Realm Knights

With Cindy and her entourage of evil holding the United Nation hostage, only one formidable fighting force can stop them.  Enter the Realm Knights, a team of Highborns and Falsebloods, put together by the United Sates government, to bring an end to any threats that spill over from the other realms.  Written by Pat Shand, Realm Knights is a special one-shot precursor to the all-new Realm Knights mini-series coming this fall from Zenescope.

Cindy is back and she’s brought some friends.  After her run-in with the Being, Cindy is set on causing a little chaos and destruction at the United Nations, just because she can.  With the world’s security force hopelessly outmatched, the US government knows there’s only a select few who can truly stop Cindy and her comrades of chaos before they destroy any semblance of world cooperation.  Brought together by Shang, Sela, as well as Robyn, Hook, Red Riding Hood and Hecate form the new defense force known as the Realm Knights.  Now Zenescope is truly delving into the superhero genre.  It’s a team of superpowered individuals, complete with colorful uniforms and code names.  This time it’s not just a team-up due to coincidence like in Bad Girls, but they’ve all been purposefully brought together in order to combine their strengths against a common threat. It’s Zenescope’s version of the Avengers and it’s truly something spectacular to behold. 

Now we delve into one of my true loves of the comic book genres and that would be the classic superhero story.  A lot of what I liked about Bad Girls, I liked about this: the action, the team-ups, the superpowered chaos, but what really stuck out to me was just how much this story really pulled from the hero books.  This one truly delves into that genre and doesn’t try to mask it (pun intended) in any way.  Reluctantly brought together, some more so than others, they all have pasts that they would be more than happy to erase.  However, through much arguing, they finally learn how to work as a unit and bring down the evil that has leaked into the Earth realm.  That right there is the pure essence of what makes a good superhero story, or at least it does in my book.  Plus, you gotta admit that this is a much sexier version of the Avengers.  Now I’m really looking forward to the mini-series that comes out this fall.

So, I can tell you right off the bat that I wasn’t too thrilled with the artwork in this one.  Yet again, it was decided to put two different pencillers on this book, and the transition wasn’t that smooth.  The first few pages weren’t too bad, everything flowed real well and it looked crisp and clean.  But then you get to the latter half and everything seems to break down and get rather sketchy.  Things just don’t look as good and it takes away from the story a little bit.  I don’t know, perhaps I’m too much of a stickler when it comes to art, but it just didn’t look complete.  However, this is a Pat Shand story, so don’t let my negativity deter you from a well written story.

Skewing away from the horror genre, Realm Knights opens up new opportunities for more magically powered teams to spring up throughout the Zenescope universe.  I mean wouldn’t it be awesome to see Calie, Tinkerbelle and the soon to come Dorothy breaking hearts and kicking ass in their own spin-off series?  For now however, this one-shot is a great introduction into one series I’ll definitely be looking forward to in the fall.  So, go check out Realm Knights, it’s a sure fire hit that you won’t need to assemble a team to handle.  For more info on where to pick up this issue, visit the Zenescope website, or the Zenescope Facebook page.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are 100% those of the individual reviewer.