Somebody Please Buy The Lady A Drink: Review of Demon Knights #1

I had intended to bring you all a recap of last night’s Deadliest Warrior: Zombies vs. Vampires, but then Daniel Bard imploded in the middle of his inning during last nights Red Sox/Blue Jays game and our local bar consoled us with beer and free popcorn until “Whoops, I have a job to go to in the morning” o’clock. So, that show is sitting on the DVR and I will get to it when I can.

However, last night I did get to read Demon Knight #1, written by Paul Cornell with pencils by Diogenes Neves (that may be the best name, ever). One of the things I remember most vividly at Comic-Con this year was just how excited the two of them were in discussing the book at one of the New 52 panels this past July. The other thing I remember vividly was this thing with a homeless guy and some Tide Stain Stick, but that’s neither here nor there. Demon Knights is truly something they should have every right to be excited about. Neves art is vibrant and expressive. I was already a fan of Madame Xanadu after Matt Wagner‘s run with the character, but between Neves’s work and Cornell’s character voicing, I just fell in love with the character:

Sometimes you just have to ditch the fairy queens of Avalon for the Dairy Queen. I get it.

Madame Xanadu is at turns smart, funny and world weary. And she really just wants a quiet drink:

I think I went to this keg party. You should've seen what was happening in the other room. Hint - weasels.

The story is set just after the fall of Camelot. Xanadu hooks up in this story with Jason Blood, who has had the demon Etrigan magically bound to him by Merlin. He wasn’t happy about it:

They took the bar! The whole fucking bar!

Her merry crew is rounded out by Vandal Savage and The Shining Knight:

Ok so, a thug, a lady and a demon walk into a bar...and some ambiguously gendered individual...

As the group meets each other at the local inn, nearby, bad guys are starting awful, magical badness that wreaks havoc on the local populace. Xanadu and company attract the bad guys attention and shit gets all kinds of thrown down. Oh, and dragons. There’s dragons.

And I will tune in next issue, if only to see if Madame Xanadu can’t get that quiet drink she wants. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen.