MARVEL KNIGHTS #15
"The Unreal World"
Mildly Recommended (5/10)
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Marvel Comics/Marvel Knights imprint
Writer: Chuck Dixon
Pencils: Eduardo Barreto
Inks: Nelson
Colors: Avalon Studios
Letters: Comicraft
Editors: Nanci Dakesian & Stuart Moore
Price: $2.99 US/$4.50 CAN |
And so Marvel Knights ends with a whimper, not a bang. It's a shame this title didn't take off in popularity, as Dixon was doing some interesting things with the characters. Sadly, the book seemed to lack any real direction or cohesiveness. Appropriately, this final issue feels as disconnected as many that came before, maybe even moreso.
The Black Widow and Dagger find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The rock: dozens of robots out to kill them. The hard place: the computer controlling them. Meanwhile, Daredevil tracks down the Punisher again, and Luke Cage and Shang Chi have a heart-to-heart about the latter's evil father. One thing connects all these encounters: each vigilante agrees that working with a team just isn't for him or her.
Barreto's art is as much fun as it was in the first issue. His sleek style is well suited to rendering a world of super-heroes. Nelson's inks envelop the book in the darkness in which these street-level characters exist. Avalon's colors... crisp but not intrusive. Basically, there's nothing to complain about art-wise when it comes to Marvel Knights.
Perhaps the greatest strength of this title has been the developing friendship between the Widow and Dagger. Of course, that should come as no surprise, since Dixon also writes DC's Birds of Prey, which focuses on a developing friendship between two female heroes as well (Oracle and Black Canary). Dixon's Punisher is as psychotic, clever and tough-as-nails as one could hope, and Luke Cage's attitude plants the book's feet firmly on the ground. Surprisingly, the only character that really hasn't been fleshed out all that much is the title's most popular participant: Daredevil.
Part of the core concept of this book was that the characters' goals rarely coincided, and they rarely work well with other heroes. It was ambitious, but in the end, it kept the various plotlines and personalities from gelling in any way. The final scene, in which Daredevil informally disbands the team, comes almost as an afterthought. It's too bad... Dixon had some great characters to play with, but they just wouldn't play together.
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