I’m honestly disappointed to be saying this because I’ve so enjoyed his Batman run and I’ve come to view it as one of the few dependably good titles out there at the moment but Volume 10: Knightmares is Tom King’s first Bat-stinker. He’s written a coupla average books before, like The War of Jokes and Riddles and the Wedding book, but Knightmares is the first one where I couldn’t have cared less about what I was reading.
Scarecrow and Bane have drugged Batman and he hallucinates a series of disconnected, trippy, barely-coherent, and generally confusing scenarios. He’s also still mooning about Catwoman dumping him. Ugh.
It’s not just that the “Scarecrow drugs Batman with ANOTHER variation of his fear gas” trope has been done to death - released concurrently to this stretch of King’s run was a separate limited Batman series called Kings of Fear that rehashed that very same storyline! - but it’s been done better before and fairly recently in Grant Morrison’s Batman run where Batman battles the Lump in RIP, which was far more compelling to read than this meandering treatment was. I can’t help comparing the two because they’re so similar and, as a result, Knightmares suffers from the comparison.
Bruce Wayne as a kid sees his parents murdered - but Batman’s there too?! Professor Pyg is torturing Batman - but who’s really under that mask!? Catwoman DIDN’T leave Batman at the altar - but what’s John Constantine doing there?! I get it, it’s a dream/knightmare, whatevs. The weird’n’whacky scenes aren’t doing anything for me though if this is all they are.
The only positive about having such a zigzagging narrative approach is the myriad of top artistic talent that contribute pages to this book. Jorge Fornes’ art in Batman #66 blew me away for how similar it was to David Mazzucchelli’s style - I honestly thought Mazzucchelli had returned to draw Batman for a special one-off, particularly as that issue so heavily references Year One.
I also loved Fornes and Lee Weeks’ collaboration for the next, near-silent issue where Batman’s chasing a masked man across the Gotham skyline. The art is incredible and I think King was going for a Looney Tunes pastiche in this issue - not just with the relentless Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote-style chasing, or with the “Beep Beep” at the end (I know, Roadrunner says “Meep Meep”), but also the cameo by Porky Pig, the human bartender version, from King/Weeks’ Batman/Elmer Fudd issue.
Mikel Janin and Yanick Paquette’s issues have fantastic art too and I always enjoy seeing Amanda Conner’s artwork. She draws Lois Lane and Selina Kyle’s hen night at the Fortress of Solitude where they get plastered on alien wine and watch robot Superman strippers. It’s pointless but I adore Conner’s character expressions which are never shy of perfect.
Batman, Volume 10: Knightmares is an artist’s book then! The main story stalls while the artist’s shine - boring to read, beautiful to look at. I just hope this isn’t the beginning of the end of Tom King’s quality Bat-books like the post-Zero Year books were for Scott Snyder.
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