Heroes Reborn gets a whole freaking Gotham Central to itself in Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1. Swapping out Gotham City for Washington, DC, this noir-heavy tie-in finds Police Commissioner Luke Cage and his shift roster of honest detectives tackling police corruption from within. Handled with grace and tact, I’m sure. Written by Paul Grist. Drawn by Chris Allen & Marc Deering. Inked by Marc Deering. Colored by Guru-eFX. Lettered by Cory Petit.
Y’all remember how I’ve been talking up Heroes Reborn as the good kind of weird and not the bad kind?
You know, like, the kinda weird thing that’s engaging and makes you wanna try to figure it out? As opposed to the other kind of weird that’s just ineptly made and maybe sorta off-putting?
Well, y’all, it pains me to say, but Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1 is the event’s first major example of the bad kinda weird.
To avoid sounding hyperbolically crabby, I’ll start with what works in American Knights #1. For one thing, its street-level visuals and tonality are really tightly rendered. Openly copying Gotham Central’s more grounded look and feel, the art team absolutely sells this being a procedurally inspired “Nighthawk-adjacent title”. We are shown a lot of realistic-looking crime scenes and city-based settings in this one-shot and it cultivates a nice noir ambiance that I liked feeling through.
It also continues this tie-in round’s streak of fascinatingly bonkers Heroes Reborn universe world-building. Specifically centered around its deification of Mephisto and the widespread acceptance of a religion centered around him. While I can’t spoil some of the issue’s juicer reveals (which include very fun uses of two Hell’s Kitchen regulars), I can absolutely assure you that if you are interested in this event’s odd, yet compelling social structure texture then this is the place for you this week.
Unfortunately, a lot of this is overshadowed by its thudding main plot. Which is hinged around copaganda powered, largely tinny characterizations of Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Jessica Jones. You see, in this new D.C., Cage is recast as a Jim Gordon-esque “last honest cop” in a town riddled with corruption and anti-superhero policies. If that instantly sounds kinda gross, take comfort in the fact that that means you are still sane because it doesn’t read much better.
Though writer Paul Grist does try to squeeze some Marvel Knights branded blood from this stone, the overall wrongness of seeing Cage as a cop (something a few events have explored in branching stories) never really goes away. In fact, it just gets worse once you see that Misty and Jessica Jones, themselves pretty staunchly anti-cop in the main continuity, are Cage’s “top detectives”. All of them attempting to root out bent cops while also trying to police a city dominated by capes.
Conceptually, it’s fine, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, we never really understand how and why Luke and company became police. We are given a quick expository scene somewhat walking us through Cage’s new “origin” but it never goes beyond a cloying need to “protect his neighborhood”. Furthermore, we never get the same for Misty and Jessica, who only seem to be there because they were connected to Luke in the main continuity. And all of this is just heaped on top of a fairly generic murder mystery, revealing the whole story as pretty basic, calling further attention to just how fucking weird it is to see Luke and company parading around behind badges.
Look, I am all for comics being weird. Hell, I even occasionally like the bad kind of weird when the fancy strikes me. But the sheer amount of copaganda and rote procedural storytelling in Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1 drowns out the weirdness at play in the issue and it’s a real shame. Providing the event an actively bad tie-in issue with some troubling racial texture to boot. I understand that you can’t win them all in comics, but I am confident in calling Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1 a full-on loss.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
