Heroes Reborn: American Knights #1

Heroes Reborn: American Knights is an enjoyable street-level crime comic that's particularly fun thanks to its homage to Batman comics. It's a touch on the slow side, but Marvel's take on Batman is well worth the price of admission. Read Full Review

Seeing Luck Cage and Matt Murdock in these roles in a clever play on ideas that I wish was explored a little more. Read Full Review

The issue is packed with some memorable alternate takes on Marvel favorites, but it is still a little rough around the edges. Read Full Review

Heroes Reborn: American Knights is most successful when taken as a face-value parody of Batman, with the gritty art and the cinematic dialogue consciously conjuring a Marvelized version of the Nolan trilogy. It scores a few points for Heroes Reborn world-building as well, greatly expanding on Mephisto's sinister role. But a search for substantive thought about the meaning of Heroes Reborn will come up almost empty here. The morality of this AU remains barely investigated, and the opportunity to tie the characters' moral struggles to the real world passes untaken. Read Full Review

Fracadactyl

Jun 03, 2021

This feels pretty lacking in comparison to everything else in this week's Heroes Reborn. Like trying to shoehorn Luke Cage as Commissioner Gordon. The inclusion of Misty and Jessica is good, even showing how messed up Daredevil is when his faith is replaced. But the problem is, nobody seems to bounce off one or the other that much other than Nighthawk's assignment of Cage.

Psycamorean

Jun 06, 2021

This isn't bad, but it could've been a lot better. It just doesn't give itself enough space to tell a compelling narrative, instead cramming way too much into itself.

F.T. Wolf

Jun 06, 2021

Enjoyable, but not very memorable. I like the narrative, Luke's character & what it had to say about the church (of Mephisto). The rest was underwhelming though. The writing is good, but not great. The art is fine but with some very uncanny faces and imagery. All in all, an issue that while enjoyable and easy to get through, won't stay with you. Very much a one-and-done read.

CrazyforRAMU

Oct 25, 2021

Luke Cage plays Commissioner Gordon to Nighthawk's Batman during the hunt for a Daredevil-esque vigilante. The story's not told particularly well, with a lot of avoidable confusion. There's lots of good ideas here, but they don't connect. Not to each other, not to the wider AU, and not to the shabbily-told story beneath them. Those ideas are like an oversized serving of sprinkles dumped on an ice cream sundae that's already melted. Which is what I'm coming to expect from comics authored by Paul Grist.

Mighty Morphin Comic Rater

Jun 20, 2021

After spending months looking forward to the Heroes Reborn take on Daredevil, I must say this issue was a huge letdown. The overall tone is that Grist just crammed this issue with a bunch of superficial junk and hoped it would tell a cohesive story, but he didn’t put any effort into actually developing the characters. We know Luke Cage is a cop because he was wrongfully imprisoned for... what? And he’s fighting against... what? Nighthawk fights crime by serving as the story’s main crime lord’s “backup?” Matt Murdock, dutiful worshipper of Mephisto fights crime because of the evilness of Mephisto that he sees reflected in others? Finally, and most egregiously, Luke Cage dismisses Christianity as a “fringe cult,” but the autho r doesn’t explore this idea any further, making it come off as a cheap shot airing of the author’s personal grievances instead of anything substantive. Overall the story comes off as a half hearted magic trick where Grist fills the “story” with meaningless distractions and hopes the reader doesn’t realize that there’s nothing behind the curtain. more