Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1 – Breadcrumbs from a Witch’s House

It’s never enjoyable to read a comic and come away with a sense of waste, regardless of whether or not the issue was crafted with competence. With a creative team as solid as this, it shouldn’t be a shock to hear that Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1 is a competently constructed and adequately entertaining comic, with some particularly notable moments of mechanical flair in both the plot pacing and coloring. However, it squanders a strong creative team on a story that is constrained by the limits of being a superfluous event tie-in issue.

The story follows the recently introduced Angel Breaker, a character who first appeared during Shadow War. Seeley and the team do a good job of introducing readers to the character once more without overdoing the exposition/catch-up required for any newcomers to the character to familiarize themselves with her. You understand exactly how and why she’s involved in the event, even if her story isn’t all that compelling.

While well-written, it’s challenging to feel excitement when the narrative isn’t here to seemingly serve the ‘major narrative gimmicks at play with Knight Terrors. One can appreciate that this tie-in is focused on doing something different with its story, something the other tie-ins could do a bit more of, but it isn’t doing so while maintaining the event’s core spirit.

There seems to be more of a desire to play around with the tone and bits of lore Seeley first established in his gone-too-soon and quite excellent stint on Nightwing, which doesn’t diminish the book’s technical quality. If anything, it elevates it, but for the majority of its page count, it skips out on what has made this event pop thus far. It improves in the book’s back half, but even then, it’s a little too late.

Besides that, however, the book is well-made. Seeley has a strong sense of character for both Angel and Raptor. Their dynamic is solid enough to carry this book on its back, but thankfully there’s a relatively fun heist turned horror show plot, spurred on by plotting that combines both character and plot quite expertly, to help force these two into predicaments that really highlight their entertaining but unscrupulous behavior. The art and colors are gorgeous but admittedly lack any panels with real gravitas or punch. Much like the plot work, it’s very simple and a tad uninspired in its framing. It gets the job done and gets it done quite well, so there is very little room for criticisms on the visual front.

Overall, while Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1 may not fully embrace the event’s core spirit, it surprisingly works well as a standalone story. Readers who enjoyed seeing Angel Breaker in Shadow War will find this issue compelling, regardless of whether or not they’re reading Knight Terrors. It offers an opportunity to delve deeper into the character and enjoy a well-constructed narrative without being heavily tied to the larger event.