Review — Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #2 — Suffer the Children

Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #2 variant cover, via DC Comics.

Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #2 — Tim Seeley, Writer; Acky Bright, Artist; Brian Reber, Colorist

Ray — 8/10

Ray: Probably the oddest choice for a Knight Terrors spin-off, this miniseries gave the focus to an assassin and antihero who only had a handful of appearances in Shadow War before this. Teamed with Seeley creation Raptor, another deadly assassin, Angel Breaker infiltrated a Kobra base where several children were being kept as trainee snake priests — only to encounter a deadly cult, and a mysterious being named Nanny Gillo who was preying on the children, and looked mysteriously similar to a monster who Angel Breaker saw in her childhood. Which raised the question — what exactly is going on, and are these characters trapped in a Knight Terrors nightmare, or something else entirely? As the monster claimed her first victim at the end of the last issue, it became clear how personal this was going to be for Angel Breaker — and just how vicious this villain truly was.

Haunted. Via DC Comics.
The sense of ambiguity works well for the final issue, as Nanny Gillo continues to stalk the characters. The jump scares, transformations, and other effects sell the sense of childhood fear that drives the villain, as several other young members of Kobra fall prey to her in one way or another. It’s a great setting that makes the best of a book that doesn’t really have a compelling lead character. Angel Breaker gets more layers here, but she’s still mostly a sketch of a character. Raptor has more development, but he hasn’t appeared for a long time. Really, what makes this a compelling story is that Tim Seeley is very much in his element here — working with primal fears and horror movie tropes in an unconventional setting. It calls back to the way he began his career, with indie sensation Hack/Slash, and that gives this series a bit more of an edge that many of the other tie-ins lack.

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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.