborg Superman as he takes out the family members protecting them one by one. The beauty of Johnson’s story is that he uses this as an opportunity to write an epilogue for “Warworld” and “Ex Machina”, using Knight Terrors: Action Comics as a way to put an end to the first two stories featuring Osul-Ra and Otho-Ra and lead them to the future of his Action Comics run. With this in mind, Johnson crafts a chilling story that plays with a child’s perception of war trauma with Hank Henshaw manipulating the kids, forcing them to fight their way through a nasty spout of self-reflection.
DC Comics
Suayan and Ossio’s art help show this using traditional comic horror techniques and aggressive shadowing that feels almost like something out of a slasher, which considering the first chapter is very fitting. Every piece of art is a glimpse into the hellscape that the twins are witnessing and the readers have the joy of seeing that terror alongside the kids. The story as a whole feels like two kids fighting back against the monster in the closet, the boogeyman hiding under their bed, and Hank Henshaw appears to them as nothing more than a childhood scare. The trio nails that.
Leah Williams, Vasco Georgiev, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Mico Suayan, and Fico Ossio have something special here, and the future of Power Girl and Action Comics is a bright one. I’ve never been more excited for a superhero comic line before until these books arrived and I can only see it going up from here.
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