Advance Review: ‘Corpse Knight’ #4 Suffers From A Confusing Pacing Issue

They say never meet your heroes. That’s certainly the case in Corpse Knight #4.

Up until now, young Foy has been on a quest to bring her zombified father to Joan of Arc, whom she believes can turn the former farmer human again. Needless to say, things don’t go as Foy expects. (To give any more details would involve massive spoilers.)

This, after Foy and pops rescue Joan and her army from an English siege on their castle. While that fight is well illustrated by Matthew Roberts, the events leading up to the fight with the English are so confusing, I was convinced that I had either missed a page or the issue was assembled in the wrong order.

Roberts moves from a page where Foy is talking to her dad to her being hoisted onto an English catapult. It’s difficult to blame Roberts for this (though he doesn’t fix the issue). Instead it feels like a pacing and plotting issue from writer Michael Chaves.

Aside from the confrontation with Joan, which doesn’t come until near the end, little else happens in this chapter. That magnifies the issue with this pacing. The only good news is that the ending is so shocking that it largely covers up the previous sin. Still, this creative team should know better or at least have made the effort to correct it.

Aside from that, Chaves writes a tight story for this chapter. That hasn’t always been the case, so it’s refreshing this time. It also heightens our expectations for the next issue while making readers wonder why he bothered putting so many fillers into the limited series in the first place.

Corpse Knight #4 — written by Michael Chaves, illustrated by Matthew Roberts, colored by Rico Renzi, and lettered by Pat Brosseau — will be available Wednesday in comic book stories and digital platforms from Image Comics.