Dark Knights of Steel, Volume 1 Review (Tom Taylor, Yasmine Putri)

In Injustice we saw a world dominated by an evil Superman. In DCeased we saw zombies overrun the DC Universe. Now, in Dark Knights of Steel, we see Tom Taylor’s latest Elseworlds-style series, where familiar DC characters are placed in a generic fantasy setting. And, like Injustice and DCeased, Dark Knights of Steel is pretty underwhelming.

There are three kingdoms: one ruled by Jor-El, one by Black Lightning, and one by Wonder Woman’s muvver. One of them does something provocative for stupid reasons setting off a domino effect so all three kingdoms are now headed to snore, I mean, war.

Broadly speaking, it’s not a terrible comic - it’s readable with the occasional interesting scene and Yasmine Putri’s art is excellent throughout. There’s also the novelty of seeing famous names in new (if generic) roles. I like the twist Taylor gave to Batman’s origins so that his character is slightly different to the usual, and Superman and Supergirl are surprisingly (or not, given how Taylor’s written the Super-characters in his Elseworlds-esque comics to date) unpredictable.

But there’s not much going on that’s all that compelling. I don’t really care about this war storyline. We know who did the first assassination. We can guess at Batman’s new origins, although we’re given an entire chapter to tell us something most readers could have easily imagined. And that’s about it. Lots of characters talking about war and going to war and the consequences of war, and blah blah blah. Whatevs.

We see Kal and Zala both do some crazy things with their powers, which I’d like to see explained, but probably not enough to want to keep reading the rest of this series to find out. But the Els’ absurd superpowers really highlights the central problem with the war storyline: consider what Zala or Kal did by themselves. They don’t need an army and no-one in this world could stand up to them, so where’s the tension? The usual answer, probably: Kryptonite and magic, both of which are in this story, so I guess that. But that’s partly why again I don’t care - it’s the same old solutions to the same old problems dressed up in a slightly different costume/setting.

And that’s ultimately all Dark Knights of Steel is: a lot of the same old DC pap only they’re all at the renaissance fair this time around. This first volume is unimpressive stuff and, far from hooking me into the series, has only turned me off from wanting to see what happens next.