Knight #4 is a comic written by Guido Martinez with art by Mauricio Campetella, Bryan Arfel Magnaye, and Nestor Redulla Jr.. Knight and Whisper continue their difficult battle against the Praetorians. This is a supernatural superhero comic with plenty of action and a decent amount of grittiness. The leading man for this story is Knight, he is a man with superhuman powers due to his ability to intensely control every function in his body. With him is Whisper, a woman with the ability to fly and turn invisible. The Praetorians group they are battling consist of three members: Executioner, a man very good at killing, Gravedigger, a woman who can create zombies from corpses, and Dragonbreath, a very large disturbed man with the ability to breathe fire. This story begins on a rooftop adjacent to a stadium where Gravedigger is about to put something sinister in motion. Knight and Whisper were scoping out the scene when they were blindsided by Executioner and Dragonbreath and their fight picks up where it left off last issue. The action here is very physical with brutal and gruesome attacks but not much blood. The pacing varies from slow to steady and the tone is dark and serious. There are many intense and high-stress moments as things get dangerous for everyone involved. The dialogue is conversational but there is a good amount of narration via Knight’s thoughts. There are a large number of thick text bubbles and at least a few word-heavy pages. This is a comic that builds the story towards something big and provides plenty of excitement and violence while starring a fleshed-out cast of standout and interesting characters. There is also a bonus story at the end featuring some familiar characters.

            The art here is drawn in a modern style with a sort of cleaned up, smooth, gritty look. The range of colors leans towards the darker side of the spectrum and there is some strong shading. This takes place deep in a city so all we have scenery is other buildings. There are two main locations here, one being the rooftops with the adjacent alley and the other being a stadium. The backgrounds sometimes show the surrounding scene, other times they are a color gradient, and the rest of the time they are full of action lines. The expression level here is a tick above average as we have many characters here that show us some different looks. The emotions are mainly angry and determined as this is a combat-heavy issue. The faces are well-drawn with a focus on the smaller details like the creases and wrinkles which help the various expressions come across clearly. The violence here is light on blood but heavy on the hard-hits and explosive attacks. The action scenes flow well and have a good amount of panels to spread out the activity.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural superfolk stories starring a hero and a heroine going up against a team of villains in a comic filled with violence and some drama then this is for you.

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

R. Violence.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Tell you what. I’m gonna give you three guesses.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/894914261/knight-4-superhero-fantasy-comicbook/description

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

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 30

Violent Pages: 23, for 77% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

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

 

Violence Level – 5

“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 – 3

“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.”