Events and comic books go hand in hand, especially for DC. It seems like the publisher has some sort of major event a few times a year with each one intending to shift something significant for the overall lineup of heroes. Sometimes, the events are great not only in terms of the stories being told but in terms of what the event actually does for the status quo but there are other events that fall flat. They’re the events that try to do too much or brings in too many characters, or in some cases, takes a good idea and just puts it in the wrong place. Sometimes, it is a combination of those things and more. Knight Terrors is one of those events that didn’t quite hit the mark and now, almost three years later, I still think it’s at its core one of DC’s weakest crossover events — and a real missed opportunity for DC to tell a good horror story.
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A line-wide crossover event that dominated DC between July and August 2023, Knight Terrors included a four-issue core miniseries from writer Joshua Williamson and artist Howard Porter as well as multiple tie-in books and issues from other books and creative teams, drawing in pretty much every active character in the DC universe at the time. The story, generally, saw an attack from the villain Insomnia who puts the whole world to sleep, trapping them in their own personal nightmares while he worked to bring together the Dream Stone and the Nightmare Stone so that the nightmares of the world’s greatest heroes would be forced out into the world, thus ruining public perception of them. Insomnia’s motivations are deeply personal and the heroes are largely helpless, save for one who managed to avoid being dragged into sleep and his very unlikely ally: Damian Wayne and Deadman. The event ends with the heroes victorious, but Insomnia still manages to win the long game. While it’s an interesting concept and the tie-ins are solid, the core miniseries is weak in comparison and the whole thing feels like it should have been a smaller story than DC turned it into.
Knight Terrors Is a String Tying Together Multiple Crossover Events Just to Launch Absolute Power
As an event, Knight Terrors attempts to do something interesting. Unlike a lot of comic events which are their own, contained stories that end up having major ramifications, Knight Terrors has its roots in two previous crossovers, Dark Knights: Metal and Lazarus Planet, thanks to the villain Insomnia. It’s reveled that Insomnia was once a man named Christopher Lukas whose family was killed in front of him by the Dark Knights during Dark Knights: Metal. The grief and trauma drove him insane and he was then taken to Arkham Tower. There, he was exposed to the Lazarus resin from the Lazarus Planet event and thus, given the power to enter people’s dreams and do harm. These new powers gave him the ability to exact his revenge for the events of 2017’s Dark Knights: Metal in that he wants to destroy the heroes for having failed him and his family.
The idea of exploring the fallout of a previous event is an interesting one. It sometimes feels like comics move on quickly from large events, only referencing what happens when it’s convenient in future stories or when a change is large enough to be permanent. But where Knight Terrors gets a little messy is that it isn’t just a nod to previous events. It’s also used as a bandage to get continuity to the event that was meant to truly change DC: Absolute Power. While Knight Terrors doesn’t really seem to have any direct connections to Amanda Waller, she gets stapled onto things at the end, taking advantage of the mess Insomnia left behind to further who own aims, which were themselves set up by a 2022 crossover event, Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. In the end, this connection makes Knight Terrors feel less like its own event with some important story beats — namely the heroes having to each confront their own trauma and failings while trapped in Insomnia’s nightmare — and more like a patch for a series even events that may or may not have ever been connected otherwise. It somewhat diminishes Knight Terrors and makes some of the mechanics of the story feel forced.
The Tie-Ins Are Great. The Core Story Is Less So.
Another weakness of Knight Terrors as an event falls to the stories that worked and the stories that did not. I read the entire event and reviewed many of the books, including the core series. Almost every non-core issue of Knight Terrors was good. They were stories that dug into the psyche of each of the heroes impacted and really walked both the characters and the readers through the trauma and baggage that these god-like creatures carry. They were humanizing and heartbreaking. The same can’t be said for the core miniseries. Knight Terrors instead functions as a Deadman story that much more superficially touches on the same themes of grief, trauma, and exploration, but never really breaks the surface. Instead, the story feels overstuffed and thin, shoving in characters that don’t really have much of a reason for being involved at all (zombified Sandman, we’re looking at you) and all for a nonsensical MacGuffin of a plot device that itself doesn’t make any sense. While the tie-in books had real heart, when we actually get to what should be the emotional reveal in Knight Terrors, there’s no connection. It was just Deadman being a weird “pick me” wearing Batman’s body and chasing an item that feels fake only for victory to be futile anyway.
That is perhaps the most frustrating thing about Knight Terrors. You had really good individual stories, but a main story that felt like it had no direction and ultimately felt both over and under cooked at the same time. Sandman didn’t need to be there, the fourth issue of the miniseries felt like a full repeat of issue three before hopping to the end, and Insomnia, for all his devastating power, ends up coming off as a cheap generic villain whose design even looks like a discount Joker on acid. It’s underwhelming and then becomes exhausting when you realize it’s just a prelude to another event designed to kick the heroes while they’re down. It ends up simply feeling very messy and disappointing.
Knight Terrors Would Have Been a Very Cool DC Horror Story All On Its Own — No Event Necessary
While Knight Terrors had a lot of issues, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad idea. That is, in a very real sense, the most disappointing thing about the entire event. Knight Terrors is actually a good idea, just not for a series-wide crossover. Horror as a genre is something that DC has the potential to do well. In the case of Knight Terrors, it would have worked very well as a limited series, most likely for the Black Label imprint. Deadman is an interesting character that DC hasn’t done enough with. Actually fully fleshing out the Knight Terrors story as being a true Deadman story rather than a whole event meant to hold other events together would have allowed for more exploration of Deadman as a character and really given him a chance to try to function as a hero. You could have still brought other heroes and major characters into the story, but it wouldn’t have felt so thin and so rushed had this been more centered on the characters and not the outcome. Sometimes, it’s more about the journey than the destination and that should have been the case for Knight Terrors.
Ultimately, Knight Terrors did its job as a crossover. It connected multiple events and guided DC into another event that would help see the beginning of yet another new event that upended the DC universe and led it to its current (and thriving) status quo. But it did so in a way that felt messy, a little lackluster, and misused a good opportunity for a great horror story that could have been more interesting and impactful on its own. Knight Terrors had potential to be more than one of too many forgettable events and it’s a shame it didn’t live up to it.
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