Dark Knights of Steel #1
Tom Taylor (w), Yasmine Putri (a)
DC Comics

Liz says: This is Tom Taylor doing what he does best: taking the DC Universe and turning it on its head, reimagining it to wondrous effect. Part ‘Game of Thrones’, part ‘Marvel: 1602’, ‘Dark Knights of Steel’ is a fantasy epic set in a medieval version of the DCU, with all the magic, politics, and familial drama that description entails. In this (Else-) world, Superman’s parents crash-land to earth moments before their super-son’s birth, surviving to reign as King and Queen of the Castle of El. Jumping forward twenty years, the world around them has been shaped by their arrival: fraught with political rivalries and magical threats, all of which come in the form of high-profile DC characters. As with the aforementioned ‘Marvel: 1602’ (Neil Gaiman’s brilliant take on an alternate medieval version of the Marvel Universe), it takes some initial conjecture to divine who’s who. The Kingdom of Storms is ruled by Jefferson Pierce; the oft-mentioned Green Man turns out to be the Green Lantern; the young mystic who foresees the future while speaking in tongues is John Constantine. Bruce Wayne is a Witcher who hunts down users of magic at the behest of Castle El, while the Banshee he pursues is Black Canary. While the book’s title implies a Batman story (Dark Knights, as it were), it’s clear from the onset that this is a tale that envelops the whole DC Universe, proper. Bruce is no doubt a key player, whose own background is sensationally convergent from the classic Batman origin story. The final panels will leave you as breathless and on-the-edge-of-your-seat as any great episode of Game of Thrones, with as many questions racing through your mind as to what will happen next. This was a thrilling first issue, rife with potential outcomes. I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.