Knight Terrors is heating up this week with an opening salvo of Knight Terrors: First Blood and a slew of one-shots kicking off. That includes Knight Terrors: Ravager #1, which focuses on Rose Wilson. The event is fun in a few ways, the first of which is because we get to see what these heroes’ and villains’ worst nightmares are. The second: finding out how they get out of this mess.
Knight Terrors: Ravager is an under-the-radar must-read for anyone interested in this event. It’s under the radar in part because Ravager certainly isn’t the most primo of characters to get a two-part story, but given where Ed Brisson and Dexter Soy take this story, it’s clearly important to the ongoing events outside of the nightmare realm.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though; just know that this story does a little more in revealing there are people not under the nightmare spell.
This story is largely about trauma, namely the trauma Rose went through as a child. It opens with a scary-looking house in the dead of night, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A young girl witnesses monstrous gray men killing her parents. The violence enacted on them is bloody and gory, especially for DC Comics’ superhero book. Soy and Veronica Candini let the blood flow in this scene, but soon Ravager wakes from a viney prison to the sound of the girl screaming for help. There’s a slasher vibe to the kills and attacker and that gives this tie-in a unique feel.
Showering in blood, are we?
Credit: DC Comics
Ravager’s heroism is a key part of this story, as is shown when she regrets not being able to help other victims later in the story. She’s got the little girl to take care of, though, and all signs point to this girl being a version of herself in some capacity. Brisson toys with the horror elements quite well here, with not one but two twists that defy your expectations. It’s a delicious way to keep the reader on their toes and play with the nightmare element of the larger story.
The trauma element is present in the little girl, but it’s a little too obtuse for my liking. You can make some sense of it if you give it a think, but the threat being these gray men and not, say, the visual embodiment of her dad makes things less clear. The change in the origin of the little girl is intriguing, but there isn’t enough there to really understand what the point of it is, at least not yet.
You’ll likely dig this if you’ve been enjoying Brisson’s Stormwarch stories in Batman: Brave in the Bold. By the end of the book, there’s a nice connection, which gives us a slight taste of some possible relief for Ravager in the next issue.
Soy keeps you entertained with the action as well. Something that might go unnoticed is how Soy uses a lot of extreme close-ups of Ravager and the little girl. The sense of fear they’re under is heightened since we can’t see their surroundings. A threat could strike at any moment.
Knight Terrors: Ravager is a strong chapter in the bigger event offering hints of where the larger story is going while delving into Ravager’s psychosis. With plenty of blood and action, this might be one of the best tie-ins of the event so far.
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