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.

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