Marvel Comics 2021
Written by Si Spurrier
Pencilled by Sergio Davila
Inked by Sean Parsons
Coloured by Arif Prianto
Lettered by VC’s Cory Petit
THE GREATEST KNIGHT OF THEM ALL RIDES AGAIN!
Dane Whitman is the BLACK KNIGHT and wielder of the magical EBONY BLADE, but the blade’s power comes at a terrible price. Dane forever bears the burden of its curse: an insatiable lust for blood and mayhem that constantly threatens to swallow its owner in darkness. Must that be Dane’s fate? Following the battle against the KING IN BLACK, a reinvigorated Dane has a greater sense of purpose than ever before. But his sword is the key to a new enemy’s evil plan and only the Black Knight can prevent the coming death and destruction. This conflict spanning mythical Camelot to modern-day NYC will test Dane like never before and challenge everything he believes about himself, the Ebony Blade, and the entire history of the Black Knight! Guest starring the AVENGERS!
I don’t know when Dane became a joke but that needs to end because the man has LED the Avengers for crying out loud and even Sersi bonded to him because of the kind of man he was. I was upset when Hercules was a drunk and a joke but this is even worse to me. There is no reason for it in my eyes but being a huge, huge fan of Dane’s I am here and with Si writing this I have some incredibly high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes, that I’m gonna love this.
I do like the way that this is being told. How we see the story & plot development unfold through the sequence of events and how the reader learns information is done extremely well. There are a few different arcs running through this issue and the way that they play off one another is pretty spectacular to see. Now the character development is a bit wonky because Dane not only understands that they feel this way but the others aren’t shy about calling him names if you will. Still this plays nicely into one of the arcs and who knows it could be the beginning of the end of the joke. The pacing is great and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, the characters and what’s going on it leaves us with so many questions.
The interiors here are really rather quite good. You’d never know three folks worked on them and I can’t give enough credit to the teamwork we see involved here. The linework, and by extension the inking, is gorgeous! How we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to bring out this quality in the detail is amazing. Now I am a firm believer that backgrounds should be utilised in every panel, that being said how we see the composition within the panels and how we see depth perception, that sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is phenomenal. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is magnificent! How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is extremely impressive.
I like the way that we see this being structured. With the layers within the story emerging or continuing from elsewhere we are treated to a very distinct character. The way that everything manages to work together to create the story’s ebb & flow is quite delightful. Another aspect of this that I really appreciate is how new reader friendly it is. That you don’t have to know everything about him before reading this allows for new readers to really get a chance to see Dane grow and evolve.
This is a well written and beautifully illustrated book that showcases a lesser known character that says hey look at this great character that Marvel has as well!