The Knight and Squire's search for a local supervillain runs them afoul a gang of militant, oculist Morris men.
The Good
There's an undeniable charm to seeing these familiar superhero tropes recast in the quaint setting of suburban England, with so many of the seemingly Earth-threatening menaces this duo faces turning out to be tempests in teapots. Like a classic BBC comedy special, you can enjoy this even when you aren't always laughing out loud or even completely following what's going on.
The Bad
Even with the explanations in the appendix, I still found the plot of this to be especially hard to follow. I was following the initial idea about a supervillain showing up in town, but I'm not quite sure how it went from that to a bunch of bigots performing a ritual around stonehenge. I'm sure the explanation's probably buried under a lot of British slang and humor, and I really couldn't see it through that.
The Verdict - 2.5/5
Much like the first issue, I really feel like this would've been better served as a short featured in an 80 page giant. It seems like a simple gag that was stretched out past its limits. I'll freely plead cultural ignorance, because much of the British humor and regional parlance was lost on me. Though, I suspect a lot of American readers will be similarly lost without a lexicon handy.
As much as I wanted to enjoy the series, it's just doing it for me. The story, the art... I find very little to be excited about and probably won't be coming back. It's a shame because I've loved their appearances in various Bat books over the past few years.
When Paul Cornell was at the Birmingham Comic Convention, we went to his Panel. He said he's deliberately made this the most English thing he could physically do. The inclusion of the appendix and stuff is to help out the American's and for them to understand some of what's being said, but a lot of this stuff is really little gem's for English people. Like the Milkman, or the Black and White Minstrells. Excellent stuff.
Of course I'm not from Cornell's generation, I'm from the following so I know some of this stuff but not all of it. I realise Knight and Squire probably won't be getting a follow up series or anything like that, but it's really nice to see something written with a very obviously surreal and British point of view on it.
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