Pipeline #1048: The Marvel Knights Team-Up

, who most famously inked John Byrne in a way Byrne was vocal in not liking. I’ve always liked [...]

Marvel Knights #1 cover detail by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
(Photo: Joe Quesada, Jimmy Palmiotti)

Coming next month to Netflix is "The Defenders," a team-up show of a bunch of street-level Marvel characters, all of whom had recent series on Netflix.

This column is all about comics, though, so I'm not going to talk about that.

Instead, I want to talk about an obvious parallel case from the world of comics: "Marvel Knights."

Think back to the "Marvel Knights" series of titles that Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti put together. It included The Punisher, The Black Panther, Daredevil, The Inhumans, and Doctor Strange.

It's not a perfect analogy, but that imprint added a series named "Marvel Knights," that teamed up, among others, Daredevil, Black Widow, and Shang Chi to bring The Punisher to justice. Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, and Luke Cage all also featured in the series. It's a dream lineup for a certain generation of Marvel fanboy, probably from the 70s. But it also pulled elements from many of those Marvel Knights series.

Chuck Dixon wrote the series, with art by Eduardo Barreto. Dixon's story arc had Daredevil pulling together some "friends" to form a loose knit team to go after The Punisher. The Man Without Fear was fed up with Trigger Happy's utter lack of a moral compass.

marvel knights daredevil punisher relationship
(Photo: Eduardo Barreto, Klaus Janson)

The Daredevil/Punisher relationship has always been a strong one for writers to have fun with, and Dixon shines in those scenes. Dixon's Punisher is often the star of the series, despite being the anti-hero at best, and a villain at worst. It's not surprising, given Dixon's past writing association with the character.

Series Structure

The structure of the series is rather loose. There seems to always be two or three plots always going on at the same time, without much interaction. It's a classic soap opera structure where certain plots graduate from the B plot to the A plot, and new subplots are devised to fill that gap.

With all these characters involved with such a loose team, Dixon has plenty of room to play with them and tell stories away from the main one. But as a team book, it can be frustrating sometimes that the team isn't coming together more often to fight the big bad guy.

The story arc escalates quickly to the point where Moon Knight is funding it, complete with their own skyscraper headquarters. Nick Fury shows up. Luke Cage is hired on. Doctor Strange is surfing the astral plane or something.

Meanwhile, Black Widow is helping Dagger go clothes shopping while Cloak is playing video games.

It has a certain charm, though there are some moments that are cringe-worthy.

It's a very "comic booky" series. It's old school. It's a lot of fun, with some great moments and nice art (especially in the early issues), but it didn't really fit in well with what Marvel had going on.

While it was selling better than 60,000 copies a month, it was quickly thrown onto the ash heap of Marvel history.

This lead to some bad feelings between Dixon and newly-installed Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada, who had provided covers for the first eight issues.

It's a miracle it lasted 15 issues. It was, in the end, quickly dumped with a whole bunch of unresolved subplots and without even a final farewell. As far as I remember, the events of the series were quickly forgotten and none of them resolved or ever mentioned again.

There was enough warning, though, that Dixon got to end the series with the team breaking up and Daredevil going back on his own. It's not at all convincing, but at least they tried to wrap it up.


The Art of Marvel Knights

The series started with three three-issues stories. The first two were inked by Klaus Janson. The later had inks done by Nelson DeCastro (a/k/a "Nelson"), who most famously inked John Byrne in a way Byrne was vocal in not liking.

I've always liked Nelson's inks. They bring a brushy smoothness to whoever's art he's working on, plus a good knowledge of shadow work and some texturing that can be done with the old sable hair.

I just don't think they worked strongly over Eduardo Barretto's pencils. I wish I could see the pencils Barretto did under Janson versus under Nelson. I'd be curious to see if his work started to simplify coincidentally with the change in inker, or if perhaps Janson did more work with his ink than just cover up Barretto's pencils. Janson could hide an imperfection in the pencils beautifully without us ever seeing it. With Nelson's, it stands out more.

marvel knights #2 quesada cover
(Photo: Joe Quesada, Jimmy Palmiotti)

Joe Quesada did some beautiful covers in the first nine issues. His art nouveau stylings worked particularly well with Dagger's hair, and his compositions are spot on.

Trent Kaniuga followed that up with something that felt much cartoonier and much more manga-based. Kaniuga was a young artist, even back then, and his style was unique and well cemented in, but not always comfortable looking. It's tough to tell at times if he's having anatomy issues, or if his natural style is so cartoony that you need to throw out some of those rules.

Recommended?

Honestly, I'd recommend the first nine issues. I think that's all you need, and you'd get a pretty complete story. I think that's the best of the series.

It gets you the first three story arcs:

  • The first arc gets the team together. There's some great Daredevil/Punisher interplay in this one, and a great battle against a seemingly unstoppable foe, though the end is abrupt.
  • The second brings Moon Knight in. Punisher raids a drug house that turns into something more. And Shang Chi's father sends someone to kill his son. (You can't pick your family...)
  • The third arc features Doctor Strange and goes into the world inside Cloak's cloak. When you start getting to such magical places in the middle of a series that's otherwise so grounded on the "street level," it starts to lose me. BUT -- and this is a big but -- the parts where The Punisher is so happy in the hellish alternate New York made me laugh out loud. It's beautifully in character.

After that, the last six issues feel a little less focused. Things start falling apart before they had even begun. Luke Cage adds some great moments, but the overall momentum was lost, I thought.

Issue #15 is a quick ending and obviously not what anyone wanted to do with the book. It feels like it comes out of the blue, and that's likely due to the quick cancellation of the series from within.

"Marvel Knights" was an interesting series that may have peaked too soon, but featured some good work from the creators involved. It just landed too far out of place with the rest of the line at the time.

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