Marvel Knights: Make the World Go Away

The Marvel Knights are a superhero team with a complicated publishing backstory and, on Earth-616 (if you care about these things), a fluid line-up. I think they were always headed by Daredevil though.

What I like about them is that most of the members are meat-and-potatoes type grinders rather than mutants or aliens or deities with otherworldly powers. In this limited series written primarily by Donny Cates the Knights are Daredevil, Punisher, Elektra, and Black Panther, with the Hulk sort of tagging along to open doors. (Note: Before I get asked in the comments, I believe the figure on the cover appearing on the far right is Karnak, one of the Inhumans. I don’t know why his picture is on the cover. He’s not with the Marvel Knights here.) Aside from the Hulk they’re all just really athletic fighting machines, good with guns and martial arts but that’s about it. And that’s all I want most of the time.

The story here I found really intriguing. Matt Murdock (Daredevil) wakes up in a graveyard not knowing why he’s there or who he is. He’s met by Frank Castle (Punisher) who is a cop in this timeline, and who has also forgotten his secret identity but is being led around by a weird-acting Bruce Banner, contacting the members of the Knights. All of whom are stuck in the same state of amnesia.

But it’s not just the Knights. The whole world’s memory has been wiped by some unspecified “machine,” basically rebooting this corner of the Marvel universe. So reassembling the Knights is a difficult enterprise since none of the members knows or trusts any of the others. Poor Frank in particular gets the crap beaten out of him by pretty much everybody.

I thought this was an interesting premise and it worked well. Like I say, these heroes are grinders and that part of their identities is emphasized as they often make do with substitute, makeshift costumes. The Punisher just has a t-shirt with his logo. Black Panther has a face mask with some fangs on it.

Unfortunately, I thought it was an idea that needed more room to run. A lot more room. There are things going on that aren’t explained — though they may be elsewhere, in some other timestream. We’re not told what the machine is or its purpose. Doctor Doom and Kingpin are both involved, with Doctor Doom apparently knowing more about what’s going on, but neither of them tell us anything. (As an aside, I was also impressed at how powerful Kingpin has been getting. He’s almost another Hulk at this point, and just smashes Doctor Doom, which surprised me.) The status of Karen Page was mystifying. Angel? Ghost in the machine? And finally the ending was quite abrupt and anticlimactic. The Hulk does his thing and the machine has a reset button so that everyone can just get switched back to normal.

Disappointing then, but disappointing because there wasn’t more of it. I felt like they could have let it run for some more issues and given it a better ending. But comics are all about the churn and keeping the pipeline flowing. Finish one story arc and then on to the next.

Graphicalex