Marvel Knights 20th #1: Tales of the Past Forgotten

Marvel Knights launched 20 years ago under Joe Quesada as an imprint of Marvel where stories could occur in relative isolation, with slightly darker themes, but still rooted in the main Marvel universe (Earth 616). Launching initially with Daredevil, Punisher, Inhumans, and Black Panther, Marvel Knights quickly became a space for top-level talent to explore innovative and avant-garde storytelling within the mainstream Marvel universe. I remember the era clearly and dove deep into these stories as a young man. Ennis and Dillon’s take on Punisher pushed the character to the next level after decades stagnant. The outline to the blockbuster Black Panther film can be found in Priest and Mark Texeira’s run on the character. The work of Kevin Smith, Joe Quesada, David Mack, Alex Maleev, and Brian Michael Bendis would forever reframe Daredevil and his extended cast in the same way Frank Miller accomplished over a decade previous. Bruce Jones reminded us that a monster lives inside Bruce Banner. Even Neil Gaiman would get in on the action with his critically acclaimed reimagining of the Marvel universe in 1602. And there were countless others.

Eventually, Marvel Knights strayed away from sustained storytelling in favor of self-contained mini-series and one-shots and the establishment of the MAX imprint for mature readers savaged the Marvel Knights stable of characters, not in a bad way necessarily, but certainly in a definitive way. Here we are, two decades removed, and here is Donny Cates, right on time, to remind us of what made this imprint so special in the first place.

What Cates has done here that is so remarkable to me is that he has captured the nuance of these characters as they existed during their Marvel Knights tenures. We see a Banner haunted by the monster within. We see Matt as a pain-junkie. We see a world of tarnished heroes– Knights in slightly rusty armor, doing their best to get through today with little to no care about what fresh hell tomorrow may bring. Cates crafts a love-letter to a bygone era here, and takes extra care in the details.

The art style is distinctly Travel Foreman in design and conception. If you are already a fan of Foreman, you will love it, but if you aren’t, the art may be an issue for you. I’m still conflicted about how clean the work is for a work of this nature, given the history of Marvel Knights and how much the imprint pushed boundaries artistically over the years, but it is not a totally unsuitable style. It is also not without some striking punctuation marks throughout, most notably this beautiful splash page of Matt regaining his memories. The use of the concentric circles zooming in from a macro view of Matt’s life, in the context of the brief appearance by Bullseye, seemed an excellent touch given the nature of the relationship between the two.