Knight Terrors – Punchline #1-Keep The Nightmare Alive

Knight Terrors – Punchline #1 opens up with Punchline and her Royal Flush gang pulling a heist and finding that things are going just a little too easy and King getting a message that Oracle’s base of operations, The Clocktower, was not destroyed during Fear State, merely abandoned. Punchline, hearing this new information, sees it as an opportunity to discredit the Bat-Family’s reputation as do-gooders. The moment is interrupted when Barbara Gordon, “Batgirl” shows up but is easily disposed of, prompting Punchline to head to the Clocktower to see what she can find.

The inclusion of Punchline in this series of tie-ins feels forced at times as she is a relatively new character in the DCU and hasn’t had any interactions with Doctor Destiny, who, as established from the event’s onset, has hidden the Nightmare Stone in the dreams of one of the DCU’s characters. Punchline’s internal monologue throughout the issue is the driving plot device, providing a glimpse into her mental state and belief that for most of the issue, she believes herself to be awake.

It is only through the subtle art details in the opening pages that the reader is aware that she is in fact also asleep like the other people in Gotham as Insomnia can be seen watching from a window during her fight with Batgirl and eventually on the various screens in the city as Punchline rides Batgirl’s motorcycle to the Clocktower.

Unlike the art in the main series and tie-ins, there is nothing that really sets it apart from a regular story or gives any indication, aside from the “Batgirl’s” eventual evolution, that Punchline is in fact in a dream state.  The same can be said about the coloring, which seems like it is a normal story set in the waking world, and unlike other Knight Terror issues that have that edge to things that scream that the world around is not real.