Review: ‘Corpse Knight’ #3 Ends Far Too Abruptly
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
This issue would have been much strong if not for a poorly-planned ending that just stops. Readers will likely wonder whether they were cheated from a page or two. It’s a pity because the rest of the chapter was fairly strong.
Overall
8/10Writing strong endings is perhaps the most challenging aspect of storytelling. What feeling do you want to leave your audience with? Hope? Despair? Longing?
It can be just as difficult to write the end of a chapter — particularly to a comic book. That is what plagues Corpse Knight #3.
Written by Michael Chaves, the issue moves along at a good pace, with plenty of action and exposition. But this installment ends so abruptly that if feels as if a page or two were missing. It’s not a cliffhanger so much as just stopping — practically in the middle of dialogue. It’s as if Chaves unexpectedly ran out of pages and just had to stop storytelling. A good writer should leave his audience wanting more — just not this way!
What he does get on the pages is fine. Foy is still looking for Joan of Arc to heal her father, who has been turned into a zombie. But zombie dad is protecting his daughter from the many threats — human and otherwise — in the world. There’s plenty of betrayal and mistrust to go around, though the pair find some help from unlikely allies.
Artist Matthew Roberts is most successful when drawing the zombie knight himself. We don’t see much of the rotting flesh because Roberts focuses on the armor — reinforcing the undead dad’s chivalry. Still, Roberts knows when to turn up the gore factor just a bit. Foy comes across appropriately pure and innocent.
Better planning would have turned this issue around completely. Instead, a botched ending leaves readers feeling as if they’ve missed something — and that can be difficult to recover from.
Corpse Knight #3 — written by Michael Chaves, illustrated by Matthew Roberts, colored by Rico Renzi, and lettered by Pat Brosseau — will be available Wednesday in comic book stores and on digital platforms from Image Comics.
