Comic Book Review – Dark Knights of Steel

Dark Knights of Steel (2023)
Reprints Dark Knights of Steel #1-12
Written by Tom Taylor
Art by Yasmine Putri, Bengal, and Nathan Gooden

DC Comics has always loved a “What If?” story. The Silver Age, from the late 1950s to the end of the 1960s, was rife with covers that teased variations on your iconic superheroes. That trend revived itself in the Elseworlds imprint in the 1990s. The Silver Age stories often gave us alternate histories, while Elseworlds placed the heroes in new situations from space and time. Red Son saw Superman’s rocket landing in the USSR instead of Kansas. In Darkest Knight, Bruce Wayne receives the Power Ring instead of Hal Jordan. Batman: Red Rain showcased a world where Batman and many of his allies & enemies became vampires. With the big push for the new Multiverse, DC has recently rolled out more of these Elseworlds-type stories. There is DC vs. Vampires, which I previously reviewed, Jurassic League with humanoid dinosaurs, and this medieval set mini-series.

This variation sees Jor-El and Lara fleeing their dying world of Krypton and crashing into Europe during the Middle Ages. They kill a group of archers who approach their ship ready to kill, and miles away, the mystic Constantine receives a prophecy of demons who will come and ravage the land. His ruler, King Jefferson, listens and begins to prepare his forces. We jump to two decades later, and the Kryptonians are now the rulers of the Kingdom of El. Previously, this had been overseen by the Wayne dynasty, but both of them were killed. Their son, Bruce, serves as a knight to the Els. Prince Kal-El wishes to join his friend Bruce, but the Kryptonian vulnerability to magic forces him to stay put. An assassination sparks a war, and forces from across the land become entangled.

On paper, this was a worthwhile concept. It’s not necessarily all that original. Several Elseworlds stories were told in the past that used a medieval setting to recontextualize these characters. We get two glaring problems with this story: way too many characters & a lack of centering in this period. I initially thought this was a story focusing on Superman & Batman. Shortly into the first issue, I realized that this, much like DC vs. Vampires, would try to cram as many faces into the narrative as possible, even if they barely did anything in the story’s context. Because of this, beyond Batman, no one really gets much meaningful character development. They are there and do things, but I couldn’t tell you much about them as characters beyond what they are already known for generally.

The biggest problem is the lack of grounding the story in the period. There are people in armor and monarchs sitting on thrones, but the dialogue and events of the story don’t feel unique to this setting. You could take so much of what happens and put it in any other time, change the set dressing, and no one would notice. I had to compare this to Marvel’s similar 1602 mini-series published in 2003, written by Neil Gaiman. This comic reimagined Marvel’s characters in the Elizabethan era and made them feel native to that time. The way they spoke & behaved was not a carbon copy of how you find them in the modern stories. They were characters shaped by their lives in the early 17th century.

Superman’s personality in Dark Knights of Steel has no dramatic difference from what you would find picking up one of his monthly titles. You see the Teen Titans as orphans adopted by the Kents, but nothing about this feels like it had to occur in this period. The rivalry between kingdoms has been done before in Flashpoint and Kingdom Come before that. The fact that this series is hinted to get continuations baffles me as I didn’t feel anything special about it. I have yet to read Jurassic League, but from a cursory glance, the art and the characters’ personalities feel unique. Dark Knight of Steel is just so bland in comparison.

I’m not someone who hates Tom Taylor. What I’ve read of his Nightwing run, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, more than I expected that I would. I couldn’t get into his Son of Superman series as a monthly read, but I’m open to reading in collected form. Dark Knights of Steel, however, was just so brutally unimpressive. I got the sense Taylor did very little background research about the Middle Ages to inform his book. It feels more like he just had the artist draw some characters in armor, others in crowns, and everyone was wielding swords. Even the reveal of the enemy at the end felt like something I’d seen a half dozen times in the in-canon books. Alfred’s secret was where the book came closest to doing something different, but it was not enough. 

There needs to be more depth to Wonder Woman or anyone else. Taylor seems focused on trying to convince us that Batman is so cool. With the glut of Batman books published monthly by DC Comics, do we need yet another story that focuses on him? The DC Universe has so many interesting faces that if you are going to spotlight Batman, you better damn well do something surprising with him. Taylor completely fails in that regard. The recent push for more Elseworlds-style stories feels like a corporate move to create new merchandising avenues rather than tell interesting stories in evocative settings. Now McFarlane Toys can put out Dark Knights of Steel versions of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc. Same thing with Jurassic League. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lukewarm & forgettable animated adaptation of these things in the near future.