Halloween in July? With a story by Joshua Williamson and art by Howard Porter, Knight Terrors: First Blood #1 kicks off DC’s two-month, horror-themed, universe-spanning event. I’m not sure who had the idea to run this darker themed event in the middle of summer, so soon after Dawn of DC launched, but the horror-based tone likely would have been better suited for a fall release. Unless DC was making commentary on the state of the country with a July 4th release? I digress, back to this one-shot…

Williamson’s story does a lot of stage-setting for the story arcs that will play out across the various tie-ins, which takes away from the overall pacing of this book. We spend time early on rehashing recent events in the DC Universe to catch readers up on the current status quo (e.g. the Justice League disbanding, Superman working with Lex Luthor, etc.). The initial table stakes for the event are laid bare with Dr. Destiny & his lost Dreamstone setting up the context for what will likely take all two-months to conclude. Deadman is introduced as a main voice & player, while the Trinity are unable to address the situation fast enough in the Halls of Justice. A lot of the initial interactions came off as forced, cringe-worthy humor, most notably Batman’s “No sleep till Gotham” line.

The horror-motif shines through via Porter’s art. The line work creates an unhinged/unstable motif that fits the general tone of the story where our characters are meant to be succumbing to their worst nightmares. There are moments of true gore that are done in a way that I can only describe as beautiful. Suffice it to say that at least DC nailed the visuals for a horror story.

I’m interested to see how the upcoming tie-ins kick off, as First Blood didn’t really do anything to introduce those individual stories. Other than each character dealing with their own nightmares, I’d bet good money that this one-shot will have more of a connection to the Knight Terrors main limited series which kicks off next week (July 11th), rather than the character-focused tie-ins. Which for me, takes something away from it all. Perhaps I’ll look back on this and think First Blood was a necessary prelude to the entire event, but I left this title thinking it was more of a mandatory pre-read so you know why DC is taking a pause on actual stories and pumping out a bunch of loosely-related tie-ins for the next two months.

Rating: 6/10