Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

Part 2: Knightquest

“The Death And Return Of Superman” storyline existed in multiple parts: Death Of Superman, Funeral For A Friend, Reign Of The Supermen, and Return Of Superman. Since they were following the same idea with Batman, exploring the hero through tragedy, “Knightfall” is also a story in multiple parts: Knightfall, Knightquest, Knightquest: The Crusade, and Knights End. The novelizations on the other hand are only three parts. For The Death And Life Of Superman it only had three parts, if you recall from that Chapter By Chapter. So too does the novelization of Knightfall. Now we enter part two, Knightquest. I’m not sure how “The Crusade” will be split between Knightquest and KnightsEnd, the final part of this novel. This is the section that I actually have read and reviewed a few comics during the period. Which ones will show up and how well they’re adapted interests me.

It’s here that the real villain of the story will see action. Bane is essentially Doomsday in usage, a character created just to damage the hero so the real villain can take his place. I guess that makes the replacement Batman this story’s Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, or possibly the Eradicator, the “Kryptonian” as envisioned by John Byrne. The point is to explore what would happen if the hero was replaced by someone lacking the morals some readers complained held the character back. They insisted superheroes should be more violent, more willing to kill bad guys, and we saw that in action. Eradicator lacked many of Kal-El’s morals as it was programmed to only care about Krypton’s values while Henshaw was the Superman without morals, an evil Superman before that became passe. In the same vein, Knightquest Batman is a Batman who kills his enemies. Meanwhile, Doomsday gets weaker with every appearance because unlike Bane there wasn’t any real way to use the character in future stories. For better or worse, Bane has uses in further Batman stories. Point to Bane, but I wonder what would happen if Bane and Doomsday fought? Yeah, forget Batman fighting Superman, I want to see the villains beat the daylights out of each other for a change. I want more episodes of Death Match like that, Rooster Teeth!

Last time we ended part one with the infamous back breaking, though it didn’t happened where I heard it did. It’s rather brutal, but it is adapting a 1990s comic. This is a rather long chapter, 17 pages. I expect to have a lot to talk about here, so let’s get to reading.

There are two main parts to this chapter. The first takes place just after the events of the previous chapter. Tim and Jean Paul manage to get Bruce into the station wagon, so taking that car turned out to be the right idea. Jean Paul did give chase to Bane first but didn’t catch him on foot as Bane got into his limo and drove off. They also remove Bruce’s costume to protect his identity and make up a story about a car wreck to hide what happened. Dr. Kinsolving is tending to Alfred and I’ve been writing her name as Kilsolving and that apparently is wrong. Sorry about that. I just fixed the tag at least. She orders Bruce to go for X-Rays but he’s using the “I don’t like hospitals because of all the sick people” excuse to avoid staying there if he can. I guess he’s worried they’ll find injuries that the cover stories of his clumsy antics won’t explain or he wants to recover at home.

From there we get into the other part, the full story of Jean Paul Valley’s backstory (finally). I’m not going to go over the entire backstory here because there’s a lot. The important details are as follows: Jean Paul’s dad was grooming him to join the Order Of St. Dumas (grooming doesn’t just refer to pedo stuff, and thankfully it doesn’t here), a group of fanatics started by an extremist even by modern fiction’s exaggeration of the Knights Templar. Dumas didn’t want to end the Crusades and when the pope told him to knock it off already Duman canoned himself and started his order. For you non-Catholics out there, it doesn’t work that way and he’s essentially committing…would you call it blaspheming? At any rate the Valleys are basically their enforcer, their version of the more recent Talons with the Court Of Owls, only instead of stasis the mantle of Azrael and the required training and brainwashing are passed down from father to son, like an evil Phantom/Kit Walker family. However, this Jean Paul rescued Bruce from the man who killed Jean Paul’s father, and for rescuing someone his trainer considered him a traitor, because disobedience is the highest sin to the Order. So Jean Paul goes to work for Bruce’s security company.

There are some interesting parallels to what happened to JP’s dad and Bruce when it came to being found. Both Bruce here and Jean Paul the previous demanded their clothes be removed, but when did he die? Was it at Jean Paul’s house or the event that got a friend of Bruce’s killed during a stampede of a bloody body falling into the festivities and scaring the horses? Because as that event is described it sounds like the previous Azrael was already dead when he fell into the arena. Jean Paul, as part of his father’s training, wasn’t allowed to make friends with others and was considered creepy by the teachers and students and as a adult couldn’t make friends with his co-workers because he didn’t know how and was also considered creepy. O’Neil even notes that the teachers called him creepy in the teacher’s lounge and the other security guys called him creepy in the office lounge. Despite his willingness to save people, you can see a few flaws in making Jean Paul the new Batman if any of his past brainwashing is still in effect.

Overall this was a good chapter, pushing the story along but also finally giving us the story of how Jean Paul met Bruce, why Bruce thought he might make a good Batman, and early exhibits of why he’s wrong, which will come back to haunt him in the chapters ahead.