Knight #2 is a comic written by Guido Martinez with art by Mauri, Viktor Nava, and Marcus Odoms. When an evil group intends to wreak havoc it’ll take a hastily formed team to bring them down. This story has intense introductions, gratuitous violence, and fills in some gaps. The man of the hour is Knight, a guy who sees himself as this city’s protector and he may be correct. Working with him is a woman named Whisper who talks in a whisper and wants to see this evil group, the Praetorians, get taken down. The story starts with a look at this new group and afterwards we follow this plan to take them down with some stops along the way to answer questions and flesh things out. The action shown is gruesome, hard-hitting, and bloody. There is a nice balance here between the more intense moments and the calmer slow ones. The characters speak in a straightforward way with not many, if any, big words. He also talks to himself like in noir. This is a wordy comic but not as egregious as the first. When it’s time to learn something you will be reading for a minute. This issue gives the reader a lot of story movement and exciting altercations while still giving them a reason to look towards the next issue. Also included is the second part to The Chosen where this gladiatorial bout is underway and our leading lady Mirena has placed a heavy wager on the outcome.

            This is a gritty, dark, shadow-filled, and always taking place at night kind of art style. This is an intensely noir atmosphere with a low amount of colors that aren’t dark in tone. This takes place on city streets, an average apartment, and a large building. Persistence of these locations from panel-to-panel is pretty low. The expression level here is below average as most of these characters have some sort of stale face. We do see other looks but those are either anger or rage. Face sameness is a problem here. You’ll be able to tell characters apart due to size, hair, and outfits, but the facial structure on all the men is pretty similar. The items used for combat are various bladed tools and the magical effects stand out as they should. The action scenes are easy to follow and get nasty pretty quick. Not recommend for those for dislike gore. The only character who wears an outfit fit for combat is Knight; everybody else is dressed on vibes. One of the ladies we see is wearing a skin tight suit in white and the other is in a bra and a miniskirt, so there’s a bit of sexualization here. The art in The Chosen has a slightly blurry smoothness to it but manages to fit a lot of details into the panels and onto the characters’ faces. Someone bleeds on nearly every page.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like gritty and dark noir-influenced stories starring introspective leads with confusing pasts dealing with evil groups and other superfolk this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Gory and violent.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Get rid of him. We’re already taking the pretty ones home.”

 

Digital Link(Free): https://nosleeppress.gumroad.com/l/Qunkl

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/894914261/knight-2/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 30

Violent Pages: 15, for 50% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 1, for 3% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 5

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 3

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”